Fr. Stephen De Young: Okay, we’ll go ahead and get started. We’re going to get started here in just a moment. We will pick up at the beginning of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 8.

And so last time— I’m definitely not going to reiterate everything from last time, but last time we were focused on, in

chapter 7: we finally, after St. Paul had digressed a little, gotten back to talking about Melchizedek. That was the thrust. And talking about connecting the priesthood of Melchizedek in Genesis and in Psalm 110—which St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews is really a homily on—connecting that to Christ’s priesthood and then contrasting that with the Levitical priesthood of the Torah, which was a particular priesthood for a particular window of time. And the Levitical priesthood obviously did not precede Levi. It didn’t even precede Moses. Until you get the Torah, there is no Levitical priesthood. And then it also has an end, as he’s pointing out, whereas this priesthood of Melchizedek, as it’s spoken of in Psalm 110, and as we see in the story of Melchizedek himself, is something that supersedes that. And so that’s why Christ’s priesthood supersedes the Levitical priesthood of the Old Covenant. And Psalm 110, by referring to it as his priesthood, as being a priesthood after the order of Melchizedek, was saying that Christ’s priesthood was going to supersede it. And by supersede, that doesn’t mean that’s the old thing, and this replaces it. It means that Christ’s priesthood does what that priesthood did, but does it fully and completely, whereas the Levitical priesthood was doing that same thing, but doing it limitedly and provisionally. And so now that the fullness is here, we don’t need the partial. That’s the idea.

And so tonight, as we move on, St. Paul’s going to segue from the priesthood proper and move to the liturgical aspect of the priesthood, what the priest does in terms of both the tabernacle structure and in terms of sacrifices, sacrificial ritual. So that’s where now we’re going to move: from the priesthood into that. Because if— We first had in the first few chapters, it was about Christ as Son of God, as the Messiah, as the King, as the Lord. And now Christ is the High Priest. So we talked about what he does, qua King and Lord. Now we’re talking about what Christ does, qua High Priest. And that’s what we’re in the midst of right now. So that said, does anybody [have] any questions or comments or witty anecdotes? We shared a few of those earlier. I think we’re spent on those.

We’ll go ahead and pick up in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews chapter 8, verse 1. “Now this is the main point of the things we are saying. We have such a High Priest who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord erected and not man.” So now he says, “now this is the main point of the things we are saying.” He doesn’t mean this is the main point of the whole epistle. It’s one of them. But he’s saying, “okay, so now we’ve talked about all this stuff with Melchizedek, and [the] Levitical priesthood, Melchizedek priesthood. Here’s the point of all that.” The point of all that, of describing the superiority of this priesthood of the order of Melchizedek, is that we have a such a high priest. And it’s obvious who he’s talking about because he’s already talked about Christ being seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens. That’s Psalm 110 verse 1. That’s where he started. “Yahweh said to my Lord, ‘sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’”

And so what he adds then is what’s there in verse two. So the fact that Christ is the high priest who is there at the right hand of the Father also means that he is “a minister of the sanctuary”, the holy place. Because the place where God is, is the holy place. “And of the true tabernacle, which the Lord erected and not man.” So a couple of points here. Notice, and we’re going to notice this throughout, that all through here he talks about the tabernacle, not the temple. And this is something important to notice because although Christ and the Apostles, while they’re in Jerusalem and while it’s there, including St. Paul himself, go to pray at the temple in Jerusalem and participate in other ritual acts of worship at the temple in Jerusalem, the temple is actually a much more ambivalent category in Scripture, not just in the New Testament. In Scripture, we often give it credit for being— and part of that is because we’re living in the United States and so under the influence of evangelicalism and the Scofield Reference Bible and dispensational theology, the idea of some kind of rebuilt temple in Jerusalem as this eschatological promise, this good thing that’s going to happen.

