Sermon Tone Analysis

In case you forgot, last week we looked at a shadowy man of mystery named Melchizedek.

We saw how God used Melchizedek as a foreshadow of the kind of person Jesus Christ would be when He came to earth.

The main similarity is that Melchizedek and Jesus are the only two people in the Bible who act as both a priest and a king.

This week, we are going to see how the writer of Hebrews takes this comparison to the next level.

Have you ever wondered why the Bible has two testaments?

I mean, we have one Bible, and yet we have an Old Testament and a New Testament.

Why is that?

And one thing you have to know before you can answer that question is, “What is a testament?”

Basically, a testament is the same as the word covenant.

A promise between two parties.

In other words, the Bible breaks down into the Old Covenant, and the New Covenant.

And just like a new car is better than an old car and a new tomato is much better than an old tomato, the New Covenant is much better than the Old Covenant.

And yet, church, here’s where it gets difficult.

We all know that God is perfect, right?

We all know that God doesn’t make any mistakes, right?

Ok, so it seems like a perfect, all-knowing God would make a perfect covenant the first time around, right?

Well then, why is the New Covenant so much better?

Did God make a mistake the first time around?

These are the kinds of questions that the writer of Hebrews deals with this morning.

And because of the length of this passage, I’m not going to read all of it right now.

Instead, I’m just going to read verses eleven through the first half of verse nineteen.

So if you’re not there already, please turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 7:11-19.

“If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law,) what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchizedek, and not be called after the order of Aaron?

For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.

For he of whom these things are spoken pertaineth to another tribe, of which no man gave attendance at the altar.

For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood.

And it is yet far more evident: for that after the similitude of Melchizedek there ariseth another priest, who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.

For He testifieth, ‘Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.’

For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof.

For the law made nothing perfect.”

Let’s pray.

This morning’s sermon is entitled, “Out with the Old, In with the New.”

And this sermon is particularly exciting to me, because in essence, this passage ties together the Old Testament and the New Testament in a way that very few passages do.

By the end of this sermon, my goal for you is that you will be able to distinguish the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and you will give all of your praise to God that He has brought in the New Covenant.

So let’s begin our study by looking at the Old Testament (a.k.a. the Old Covenant).

The Old Covenant

To truly understand the Old Covenant, we would have to read all of Genesis one through Malachi chapter four.

The entire Old Testament is the story of God’s first covenant with His people.

But if I started reading Genesis one right now, and we didn’t stop for meals or naps or bathroom breaks, then we might stand a chance of finishing around lunch time next Sunday.

So we’re going to have to find a way to sum the Old Testament up a little bit.

And thankfully, that’s what the writer of Hebrews does for us in these verses.

But before we specifically get into the qualities of the Old Covenant, I want to give you a quick survey of what the Old Testament is all about.

For most of you, this will not be anything you haven’t heard before.

And I don’t know about you, but I could listen to the story of the Bible for the rest of eternity!

So hopefully, you’re not bored.

So church, this is what the Old Testament is all about.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

You all know the story.

God created an absolutely perfect universe in all of its splendor.

And then, to cap off His perfect creation, He put two perfect human beings in the middle of the most beautiful part of His creation, the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve had perfect fellowship with God.

They could be face to face with God, because they had no sin whatsoever.

But you all know the fateful story of what happened in that garden.

Satan came in the form of a snake and he convinced Adam and Eve to taste the fruit that God told them not to eat.

When Adam and Eve broke God’s one and only commandment, sin entered the world.

Where once was perfect fellowship, now there was pain, separation, death.

The perfect relationship between God and man was broken.

But church, God was not okay with this.

God wanted mankind to be in fellowship with Him, so He devised a plan.

God picked one man through whom He would bring about redemption.

And that man was Abraham.

Through the story of Genesis, Abraham’s family grew until they numbered a clan of seventy people, and they moved to Egypt.

Over time, the Egyptians began to fear Abraham’s family (who were now known as the Israelites), so they enslaved them.

After a period lasting approximately 400 years, God chose a man named Moses to lead His people out of slavery.

And that is the story of the book of Exodus.

God freed the Israelites, and they began wandering through the wilderness for forty years, before they finally arrived in the land of Canaan, the land that God had promised them.

And it was through Moses that God unveiled His plan for the salvation of the people.

You see, God knew that the punishment for mankind’s sin was death.

There was no way around it.

The punishment of sin is death.

And yet, God desired for the people to live forever with Him.

So through Moses, God instituted a plan where people could offer up sheep, goats, and bulls and that would cover their sins.

God gave the Israelites a list of over 600 laws, and any time they would break any of those laws, they would take a sacrifice to the tabernacle, and the priest would kill the animal.

That animal would take the place of the person’s sin.

By the lamb’s death, the person could find life.

Now, we know from the Apostle Paul that it was through faith in God that the sacrifice saved the person, not through any magical properties in the blood itself.

But essentially, that is how it worked.

Because of their sin, the individual man could never hope to come close to God.

All they could hope to do was go before a priest and have the priest kill an animal on their behalf.

And while the sacrifice would cover their past sins, it did absolutely nothing for their future sins.

If you made a sacrifice today, and then tomorrow you ate something that wasn’t kosher, then you would have to make another sacrifice for that sin.

And church, that is the Old Testament in a nutshell.

And when the writer of Hebrews looks at the Old Covenant, he sees two primary flaws.

The first flaw is seen in verse eighteen.

Look at what this verse says.

“For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof.”

In this verse, the writer of Hebrews says that the Old Covenant is weak and unprofitable.

That word “unprofitable” is actually a bit euphemistic.

The word in the Greek literally means, “useless.”

And the writer of Hebrews is not saying that the first 39 books of the Bible are useless.

No, he’s saying that the plan of salvation found in the Old Testament is weak and useless.

These aren’t my words, they’re his.

It was weak and useless because the old way only temporarily covered sin.

You could have no real assurance in your salvation, because you could easily mess up again!

And the second flaw is seen in the first half of verse nineteen.

“For the law made nothing perfect.”

The old way of doing things (keeping all of those laws and making sacrifices when you mess up) they never made one single person perfect.

As a matter of fact, they did the exact opposite.

Paul says in Romans three that the main purpose of the law was to show us all how imperfect we truly are.

When you made a sacrifice, it was kind of like taking a bath.