Hebrews - Part 23 God's Law On Our Hearts (Hebrews 9:1-5)

All right, let's dig into Hebrews 9, starting at verse 1. Now, even the first covenant had requirements of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary. For there was a tabernacle prepared, the first part in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread, which is called the holy place. And behind the second veil, there was a tabernacle, which is called the holy of holies, having a golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant, covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar holding the manna, and Aaron's rod which budded, and the tablets of the covenant.

And above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail. I'm going to stop right there. even though I think that the next five verses go really well together with these five the author of Hebrews has been making a point the entire time which is that Jesus Christ is better than everything that these people had ever known.

The new covenant is better than the old covenant. That's the specific point of application that we are investigating right now as we finished Chapter 8. And so the author is drawing on imagery that would have been utterly familiar to his listeners at the time. He's going to talk about how the tabernacle was set up for the Day of Atonement and just generally a couple other details.

But as he says in verse 5, of these things we cannot now speak in detail. And so I think that there's a couple things there. One is that we could go into much more detail. So he didn't tell them everything about the tabernacle that may have been interesting or applicable. But also, we can go and we can investigate those things. We can go into Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers, and we can read about all the details of all the sacrifices and what the priests wore and what they did with their clothing and the washings afterwards. and the washings beforehand, the scapegoat and the blood of the bull for the sacrifice.

We could research all those things as well, and we ought to in general. I'm not going to go into all those details myself for the purpose of investigating what's going on in Hebrews 8 and 9. now following the description of what's going on in the holy of holies here we're going to see the author talk about the high priest going in once a year and we're going to see what he says the holy spirit is indicating by all this and really what he's trying to teach us is that the Old Testament way of doing things was just a picture of what Christ would come and do perfectly. But I want to focus on what was in the tabernacle.

And I just want to take a couple lessons from it that I think relate back to chapter eight nicely and give us a little bit of information about the detail that we just read about, of which we don't have time to go into detail. And then the next time we meet, I want to look more at the whole actual context of verses 1 through 10 or 1 through 11 and try to understand them a little bit better. But when we met last time, there was a question that came up after the teaching portion.

And the question was about God's law being written on our heart and what exactly that means. And I wanted to dig a little deeper into that. We did have some good discussion about it last time. And anyone could go back and listen to that recording. but I want to take another look at that a little deeper now in this section. So in verse 2, the author says, for there was a tabernacle prepared.

Now he says the first part in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread, which is called the holy place. so there's pictures of this that people have made some Bibles even have little pictures of what this would have looked like but the idea is that you went into the tent and in the first part you had a lamp stand all these things somehow indicating truths about our Lord Jesus Christ he's the light of the world, he gives light you have the table with the sacred bread on it the show bread it was called and i think there was the 12 loaves and this area was called the holy place and the priests would minister there on a regular basis and this was a place where where a lot of the priests could go in and they had regular tasks they were to do there But then there was another veil Okay and there was a veil there that behind it They called it the Holy of Holies And so you have this idea of even more holiness right It's the Holy of Holies. And what we see in verse 7 is into the second place, only the high priest enters, and he only enters once a year. And he cannot enter without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance.

And so the priests continually entered the first part, performing divine worship. That's what it says in verse 6. And then in verse 7, they actually went into the Holy of Holies. Now, it says in verse 4, in the Holy of Holies, there was a golden altar of incense. It says there was the Ark of the Covenant covered on all sides with gold. and in the ark of the covenant was a golden jar holding the manna aaron's rod which budded and the tablets of the covenant so now the first thing to note and i didn't figure this one out on my own i maybe if i'd studied a lot more i would have got there but one of the notes i read the commentators noticed was that the golden altar of incense was not listed as being in the Holy of Holies when you read through the book of the law of Moses.

