 Yeah, so we were in Hebrews chapter 7 towards the end and we saw how the priesthood of Jesus is so much greater than the priesthood of Aaron. And we saw the features of our priest as well who presents to us a new covenant. He was appointed by God. He is a high priest forever. So we've understood that in every sense what we have now is so much greater than what used to be. And imagine the people honored what God gave them and particularly the Jews, they were proud of the ceremonies that in fact God gave them all those practices of worship. So that the fulfillment of those things would take place in the Lord Jesus. And now that they have the Lord Jesus, who is the fulfillment of everything they have known earlier, they were struggling to accept this Jesus. They were struggling to let go of all their preferences. Isn't it so sad and so unthinkable that though we have the greatness of God before us, sometimes we get stuck in the old. And that was the problem of the Israelites as well. They were being taken to the Promised Land. But as some people have put it, they came out of Egypt but Egypt was in them and they wanted some fleshly comforts. Because of that, they were ready to let go of God. They were ready to let go of the worship of God. If you remember, they built a calf to worship him. Worship it. When Moses came back from the mountain, he was so upset. He had gone for a little while and these people wanted to worship the way other cultures worship. So that flesh in us, we need to let it die. We need to gain an understanding of why is it that we are worshiping this God. And Hebrews is a book like that that gives us revelation and helps us understand what God has done for us is so much greater. And what our flesh is asking us to hold on to. So even for us, different ones of us, no matter what traditions we come from, or our way of life, our attitudes, we may not fully recognize the greatness of God and His works. But when we get revelation from God, we begin to understand, what I have now is way greater than whatever I thought was good for me. So let me worship the Lord more, let me serve the Lord better, let me offer up my life to God. This book is meant to do that to us, help us commit and submit ourselves in a greater way. And that is the call that these Jewish believers were being given. Come on, surrender to this God because He gave you what was wonderful. But now what you have in Christ Jesus is so much greater and you need to understand the value of it. So coming back to the kind of high priest that the Lord Jesus is, we saw that He can sympathize with our weaknesses. He became a human being to be our high priest. Now add more things to that. He is holy. He is harmless. All of this brings us honor for the kind of high priest that we have. Now if our high priest is not honorable, how do we approach this high priest? We will lose our confidence but we are told that he is holy. And so we can look up, we can honor this high priest who is serving us. He is harmless. Many a times we are afraid when we go to somebody who is more righteous than us that they might condemn us and say, how could you do this? Or how could you not live a righteous life? But we have a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses and he is harmless. He is not going to take our weakness and use it against us. That's not the kind of high priest that we have. He is holy. He is harmless. He is undefiled. Again, he is not corrupted by the world. If you go back to Hebrews 4, there we saw that he was tempted in every way yet without sin. That's the kind of person. I think it's Hebrews 2. He tempted in every way but he never really sinned. So he was not corrupted by the world. So this shows us that he was an overcomer and that's a challenge for us. We can live in this world and make a lot of excuses and say, oh, it's very difficult. The treasures are too many. The sins I am tempted, attracted to the things of the world. I sinned because I couldn't help it. But the example of Jesus is a challenge for us. You see here that he was undefiled. Was he tempted? Yes, but he never got corrupted by sin. So we too can follow in his footsteps. In continuation. More features about this high priest. Separate from sinners and has become higher than the heavens. Who does not need daily as those high priests to offer up sacrifices. So the human high priest because they also had sin in them. They have to cleanse themselves before they go and make offerings for others. But Jesus was holy. He was undefiled and therefore he did not have to do those rituals before he could come to the Lord. And so this high priest, in that sense, he is so perfect. And he offered himself up. It says he did once for all when he offered himself, offered up himself. So instead of these repeated sacrifices. So, you know, it's like you can make a table where you can put the high priest under the order of Aaron or Levi, the tribe of Levites. And then you can have another column that where you say Jesus high priest according to the order of Melchizedek and then start making comparisons. Did the high priest end up sinning? Yes, they did because they did not have that overcoming power yet. We know that after the Lord Jesus died and he rose again, we are in another covenant altogether in the kind of forgiveness, grace that we enjoy. That's different from what the Old Testament high priest had. And you know, so you could sit and keep comparing. They sinned. Jesus never sinned. They had to make sacrifices for their own sins. Jesus did not because he was holy and undefiled. Were they harmful? Yeah, sometimes they took the sins of the people and they were not compassionate towards them. But Jesus is harmless. So you could put all of these things up and these high priests often they had to make sacrifices but Jesus once for all. How did he make that sacrifice by dying on the cross for us? So it's finished. He does not have to repeatedly daily, in other words, keep making sacrifices for us. So this high priest whom we have through an oath, he has been appointed for us as a high priest and God has appointed the son who has been