So the Church Fathers talk about it happening as a very bad thing, but the idea that this is a good thing, that’s in the theological atmosphere around us. And it’s affected how we read the Bible. But if you go back, going back to Solomon: Solomon, when he goes to dedicate the Temple— first of all, with the Tabernacle: the Tabernacle is there in the Torah. Nowhere in the Torah does it say, “oh, and when you get to the land, build a permanent Temple.” Doesn’t say that. And everything in the Tabernacle, from the curtains to the poles, to all of the pieces of furniture, to exacting detail, are given twice in the Torah. It makes the end of the book of Exodus a real bore to read. Because, you know, you could make it through once, through the three cubits long, and two cubits high, and two cubits wide, and all of those things. But then after the instructions are given, it then repeats it all saying, and so they built it, three cubits long, and two cubits high, and two cubits wide, the exact same information. The point being, everything was done exactly as it—

You don’t have any narrative like that surrounding the Temple. David wants to build it, God tells him no, you’re not going to. Solomon builds it, and then Solomon prays this prayer of dedication, where basically, he talks about the Temple of Jerusalem, the way the pagans talked about their temples, where he basically says to God, “oh, grant whatever we pray toward this temple. And when we make vows and offer sacrifices to this temple, honor them, and basically do what we want you to do when we do stuff at this temple.” And God’s response is given, and God’s response is thick with, he doesn’t live in buildings made by human hands, and he’s not constrained to it, and he’s not tied to it. But he will sort deign to honor the effort. “And I will be present with you here”, but not on human terms. And so we see he leaves, and Nebuchadnezzar destroys it. And at the time, when you read Jeremiah, everybody in Jerusalem is saying “there’s no way the Babylonians can take Jerusalem because they would destroy the temple, and this is God’s temple, he’s not going to let his temple be destroyed.” So the way they looked at the temple and the way God treated the temple were very different.

And if anything, by the time you get to the New Testament, it’s way more ambivalent. The Pharisees didn’t even completely accept the validity of Herod’s temple because it was Herod’s temple, who had done all of these building projects— And there were huge sects, I mean, Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls— That sect is one of the most obvious, but who left the temple and wanted nothing to do with— We talked about the Sadducees last time, and the corruption of the high priest. Literally the last several high priests of the temple in Jerusalem became high priest by assassinating the previous high priest. One of the problems with identifying— There’s that referring to his own body. Where Christ supersedes the temple. And of course, then that culminates at the end of the book of Revelation, and the new heavens and new earth, St. John texplicitly says, there is no temple, because God and the Lamb dwell with them. There’s no need for a temple structure now. So talking about a heavenly temple doesn’t work once we understand how temple works. That temple, again, is one of these provisional things that doesn’t have a reality to it.

Now, the tabernacle is there in the Torah. And so that’s what we’re we’re dealing with here. The tabernacle is the thing that God intended. And so if the question is, did God intend for it always to be the tabernacle? The answer is yes, because there’s actually a group of people who lived, a clan within Israel, who until the exile never settled. They lived in tents on the land that was their land grant in the Torah. And they were praised for that. They never put down roots.

And so there was there was a principle there built into the Torah, and this is the Feast of Booths, the Feast of Tabernacles, where you sort of uproot yourself. And at the Passover, you dress and eat as if you’re about to go on a journey. This idea that even when they got into the land, this world isn’t our final home. We’re on our way somewhere else. We can’t become too settled and fall too much in love with this world and the things of this world. And so God living in a tent was part of that too. That was mobile. So this is why now we’re going to talk all about the tabernacle and not the tent.

And [what] we have here in verse two is the idea that there is a tabernacle, “a true tabernacle, which the Lord erected and not man.” So what is this referring to? Well, this is referring to the symbolism of what was going on with the tabernacle in the first place. This is going to get expanded on in the next paragraph, but of what was going on with the tabernacle in the first place. Because when you read ancient Near Eastern texts from this period about where the gods live, gods live on mountains. We’re all probably familiar with that. Mount Olympus, Mt. Zephon, etc, etc. Gods all live up on a mountain. They also live in gardens. This is especially prominent in the ancient Near East because you got a lot of desert. So if desert is what you’re stuck with, well, the gods must live in this sort of bountiful garden. On top of a mountain in this inaccessible place. But in those places, they lived in these sort of pavilion tents. That there was— when we see these scenes play out, the divine council, the assembly of the gods, the assembly of the divine beings, happens inside like a big pavilion tent where they gather and meet. So, St. Paul is re-invoking that idea.

So Christ isn’t serving in a tabernacle, much less a temple, here on this earth, the way the Levitical priesthood did. He’s in the presence of God. He’s in the place where God dwells. He’s in the divine assembly there. That’s where his high priestly service is, is at the throne of God? And now this is going to get developed a little more.