And yet this author is telling you it was there. And the golden altar of incense would have represented a few things. One of them would have been Christ's suffering. It's the burning coals would have shown us the suffering of Christ. And that would have, of course, had to happen in the Holy of Holies at some point. And also you have the incense is the intercessions of Christ, the prayers of Christ up to the Father on behalf of his people. and so the golden altar of incense i've heard this explained a couple ways now but the idea being that it wasn't in the holy of holies on a regular basis but in order for the priest the high priest to ever enter the holy of holies he would have needed the golden altar of incense to have been permeating through that temple veil to get into the Holy of Holies.

So for him to have entered it at all, he wouldn't have done so without the golden altar of incense either coming with him or at the very least the intercessory prayers that are represented by that incense that's being offered up going through that temple veil or the tabernacle veil into the Holy of Holies. And so that is an example to me of where he says, of these things, we cannot now speak in detail where there's more to be investigated there. And there's something interesting there.

But inside the Holy of Holies, we see in verse four, there's the Ark of the Covenant. And the Ark of the Covenant is the box. And it's the box that contains some some things and it you know it was made famous uh in some ways that with the indiana jones movie i don't don't remember which one it was actually um but indiana jones was searching for the ark and and then they opened it and anyone who looked at it uh some bad things happened to them and it's kind of kind of a gruesome scene for kids and gave me nightmares for a long time and gave me a pretty confused view of what's going on in the Bible, I think.

But the Ark of the Covenant was the box. And there's also the Ark that Noah and his family went in. And so when we think of an Ark, I always think of the big boat. But I think the idea here is it's a container for other things. It's something that holds other things and keeps them separate from what is outside of them. So the ark kept the people inside separate from the waters, representing that they were protected from the flood.

There was a separation between the people inside the boat and the people outside the boat. And the wall of separation, the thing that demarked what separated them was the actual ark. And that's why we say to people that being in Christ today is, you know, that's your ark. to protect you from the waters of judgment that God is going to send onto the earth again.

But this time, instead of waters of judgment, it's going to be fire of judgment. You must hide in your ark, Jesus Christ. But the ark of the covenant was the box, and it was covered on all sides with gold. So everything's overlaid with gold. It's perfect. It's beautiful.

It's extravagant. it is a picture of Jesus Christ. There is no problems with Jesus Christ. There's no imperfections with Jesus Christ. So we take a pure and valuable metal such as gold and, you know, whereas some people, and we'll say, you know, to quote Judas, would say something like, why wasn't this valuable thing sold and the money used to feed the poor well because jesus christ is worth representing perfectly and that gold was although it was valuable and could have been used for good uh for the sake of some fleshly reasons that gold was necessary to make the ark look correct And so Jesus Christ being the picture that the ark is painting for us it was overlaid in gold It talks about his majesty It is a picture of his kingliness And we are able to see in an earthly sense how valuable gold is.

And I mean, like if any of us found a block of gold in our yard tomorrow, we wouldn't just toss it. And I think that's the idea we want to see that like this is a valuable thing. And yet what's inside is in many ways, we'll say more valuable because of the spiritual value of them. So the Ark is covered on all sides of gold. The Ark is representing, again, separation of what is there in some ways from what is outside of it, what is within or what is without. now what's inside the ark the golden jar that held the manna aaron's rod which budded and the tablets of the covenant so now we need to do a little bit of remembering of what was going on in the old testament and the author wants us to note these things so the golden jar holding manna again we have something that's golden we spare no expense when we worship the lord moses was to make the tabernacle exactly according to the pattern he was given it was it was extremely important that moses worship god the way that god prescribed And that hasn't changed today.

We just have different positive laws telling us how to obey God and worship him than were active at the time of Moses. But the holding of the jar of the manna, or the jar holding the manna, if you remember the purpose of the manna, the manna represented god's provision for his people no matter what their circumstance so regardless of their suffering regardless of their physical circumstance that they were in and the situation and however difficult it may have been the manna showed them that god could provide for them and he did provide for them Jesus Christ came and Jesus Christ never missing an opportunity to teach people the truth of scripture he says to him in verse 41 of John 6 I am the bread that came down from heaven he says no one can come to me in 44 unless the father who sent me draws him he says in verse 33 the bread of god is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world in verse 35 i am the bread of life he who comes to me will never hunger and he who believes in me will never thirst this is all in the context of verse 31 when they say our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness he gave them bread from heaven to eat so when we see the manna from heaven being in the jar in the ark for the israelites this was a constant reminder of god's God's sovereign provision. It was a constant reminder that it was God who would provide exactly what they needed, all the nourishment that was necessary for them.

