Audio Transcript

All right, well, beautiful singing. If I’ve not met you, my name is Aaron, and I’m the preaching pastor here, and I’m glad that you’re with us this beautiful fall day. So if you have a Bible with you, if you open up to the book of Hebrews, today’s text for study is going to be Hebrews 8. If you don’t have a Bible with you, there are Bibles scattered throughout the pews, and it’s on page 583. Please keep your Bibles open.

We do a style of preaching here called expository preaching. So I’m going to read this passage, we’ll pray, and then we’re going to get into the words of the passage. All I’m going to do is try to communicate back to you what the text is saying. We, as a church, just want God to speak to us through His word. So that’s all I’m going to try to do this morning for the glory of Christ, whom we just sang to.

So, Hebrews 8, starting at verse 1. I’m actually going to read the entire chapter, if you want to follow along—verses 1 through 13. Before I finish, as mentioned, I’ll pray, and this morning I’ll be reading out of the ESV. So the word says:

“Now, the point of 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. Now, if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’

As it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old, as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says: ‘Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.’

In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete is growing old and is ready to vanish away.”

So that’s God’s word for us this morning. Would you please pray with me?

Lord, thank you for your word. You saw fit to communicate your word through preaching, and Lord, that’s very humbling. So please help me today to rightly divide your word of truth. Please keep me from error. Help me to speak what is true. Lord, please also be with the listeners. I pray that you would press truth on all of our hearts. I pray that you use this time to bring glory to Jesus. In His name, we pray. Amen.

So perhaps the greatest college coach of all time is a man named John Wooden, who was famous for winning ten basketball championships over a twelve-year period, including seven in a row at UCLA in California. Because of the unparalleled success that Wooden had, naturally, he was a well-sought-out presenter at various coaching clinics where all sorts of coaches from all sorts of sports and skill levels would spend time and money to hear from Wooden, to hear what he had to say, with hopes that they themselves would find some success similar to what Wooden enjoyed.

Now, at these clinics, no doubt a lot of things would be covered, whether it be drills that Wooden would use, strategies he would seek to implement, or maybe leadership lessons that he would apply. But one of the things that Wooden became well known for, and that he would talk about at coaching clinics, was not something that one would imagine he would talk about, especially for how long he would actually talk about it, which was how to properly put on socks. This is not always something that Wooden would talk about in coaching clinics, but it’s actually something Wooden would do at the start of every year with his teams. Before the start of their very first practice, he got all his players together and he physically demonstrated to his players how he wanted them to put on their socks. In turn, in this demonstration, the players would demonstrate back to Wooden that they understood what he taught them by physically doing it themselves.

Now, there’s a little bit of a leadership lesson by Wooden in this exercise. Wooden was trying to communicate to his players, and to the coaches at the coaching clinic, how important it is to do the little things right, where, most often, success—whether it be in sports or, more importantly, in life—is found by doing a lot of little things, seemingly boring things, seemingly unimportant things, but doing them right. In fact, this is even true, most importantly, when it comes to our faith. We know this. We are called to be faithful with little.

But it wasn’t just a leadership principle that Wooden was hoping to communicate in this exercise. He actually wholeheartedly believed it was really important to put socks on the right way. In most sports, including basketball, which he coached, the game is played on one’s feet. If athletes do not take care of their feet, their feet can blister, which can come from not properly putting on socks. If feet are not properly tended to, athletic success can be very difficult, if not impossible, to find. For Wooden, it was essential to get the feet right, as everything builds off them.

So coaching clinic after coaching clinic, year after year, to stress how important this concept was, Wooden would put way more thought and time than one might think to communicate this simple yet profound and important truth. I’m sure for some of the coaches at the clinics, no doubt some of his players were probably a little bit like, “Yeah, we get it. Let’s move on to something else.” But Wooden thought this simple concept was too important to rush past. He didn’t want his team to take it for granted. Rather, his teams had to go back to the same truth over and over again if they wanted to reach their goals.

Now, I share this with you this morning because I can be a little vulnerable with you. This week, as I was preparing for this sermon from the text I just read for you, there was a little bit of me that felt like, “Yeah, we get it,” concerning the information that we’re about to work through. This information in our text surrounds the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is information we’ve been working through for the past few chapters in our study of Hebrews. In fact, we’re only going to continue to work through it in the next few passages as well.

So to be honest, a little vulnerable, I had some struggling thoughts this week. I’m trying to preach to you yet again another sermon on the high priesthood. But obviously, the Lord who inspired the author of Hebrews to write this letter knows what He is doing. He understands how critical this information is to us, His readers. We have to continue to go back to see this fundamental truth: that Jesus is our great high priest, the one who is so much better, so much superior to the Old Testament priests of old. This information we have to get right because our faith is built on it. If we can’t get this part right, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for us to live a faithful Christian life, one that’s filled with the joy of Jesus Christ.

So that being said, if you want to look back with me, starting in verse 1, as mentioned earlier, we’re just going to walk back through the passage.

For verse 1, read this: “Now the point in what we are saying, and all that we’ve already covered concerning the priesthood, how Jesus is priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek, which was our text last week. The point of all that, to work through all that which is laid out, is this: We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, who, as He is seated at the right hand of God in the throne of heaven, in verse 2, we see that He is ministering in that holy place, meaning as Jesus is in heaven on His throne, He’s not just hanging out in heaven, passively watching what takes place in the world, kind of like sitting passively watching television as we sit on our couch after a long day, just kind of zoned out.

That’s not what Jesus is doing. Rather, as He sits on the throne, our high priest, our Lord Jesus, is actively ministering in the world, which He is doing through the power of the Spirit which He has sent, and through the power of the word which He’s given. John, chapter 4, Hebrews, you may remember, is a living and active word.

In verse 2, as the Lord Jesus Christ is ministering in that holy place, we see that that is the true tent, the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. This here is a reference to the