Verse three, “For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this One also have something to offer.” So high priests offer gifts and sacrifices. What’s the difference? Well, we’ve talked before about how worship in general was understood in the ancient world within the context of hospitality. The ideas of hospitality and forging this communion between each other and the community and the community and their god. And hospitality primarily takes the form of food. Sharing a meal, right? And that’s where sacrifice comes in. Sacrifices are meals.

The other thing is gifts. Someone comes, you welcome someone in your home, you give them a gift. Or someone invites you into their home, into their home, you give them a gift. And so this is another category. It’s not really separate, but another aspect. And so this is where the idea of a “sacrifice of praise” or that kind of thing comes from. It’s a gift. This is an old-timey sense of gift. But if somebody invited you to their house, you came and you wrote them a poem that you read to them, or sang them a song. That could be seen as a gift. This is something I’m doing. So basically those are the categories to cover worship. That’s why you have a high priest, is this ritual worship. Not to be the boss, not to whatever else, not to own all the land, like the high priest in the first century did. And so that means if Christ now is the high priest, then he’s offering something. If we’re calling him a high priest, it’s because of that.

Verse four, “For if He were on earth, He would not be a priest, since there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law.” So this is building off of that. Remember, Christ isn’t part of the Levitical priesthood. So if he were here serving on earth, if he were a priest at the temple in Jerusalem, if he were in Jerusalem, he would not be in the temple offering sacrifices because he’s not of the Levitical priesthood. There are Levitical priests who do that in that temple.

Interlocutor 1: [inaudible]

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, yeah. Because there are priests who do that under the Torah. According to the Torah.

Verse five, “who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, ‘See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’” And that’s from Exodus. So what this is saying is that when Moses went up on the mountain, Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai had become the mountain of God. Mount Sinai was being the mountain of God, the mountain of assembly, har moed [בהר־מועד] in Hebrew, at that point. So when Moses went up there, we already talked about the law given through angels part, that he goes up there and he enters into— God is enthroned there, totally speaks to God face to face there.

The angels are there. He enters into this assembly, into God as King reigning in his council, which means he enters into this tent of assembly, this tent of meeting, this tabernacle, this place where God lives. And so when he comes down the mountain and the tabernacle is constructed, it’s constructed as a replica, essentially, of where he was and what he saw. And so that’s why there are cherubim and angelic beings woven into the, why there’s all this imagery. And on the Ark of the Covenant itself, there are cherubim, carved: three-dimensional, covered in gold. Sorry, iconoclasts. And there’s the most holy place where the throne of God is. And then there’s the exterior where the angelic beings are. And this, of course, is the same pattern that we still use in Orthodox churches. Now, in addition to angelic beings, we have the icons of the saints who are also part of that heavenly council of God. And we have the altar that is his footstool. And we have, so it’s the same structure, we’re just much further in, as we talked about last time.

So the main reason this is important is that this adds an important nuance to what we’re saying about the relationship between the old covenant and the new covenant. So it’s not just that the old covenant was this preliminary, partial first thing that was kind of good, but now we have this that’s better, and it replaces that. The reality that we have now actually came first. Christ came first, as we already saw in the first part of Hebrews; Christ was before Moses and before Abraham. So this actually came first. And the Torah was the beginning of that heavenly reality, that eternal reality, that spiritual reality coming into our world. And it has now arrived in our world more fully in Christ. And then that comes through fruition in the age to come, when the heavenly reality, heaven and earth, are united and become one. It’s what we pray about in the Lord’s Prayer. When those two finally become one. So this is not a new reality that comes into existence, but this is an eternal reality that is now entering into our human experience. First in the form of just the imagery of it, and now in a more fulfilled sense, pointing us toward the ultimate fulfillment in the age to come. So there’s multiple stages here, but the change is happening within our material world of human experience. In eternity, nothing is changing, and so that means that these Levitical priests are serving in this copy. This replica of what’s going on in heaven. But Christ as high priest is in the real thing. Again, supersedes.

So not only does his priesthood supersede the Levitical priesthood, but the place where he conducts his priesthood, not only supersedes, it was the basis. It’s a copy. It’s a Xerox. It’s the Great Value brand of tabernacle.

Verse six, “But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.” And that’s introducing what he’s about to talk about. And he’s not saying Christ has obtained a more excellent ministry than Christ had before. He’s saying Christ has obtained a more excellent ministry than the ministry of those Levitical priests. And that’s in-as-much as he’s also the mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. Because as we talked about last time, the Torah never promised eternal life for keeping the commandments. So those aren’t the promises it was based on. And so that’s part of what makes the new covenant better.