And then Jesus comes and tells them that the bread was actually representing him. It was pointing to him as the ultimate provision from God, the one whose flesh would have to be broken and torn for his people. And so whereas the manna was important and the manna was necessary, and the manna provided a good reminder to people of trusting in God. what it primarily did at the time was helped people trust in god for physical well-being for physical nourishment what jesus christ does remember the the book is about comparing jesus to all these things jesus provides spiritual nourishment jesus provides eternal satisfaction and eternal provision.

The manna, remember, had to come down daily. They had to collect twice as much manna on Friday to last them through the Sabbath on Saturday at the time. Jesus Christ came down once, and he is able, by his perfect sacrifice, to nourish and to cleanse all those who come to him in his once coming down. And so we have a very good picture in the manna of Christ.

But we also have in the ark, we have the manna representing that God is able to provide for his people. Along with the manna was Aaron's rod which budded. Now this is a story that may be less familiar to everyone The man is something everybody seems to know about more on the top of their head But with his rod that butted, what had happened was there was a rebellion amongst the people.

And you can read about this in Numbers 16 and 17. And ultimately what happened is the people rejected Moses and Aaron. and the people were saying, you know, why should you be leading us? We don't like the results we're getting. We don't like the earthly suffering that we're enduring for following you. And so we're really, we're choosing to say, we don't think you're from God.

We think maybe we know what's good for us rather than you. And ultimately, when people, very few people say, well, I know Moses and Aaron are God's chosen representatives, but I just want to do things my own way. Usually what people will say is, I want to do things differently. And so I'm going to choose to think God is different from how he's been revealed through Moses and Aaron.

And so these grumblers and these rebels rebelled against Moses and Aaron. And in order to show that God was the king, in order to show that Moses and Aaron were his chosen representative, God identifies with Moses and Aaron and effectively says, when you reject my chosen leaders, when you reject my chosen priest and prophet, when you reject the ones that I've given you to reveal me to you, it's the same as rejecting me. When you grumble and complain against Moses and Aaron, you're just grumbling and complaining against me.

That is how closely God identifies with his people. That's why when Paul persecuted Christians, Jesus said, why are you persecuting me? Jesus identifies so closely with his own. God identifies with his people that to oppose God's people is to oppose God and to honor God's people is to honor God. And so God set up a test so that the people might know what's going on. and most of the times God does a miracle, what I want you to remember is most miracles provide condemnation for a large group of people.

The miracles are neat and miracles confirm the belief that is already present in a person who believes God. But miracles themselves don't convert people. Miracles usually have the effect of hardening the hearts of those that already hated God. But so just to give you a hint about what the staff was for in verse 10 of number 17, Yahweh said to Moses put the rod of Aaron before the testimony to be kept as a sign against the rebels that you may put an end to their grumblings against me so that they will not die so Aaron and Moses or Moses took these 10 10 staffs 10 different groups or 12 staffs from 12 different groups of people one for each the father's the house of israel israel and he promised that one of them would bud and and of course aaron's did representing the tribe of levi being god's chosen people as priests and then it even says and moses gave the staffs back or each man took his own staff back a rod and that's when Yahweh said no take errands and put it before the testimony to be kept as a sign against the rebels he literally kept it there as a sign against rebels to remind people that you do not rebel against God and you don't rebel against God's God's appointed leaders and God's appointed prophets, you don't rebel against them.

Because if you do, you're rebelling against God. And so to the extent that Moses and Aaron and any leader of God is actually accurately representing God, we should be very cautious to do anything that would be called rebellion against them. And so you have Aaron's rod and the manna, and Aaron's rod reminds us that God is Lord. That he's the one that is in charge.

