The other day I was going through some old DVDs in our basement, when I came across one of my favourites: The Princess Bride. I find it difficult to believe that it goes back thirty-five years, so I’ll excuse you if many of you are not familiar with it.
I won’t recount the whole story for you. (I’m not sure I remember it all that well myself!) But there was one character in it called Vizzini who stood out for me. It seemed that in almost every scene where he appeared, he would find a reason to utter the word, “Inconceivable!” In fact it gets to the point where another character ends up saying to him, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Well, I suppose we may all have our favourite words. That certainly seems to have been the case with the author of Hebrews. I mentioned a few weeks ago that one of his favourite words is “better”. In all he uses it eleven times: We have a Saviour who is better than the angels (1:4), we are heirs of a better hope (7:19), we are recipients of better promises (8:6), we desire a better homeland (11:16), we are purified by a better sacrifice (9:23), we will rise again to a better life (11:35) … And in verse 22 of this morning’s passage we find that Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant.
Which brings us to a second favourite word in Hebrews: “covenant”. It occurs for the first time in verse 22 this morning. And by my count we will come across it a total of nineteen times before we arrive at the conclusion of the final chapter. So if we’re going to understand the message of Hebrews, we need to understand what its author means by the word “covenant”.
So let me ask you: What comes to your mind when you hear the word “covenant”? Personally, I can think of covenant being used in a couple of settings. The first is in the realm of legal contracts, where two parties agree to certain conditions that must be met in order for a deal to be settled. The second is in the realm of marriage, where bride and groom swear to love, honour and cherish each other to the exclusion of all others “till death do us part”.
Perhaps you can think of other examples. But whatever the case, I think we all can agree that a covenant of any kind involves solemnity, permanence and commitment.
The Four Covenants of the Old Testament
Outside of marriage, covenants may not be a regular feature of life today. But they were not uncommon in the world of the ancient Near East. There were covenants between kings, covenants between cities, and covenants between rulers and their subjects. And some of them can be traced back to more than four thousand years ago. However, common though covenants may have been in the ancient world, the Old Testament is the only place where you will find a covenant in which one of the parties is God. So let’s take a few moments to look at some of the covenants we find there.
The first time the word “covenant” appears in the Bible is in the account of Noah. No doubt you are familiar with the scene, as after what seemed an endless time in the ark, Noah at last stood on dry ground once again. As he gazed into the sky, there was a rainbow and God spoke to him: “I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature … that never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Genesis 9:9-11)
Turn another half dozen or so chapters through Genesis and you will come to a second covenant, this time with Abraham. God promises that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky. Added to that, they will no longer be wanderers but will be possessors of a land that they can call their own. Unlike the covenant with Noah, however, this time there was an obligation on the part of Abraham and his descendants: that every male should be circumcised as a sign of the covenant.
We come to a third covenant when we turn to the book of Exodus and stand with the people of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. There the Lord lays down the conditions that his newly rescued people are to uphold if they are to remain in relationship with him. We think of them as the Ten Commandments. But rabbis would tell you that there were in fact no fewer than 613!
The fourth covenant comes two centuries later, when the nation of Israel was entering its golden age under King David. God’s promise to David is summarized for us in Psalm 89: “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant: I will establish your offspring for ever, and build your throne for all generations.”
Now these are all amazing promises. The people of Israel stood in immense privilege. No other nation was so favoured. But the problem was that they never upheld their side of the covenant. They failed to recognize that circumcision did not involve just a surgical procedure, but that that outward act was intended as a sign of an inward commitment to serve the Lord God and him alone. Instead, they found themselves being attracted to the false deities and pagan practices of the nations that surrounded them. They bowed before images made of wood and precious metals and some even sacrificed their children to them. Their priests and their leaders from the king down became corrupt and the people were not far behind in following them. The poor were trodden under foot and widows were forced to beg to keep themselves and their children alive.
The Promise of a New Covenant
It was into the midst of this ongoing scene that God sent his prophets. Their task was to warn the people, including the king and the royal family, the priests and all the religious officials, of their rampant corruption and infidelity.
But the prophets came not just to alert the people to their waywardness. They also brought a message of hope and redemption, of forgiveness and restoration, of new life and a whole new relationship with God. Among those prophets was Jeremiah, who came with these words:
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
It was a remarkable promise—and we don’t have the time to go into it in any great detail right now. Suffice it to say, though, that this new covenant would not be a matter of outward obedience to laws and regulations. Rather, it would be centred in a relationship—knowing God, not as a distant being out there, but as a living presence, God himself coming to dwell within us. And we know that those promises were fulfilled in a person—in Jesus.
I love the way the apostle Paul put it when he wrote to the believers in Corinth: “All the promises of God find their ‘Yes’ in Jesus.” (2 Corinthians 1:20) Jesus has come to usher in a better covenant than the covenant with Noah or Abraham or Moses or David—a covenant that is sealed not with the sacrifice of bulls and sheep and goats, but with his own life’s blood; a covenant that involves not an outward obedience but his daily presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit. All of that is wrapped up in the words from Hebrews we have heard this morning, where we read that Jesus , “the Son who has been made perfect forever”, “is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him”.
Four Promises of Jesus
So it is that “Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant”—a covenant that was sealed by his blood shed for you and for me on the cross and ratified by his resurrection from the grave on the third day. But what does that mean in practical terms? How does it work out for you and me today? Part of the answer at least can be found in four promises that Jesus makes in the gospels.
The first is found in John’s gospel, where Jesus says, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37) So we have the assurance that when we put our faith in Jesus, he will never let go of us. We may fail him. Indeed we most certainly will. I know I have time and time again. But he will never turn his back on us. Peter found that out after he denied knowing Jesus not once but three times. It was not many days later that Jesus was coming to him once again and saying to him, “Follow me.” (John 21:19)
A second promise of Jesus comes to us from the week before his crucifixion, when he assured his followers, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35)
Yesterday was the anniversary of my ordination. Back then there were theologians who were claiming that God was dead. Now those theologians are the ones who are dead—and the good news of Jesus continues to be proclaimed with power and to prove itself true in people’s lives all over the world.
The church in Nigeria grows by more than a million new disciples a year. At last count the largest church in Europe was where? In Kyiv, with more than thirty thousand adherents.[1] And where are the world’s largest Christian congregations? Not in North America, but in Korea and India.
A third promise that Jesus made to his followers came as they gathered for the Passover supper on the evening before his crucifixion. It was on that occasion that he told them, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (John 14:1-3) And so Jesus gives us the assurance that not only will he be with us in every circumstance of life, but that when life ends, we will be gathering among that joyful throng to sing his everlasting praise:
To him who sits on the
throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever! (Revelation
5:13)
And the fourth promise that Jesus has left with us comes in his very last words before he ascended to be with his Father: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
John Baillie was a Scottish theologian of the early twentieth century. He was fond of telling the story of going for a walk one day with his young grandson, who was just a toddler. At one point along their way the little boy began to stumble. He might have fallen down altogether, had his little hand not been held in the firm grasp of his grandfather’s. And that, said Baillie, is how it is with Jesus. We may stumble and fall, but Jesus is with us and he will never let us go.
With all that in mind, maybe you can see now why covenant is one of the favourite words of the author of Hebrews. May it be one of your favourite words too. And by the power of the Holy Spirit may you seek to live out that covenant in your daily walk with the one who sealed it with his blood.