So verse seven, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.” So if the Torah had promised those things, then you wouldn’t need a— If you could have gotten eternal life by not committing adultery and cleansing your mildew properly, then that would have been sufficient. There would have been no need for anything else. Now, note, because this is important, theologically. A lot of our Protestant friends will say that the problem with the Torah, they will say that if you did keep the Torah, you would earn eternal life. So they will argue that the problem with the Torah is not with the Torah itself, but that you can’t keep it because we’re sinful, because we’re depraved, we can’t do it. If we could do it, then we would. And in fact, part and parcel of that theological system is that that’s how Christ gives us eternal life, is that Christ earned it by keeping the Torah. But notice that’s not what St. Paul is saying here. St. Paul is saying that the old covenant, the Torah, was founded on inferior promises. So the problem that St. Paul is pointing to here that required the new covenant is not that the people couldn’t keep it. It’s that keeping it didn’t accomplish what Christ accomplishes. So you can’t make that kind of theological system jibe with what Hebrews is saying right here. Because Hebrews is saying the Torah was never about that, very clearly.

Alright, verse eight. Now we get a block quote, a long quote from St. Paul.

Because finding fault with them, he says, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. None of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more.

So this is from Jeremiah 31 in the Hebrew chapter numbering. And Jeremiah 31 is famous as being sort of the new covenant passage. So notice in the block quote, what is the difference, according to the god of Israel, between the old covenant and the new covenant? The old covenant, they didn’t keep it, and so God abandoned them. Not they weren’t able to. The new covenant, in this quote, the difference with the new covenant, is that the new covenant is something God is going to do. God is going to do. Now does he say, “I’m going to save every one of them”? No, he says they’re all going to know me. They’re all going to know me, from the least of the greatest, so that no one will have to teach his neighbor how to know God, because they will all know God, and they will all know his laws, his commandments. So laws and commandments don’t get done away with, in the new covenant. And that he will offer forgiveness. He will offer forgiveness.

So what’s the contrast here? The contrast is between— people didn’t know God, and that created this rupture. The [old] covenant came to an end. Yeah, the old covenant came to an end, because there was this rupture. What does it mean that people couldn’t know God? Well, we don’t know all psychologically, but as we talked about last time, very few people could go into the Tabernacle or the temple, at least very far in. There was this disconnect. There was this disconnect, and that was connected to possessing the Holy Spirit. You can’t separate those. Because who received the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament? Prophets, judges, Moses, the King, but not everybody. So there were certain people who knew the Lord. There were certain people who were empowered. There were certain people who were in His presence. And then there were the common people, whereas the new covenant, everyone, everyone knows the Lord. Now, does everyone knowing the Lord automatically produce salvation for them? Well, were all the kings of Israel who received the Holy Spirit saints? Saul certainly wasn’t. The Holy Spirit leaves him. And David prays and pleads after his sin that the Lord won’t take the Holy Spirit from him, wouldn’t depart from him. And the Holy Spirit departed from the temple completely because of the sins of the people. That’s what he’s talking about, disregarding them. He had to leave because of their sins.

So God’s presence doesn’t automatically produce salvation. In fact, it ramps up the accountability. It ramps up the accountability. If you know God, if God’s law is written in your heart and you don’t have to go study it, you have a lot fewer excuses, in terms of not keeping it correctly. Your average farmer out somewhere in the hinterlands of Israel, might not have known exactly how he was supposed to get rid of mildew. [Laughter] He was illiterate. He didn’t have access to the temple on a regular basis. But if we all know God, and we all know what he commands and what we need to do, now we’re very much accountable. Now we’re very much accountable.

But there’s also this new level of forgiveness available. Where we’re not just in the Torah, managing the sins of the people so God can stay. But we’re talking about actual forgiveness and reconciliation so that we can continue to know God, not just have him in a building nearby where we can go visit and offer a sacrifice once a year. That we can know him.

Interlocutor 2: If the forgiveness is there and he will not remember their, all those deeds and so on and so forth, it doesn’t say that some people are exempt from that. It sounds like he’s forgiving everybody everything.

Fr. Stephen: Well, we’ll see. [Laughter] But you have to take it in the context of Hebrews. He’s already talked about people who aren’t. So this is talking about the people who— this isn’t saying that the new covenant isn’t with every human on earth. That’s potentially with every human on earth. But this is talking about people who are party to that, just like the old covenant. There were people who are party to it and people who weren’t, right? So if you’re party to the new covenant, then yes, you have the forgiveness of your sins and you have the knowledge of God. But that’s not to say that any of that is irrevocable. You can leave the covenant.