He's the one that chooses his representatives. He chooses his people. The manna reminds us of his kingship. The manna reminds us of his loving provision for his people. And then finally, we have what's called the tablets of the covenant. and now the tablets of the covenant i believe in this case are god's law his 10 commandments many people think that there were two tablets one tablet that had maybe the first four verses on it first four commandments because those four commandments seem to relate to how we interact God.

And then this other tablet would have had the other six commandments. And so a lot of times when you see the 10 commandments displayed anywhere publicly, especially when they're put on stone, at least, you know, in a picture, you'll see it that way. And that's a popularized view of it. But in reality, when someone made a covenant in the Old Testament, that covenant each person got a copy of it.

Okay, so even just in the olden days, it happens today. When you make a contract, you each get a copy. And so in the case of God not needing a copy of his own covenant, I believe that there were just two sets of the Ten Commandments etched in stone. And so now we have in the Ark of the Covenant, We have the tablets of the covenant. We have the law of God written.

And so to make it a little more of an analogy, a little more symbolic, in the Holy of Holies, in the heart of the Holy of Holies, you have the law of God written in stone. I think this is analogous to what we read in chapter 8. In verse 10, God says, I will put my laws into their minds and upon their hearts I will write them. I don't think it's a mistake that in chapter 8 we're told God's law would be written upon our minds. and upon our hearts.

And then in chapter 9, very early, we see the author referenced the fact that the law of God, the tablets of the covenant, were in the Ark of the Covenant. Again, we have a separation. The law being in the Ark, the law being etched in stone, in the ark represents that separation of the law of god from the people of god and it was external to them so they could read the law they could hear it read to them they could understand it And I would argue that what is in the law of God is, in some ways, etched on the heart of every human being.

In some ways, your heart already knows God's law. but as we talked about last time it knows it in a distinct way from it being into being put into your mind or written on your heart and so what i see here is that we have the law of god in the ark of the covenant and it's written in stone and i think it represents the fact that the law is on our heart written in stone. Our hearts are made of stone. And for God to put his law in your heart in the way that he intends in verse 10 of chapter 8, you have to be regenerated.

You have to have your heart of stone pulverized and replaced with the heart of flesh because the stony heart can only have the law etched on the outside of it. The stony heart can only have knowledge of the law. And as we know from Romans 7, the stony heart, when it encounters God's law, will actually only be enticed to sin. It's not knowledge of the law that helps you obey the law.

Now, your sinful nature, apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, is looking for ways to violate God. So that's why the revealing of God's truth to people very often has the effect of causing them to sin more. because something in them now knows more clearly, oh, in order to show my hatred and rebellion against the God that I hate, I now have a more specific thing I can do to show that. So rather than just doing what they want to do because they're sinners, which is what all of us do to some extent, most of us just do what feels good hey this is what feels good to me i'm going to do it that's really how most people's lives are led some people have learned well i can delay gratification for something more long term and so we have some some sinners with more self-control that are able to put off their gratification so they end up doing some good things but ultimately when the heart that hates God gets to read specifically here's something God would have wanted me to do that heart now knows exactly what to do to feel the joy of the rebellion that it really wants So you may be a sinner and you can accidentally be obeying God a lot right If you a sinner that never steals in some way you're obeying God's law not to steal, but you're doing it because it just works out for you that the consequences of stealing are too great. you don't like the gratification of stealing the same as the not stealing.

The results you get are better for you. When you see God's law tell you not to be greedy or covetousness, you now know, greedy or covetous, you now know that, oh, I can sit and I can covet other people's things, or I can invent ways to steal. And so that's why in the Bible, it says, woe to those who call evil good and good evil. That's why when you look at our society, so much of what in our society now passes for righteousness is the literal opposite of exactly what God said would be right.

And one of the reasons for that is that people actually believe that they are doing something righteous when they live in their rebellion against God because they have made a law unto themselves. They have now created for themselves a replacement law for what God has specifically said in his word. An easy example to this one is the Sabbath and how many people you know that do not honor God's Sunday Sabbath.

They do not honor Sunday, the Lord's Day, the way that God has specified to honor it in his positive law. Yet, on everyone's heart, apart from God, is written the law, so they know that there's time set aside. but in the word it tells us how to set aside that time and which day to use and so that's why everyone you know who's not a christian still has their form of a sabbath if you investigate most people's lives most people do not work seven days a week they take time off to rest from their labor. And when they take time off, regardless of how, if it's weekly, I'm not saying everybody has like some one day a week thing, but when they take that time off, one of the things you notice is that they are worshiping.

They are worshiping the God that they love one way or another. And it is a universal human phenomenon that we worship what we love, we sacrifice for what we worship, we give up our time, our energy, our resources, and even our life for what we will worship. And why do people not do it on Sunday? Well, one reason is now that it's been revealed to them, Sunday is now a day to do the exact opposite.

Or in many people's cases, we'll take like the NFL to worship their God rather than worship the God. And so in the Ark of the Covenant is the law of God. In Psalm 40 verse 8, a prophetic verse about Jesus Christ, it says, I desire to do your will, O my God, your laws within my inner being. It is no accident that in the Ark of the Covenant was the law of God specifically stated after we're told that God will put his laws into our minds and upon our hearts he'll write them.

God is the law giver. God is the heart maker. It is God's prerogative when he's going to change a stony heart into a new heart. But the fact remains that you cannot have God's law truly indelibly imprinted upon your heart as long as it's a heart of stone. As long as you have that heart of stone, that law is never penetrated to the core to change you. And it never can.

All it can do is inform you and appeal to your conscience that this is God. This is wrong. This is lawless. So the only thing that the law can do on your stony heart is be an external witness to your continual failing to keep God's law. there is no power in 10 commandments written in stone there's no power in 10 commandments written in stone hanging at your courthouse or a big monument of them at your courthouse in your town there's no power there it's an external thing now it may appeal to people's consciences and to the point that somebody already has a bit of a soft conscience, maybe a bit of a soft heart, it may cause people to behave differently.

In fact, that's one of the things we hope for as Baptists. We hope to teach our children God's law at a young age, not because we think they'll have the power to obey it from the heart, but we want them to know that this is God's way. We want them to be taught that they're sinners by God's law, but also we want them to obey it outwardly, simply for the fact that outward obedience is better than outward disobedience.

But in order for a person whose heart is not soft whose heart is not a heart of flesh to truly be able to obey God law They have to desire to obey God law and that is the gift of the Holy Spirit when he regenerates someone And so when God says he's going to put a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, when he says that it's going to be a new covenant where he's going to put his law into our minds and upon our hearts he's going to write his law what he's referring to is the fact that unlike the old covenant that had its earthly forms and its earthly tabernacle and its earthly dwelling and its earthly place of worship and its earthly box that was made of wood from the earth and gold from the earth and the jar of manna and the staff that budded, the miracles of God. Unlike this earthly tabernacle that then would have the law written in stone. The stones that were easily broken when Moses came down from the mountain and witnessed that the people had no desire from the heart to obey God's law.

Unlike those things, God is going to regenerate people. God is going to actually write his law on our minds and on our hearts in such a way that our conscience will bear witness to that fact. that wherever you are, you will know that God is with you. That wherever you are, you will have a sense of what God's right and wrong is, not only because of the knowledge of the Ten Commandments, but because somewhere in your heart, you've been now given a new desire. and so in the holy of holies where the priest would enter once a year were these elements of worship were these reminders of god's provision for his people his lordship over his people his kingship over his people And it was also a reminder that God's law was unattainable.

One man once a year would enter that area. The normal person who wanted to know God, who was interested in knowing God, the average Israelite, had no hope of seeing those commandments. The average Israelite had no opportunity to encounter God directly. There was a separation between him and God that was represented by the tabernacle itself. And then there was a separation by even if someone slipped into the first place, there was another veil separating them from the ark and the Holy of Holies. and this separation is what Jesus Christ came to tear down, which is one of the reasons why the book of Hebrews had to be written was to teach people that this had to be torn down and God would tear it down.