Interlocutor 2: That raises another question. This passage, obviously from Jeremiah, talks about this applying to Judah and Israel.

Fr. Stephen: Yes.

Interlocutor 2: So I know the church is the new Israel and all that, but it sounds—

Fr. Stephen: Well—

Interlocutor 2: —like it’s talking about Judah and Israel.

Fr. Stephen De Young: Right. We got to go back to Romans 11. Because this is one of many promises of the prophets about Judah and Israel, or Judah and Ephraim, as Israel is often called. And the problem with it being about Judah and Israel is Israel’s gone, long gone. Sorry, British people who think you’re the lost tribes. [Laughter]

And so what St. Paul does in Romans 11, not to go through all that again, but just refresher, he uses this phrase about the fullness of the Gentiles. He says that Judah has been hardened. Because Judah is just part. It’s one and a half tribes. There’s some Benjamites in there and some have been hardened until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And people have all kinds, especially the Puritans, have all kinds of interesting theories on what that means. But if you go by the Bible, there’s one other place where that phrase, the fullness of the Gentiles occurs. And that’s back in the book of Genesis, when Jacob is blessing Joseph’s sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, Ephraim, who the Northern King was named after. And he does one of those things that’s so typical in Genesis, where Ephraim is actually the younger of the two, but he crosses his hands, his right and left hands when he’s going to do the blessing and gives the bigger blessing to the younger son, Ephraim. But the prophecy he gives, or the blessing he gives, is that Ephraim’s descendants will become the fullness of the gentiles. That’s the other place where the phrase occurs.

So what St. Paul does picking up on that is say, “Well, wait a second. His descendants [will] become the fullness of the Gentiles. All of these prophecies say these ten tribes are going to come back. They were scattered out there among the nations, among the Gentiles, and interbreeding, they are the Gentiles. So for them to come back, they have to come back from the Gentiles.” And so that’s what St. Paul means when he says that the Jews have been hardened for a time until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, and that then as a result, all Israel will be saved, all twelve tribes, because those other ten tribes are being reconstituted from the nations. So it’s not that the church is the new Israel. It’s that the church is Israel. [Laughter] Just full stop. It’s Israel. So that’s how St. Paul understands there in Romans nine through eleven, how he understands why now the gospel is going out to all the nations, because we have to reconstitute the people of God. And you have to go find them where they went. And that’s out there intermarried into the nations.

Interlocutor 2: I don’t think it really implies that they’re biological descendants.

Fr. Stephen: No, they didn’t have a concept of DNA like that. But they become part of Israel again, the same way, ritually. They become part of the covenant through baptism, through receiving the Eucharist. Yeah, they become part of the people of God.

Verse 13, “In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” The older I get, the more attacked I feel by that verse. [Laughter] But so he’s making the point: if God is all the way back in Jeremiah, back when the first temple was destroyed, all the way back then he’s promising a new covenant, that means that first one is in some sense obsolete. It’s not, “oh, we’re going to give this one another go. We’re going to try harder this time.” Because it was never intended for that. It was never intended for that. Obsolete means it’s served its purpose. And now this higher purpose, it can’t serve. And so we need the new, the better, to fulfill the greater function. And so because it’s obsolete, growing old. And that, of course, is how Christianity has historically understood why the temple gets destroyed and why then Jerusalem gets destroyed after the Bar-Kokhba Rebellion. That’s it vanishing away. It’s not needed anymore.

And that becomes, for the Church Fathers who we see interacting with rabbinic Judaism, that becomes their primary argument. St. John Chrysostom says: Judaism, by that time in the fourth, late fourth, early fifth century, no longer had a temple, no longer had a priesthood, no longer had sacrifices. That’s a lot of the Torah. That’s a massive portion of the Torah that’s gone. And so that was the sign that, “Look, it’s obsolete.” That that’s over. And he says, of course, that the church has temple priesthood, sacrifice that Judaism no longer had. But you find that in everybody, you find that in St. Justin Martyr, his dialogue with Trypho, St. Justin the Philosopher, all the way through. This is a constant. Look, that stuff’s gone because it’s no longer necessary. And this is a sign that what Christians are saying is true.