When he tore down the temple in 80, 70. And so next week or two weeks, whenever we meet again, We will look at the rest of this section, and we'll see how this pointed to Christ eventually coming to tear down the wall of separation. And we'll see how much better Jesus Christ is than this old covenant that was only meant to keep people until the time of reformation, as it says here, until the time that Jesus would come. and he would make the way that people could have access to God and there were people when they know when when people would understand they were separate from God it wouldn't be just because God was so inaccessible they would understand their separation because of their own sin and they would see that there was a high priest who once and for all could make a way that they could enter into the presence of God.

And so for this week, I just wanted to remind you that God needs to regenerate hearts in order to write his law on their heart. This is an argument for the need to be born again. And it's an argument for understanding in the Christian life. one of the reasons why we evaluate people based on God's law is that we believe that if you're born again God's law will be put into your mind and written in your heart and we should see that practically played out so I'm going to stop there and give you guys a chance to leave a comment or ask a question and God's law is written on the hearts of the believers but but non-believers have would have the knowledge of God's law is that yeah yeah we There a verse in Romans Verse 14 and 15 of chapter two.

Sorry, I see the verse first sometimes. Verse 14 and 15 Romans two for when Gentiles who do not have the law naturally do the things of the law. these not having the law are a law to themselves in that they demonstrate the work of the law written in their hearts their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them and so there is a sense that all people have god's law written in their heart in one way which is that it's it's it's etched there and the best example i think i can make is that if you have a heart of stone god's law is etched into that heart of stone but it's not there indelibly and it's not there with affection it's just there hey here's the rules okay if you've been given a heart of flesh god has built that law deep inside and given you affection for it oh how i love your law it is my meditation all the day that's the cry of the Christian heart, not the Gentile, right? Yeah.

And so, so we can, I think we can rightly say that God's law is technically speaking written on the heart. And what I would say is that it's written on the, it's either written on the heart differently for believers, or maybe a better way to put it is it's the type of heart you now have that changes your disposition towards that law that's written in your heart does that make sense yeah yeah that makes sense so this is why you knew it was wrong to do some things before you got saved right and some of them were obvious to you just you know just from nature but in a lot of cases the only reason we look back the reason why we obeyed things we know because we had an evil heart but we obeyed it because somehow it was good for us you know i mean i know a lot of people that don't steal and don't lie uh and it's like well what what explains the fact that that total depravity doesn't always result in utterly doing nothing but the most wicked thing all the time well because part of total depravity is the selfishness that says i'll i'll do the right things if it benefits me you know yeah if i can make more money if people if i'm honest it's not out of a love for god that results in my honesty it's it's ultimately for my own glory that i want to make more money so i i'd be honest but some some people they're I read this in another book it's by Henry Schugel called the life of God and the soul of man and one of the first points he makes is that some people's flesh is actually titillated more by self-righteousness than just being a debauched evil character and so that's why some people want to they actually try to do what's right all the time like Martin Luther before he got saved. It's not because they love God, so those righteous works have no efficaciousness for you, for your salvation, but you still might do more right things.

And thank God for that, because a society where everybody wants to, you know, run around being homosexual and murdering one another and stealing from one another, like that society is just going to crash. a society where people at least outwardly want to do right things like well you got a little chance to enjoy some prosperity invent some things yeah what do you think oh yeah that makes sense yeah we have all those other religions built around a morality trying to stay within that for their own yeah self righteousness yes I think thankful we're in the new covenant it's neat to see all the ways God was pointing towards Christ in the old covenant yeah I think it's interesting how you have like some Christian circles that seem to kind of want to reach back and do some of those old covenant things. Like doing some of the feasts and stuff, Jewish feasts. I don't really know other purpose in doing that.

Yeah, it's hard to judge the heart. Yeah. But if you could just imagine, imagine a guy is deployed in the military and he's writing letters back and with his girlfriend and he's got a picture of her that he looks at all the time you know and he's out there with the other guys and he's fighting battles with people in another country and he's suffering and having difficulty but he just keeps looking at this picture of this girl he loves.

And then imagine he comes home and he sits down to hang out with her and he just stares at the picture. Like, dude, you have the real thing. Why are you reaching back for this picture right now? Like, the picture was for when she wasn't with you. and I think that's that's the exhortation to some of these people now the ones that call themselves messianic where they kind of want to celebrate it out of more of a Jewish lineage thing a historical I'm actually a Jew thing okay well maybe that's interesting but God still pretty much did away with the whole covenant here and and I think one of the things we kind of have to consider is why didn't he just so what just excuse me why didn't he get rid of the law also you know if the tablets of the law were in the ark and this is one of the things that's being described as going away why do we still say the 10 commandments are applicable and you know my response is first First of all, they predated the old covenant.

But second of all, the whole point of the laws being written on our heart is that we don't have the Ten Commandments in the same way we had them before. We don have an external law telling you do this and live What we have is the internal Ten Commandments written on our heart that tell us God already provided life for you Here's how you can show him that you love him. Here's ways that you want to know to live.

I don't obey the Ten Commandments because maybe God will love me. I obey them because I desperately want to do what's right now. And we still have the outward Ten Commandments because that's how we learn about. It's just reading. But it's not in the same way anymore. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't understand some of that. But I understand some in some ways. Because some of the Old Covenant stuff, I don't know how to put it. It's a picture, but, you know, like that celebration of Purim, celebrating that the Jews were released from the Haman's death wish. if someone said yeah we want to celebrate that i'm kind of like well i guess i guess if you want to celebrate that historical event i don't see that as an old covenant ordinance that has been done away with even though it was a picture of Christ um you know really saving his people all that you know when when we're talking about what's been done away with in the old and new covenant I think we're talking about a lot of the specific ordinances you know like the priestly worship and the way that all these things happened with with with the Yom Kippur the day of atonement I don think we necessarily saying get rid of everything I think there's some things that, all right, well, I guess if like, if you wanted to have a Passover meal, just to see what it was like and, and, and maybe while you did it talk about what God did for the Egyptians or for the Israelites in Egypt, I don't think I'd say, man, you're in sin, you're worshiping God wrong.

But I guess for me, it's like we already have a better meal, right? So to me, it just doesn't, that one doesn't comport. But Purim does. I don't know. Different. It's about the heart.

Right? Yeah. We celebrate our Passover every Sunday. All right. Right. And have the Lord's Supper.

And we remember that God's firstborn was struck down so that we might not be. So as neat as it was what happened with the Exodus, the miracle of God's firstborn suffering the plague instead of me is, is a far bigger thing to celebrate for me now. And I've been given a way to do it. So why would I reach back? I'm kind of with you with the, why would you reach back question?

I don't see good reasons. I just don't, I don't want to blanket accuse people of, you know, sin or unbelief or something like that. But, right all right well have a good day at work let me pray father in heaven thank you for these men Thank you for the chance that we had today to just look at your word and thank you for the discussion we got to have We pray, Lord, that you would maybe even foster more discussion.

I hate to think that any of us have thoughts about this, and we just wait two weeks to talk about them. So may this fuel our discussions other days of the week. May it fuel our personal teachings in our homes, our own private devotions, as well as us leading our wives and children. It would be a shame that we all come together and learn and hopefully grow in our knowledge of the book of Hebrews and the truth therein and then not pass them on to the very people closest to us. so please motivate us to share what we've learned and give us a good day today of glorifying and worshiping you wherever we are for as you promised the least of us to the greatest of us will know the lord and wherever we go you will be there is no more wall of separation there is no more place we have to go to do our worship and to encounter your law.

We, wherever we go, have you with us. And so we pray that we would live lives that honor that. Amen. Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website michaelcoghlan.net You can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.