perfected for ever. So we can put it in a simple way and say he is a perfect high priest. Jesus is a perfect high priest. Now let's continue to see further about this high priest and the better covenant that we were earlier discussing. So we've understood that we have a special high priest. Where is this priest doing his ministry? He is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens. Every high priest will have his place of worship. We know that the tabernacle was the place that the other earthly high priests would go to earlier and then later you had the temple where they would go and they would minister. But which is the headquarters or if you want to say the office of the Lord Jesus? Heaven. So his ministry is in heaven and which is the chair? Everybody has a chair in the office. Which is your position? Sit in your place. Jesus' place is the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens. That's where he sits and he does his ministry. He is a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord erected and not man. So here is the truth for us. The heaven where God dwells and where God is worshiped. 24 bar 7, the angels, the elders, the heavenly beings are crying out, holy, holy, holy. They are worshiping God. That is the true temple. Here the word tabernacle is mentioned. It's the true tabernacle. On earth you have pictures or you have shadows. I am reminded I have this child, my niece, and she has this toy laptop. She is very excited about it. It's a pink colored laptop and you put the switch on some music. You can play some music and it will give you those sounds when you press the keys. As if you are typing, you get that and then you get images of A, B, C, D. So sometimes she used to say, I am going to work on my laptop and she will bring her laptop, open it. It's one small cute pink one and I always used to look at it and think that's not a real laptop. But you can tell her that it's like a shadow of the real laptop. So she also used to say, I am also working on my laptop. So when you talk about the things that God erected, I am giving a very crude example. But when you look at practices under the old covenant, they were shadows. It's not the real thing. It gives us some insight and understanding into the real truth that God wants to convey. But it's a shadow and maybe one day when my niece, she grows up and she's able to use a real laptop. She will understand, oh wow, you can do so much on this real laptop. You can research, you can have audio, video. So the capacity is so it is beyond what that small little tiny pink laptop can do. So in the same way, when you look at the real tabernacle, the tabernacle which we had on the earth was limited. It was a shadow. There was some, like you could look at the tabernacle, you could look at the things in the tabernacle and you could understand. Oh, this is what God wants, God wants worship. Okay, this is how God wants to be worshiped. Everything should be holy. This is how God wants to be worshiped. So you have an idea, but it's not the real thing yet. So the real temple is heaven. And in that place, in the real head office, Jesus is a minister of the sanctuary. And who, you know, sanctuary is another word we use for like the house of God, the house of worship. And who made that real sanctuary? On the earth we build, isn't it? We build, okay, I'm going to build my church like this. It'll be, it'll look like a hall or maybe you want it to look like some of those old traditional churches with the steeple and a cross and all of that. So man builds the physical structure here. So even at the old covenant, old testament times, people built the tabernacle the way God told them. But heaven, who built it? The Lord erected the real sanctuary and Jesus is appointed there as our high priest forever. He's holy, he's harmless, you know, he is forever. So you could look at his ministry and understand that this is the kind of person I have who will intercede on my behalf or who will do whatever is required by high priest for me. And he has already done it as well through his sacrifice. So what a privilege for us as God's people. Verse 3, we are told, every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this one also have something to offer. So every priest, if we talk about their ministry, they will keep doing something in the temple, right? We are familiar with that. So even Jesus needs to be doing something, some offerings and sacrifices. Because if he were on earth, it would be required of him of the law. Those who were here on the earth, they did those things. But the Lord Jesus, we'll see later, a little later in these passages. What is the kind of ministry? What has he done for us by becoming a high priest? We will look at it. But we are quite clear that the tabernacle or the temple which was made by man on the earth, it was made according to the pattern. Verse 5, it says, God gave Moses, 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. So God gave the pattern to Moses and that's how he made it. So now let's come back to the excellent ministry. We are told in verse 6 of Hebrews, more excellent, in fact, ministry of the Lord Jesus. Why? Why is it a more excellent ministry? Because he has become a mediator of a better covenant. So when you look at the priests here on the earth, they are doing sacrifices and offerings. But we saw earlier that once for all he has already made that sacrifice. But his role right now is that of a mediator of a better covenant. So that is the more excellent ministry which our High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. That is the Lord Jesus has received now. And this covenant is also established on better promises. So you know, whenever you have something better, why should you use the older one? When you have phones, I remember back when I was in college, you had those Nokia 1100 phone or something, which was just basic. You could just make a call with it and send some text messages. And we were so excited when we got those days when those phones came out and they were affordable. Everyone was excited. Everyone had a phone. But as days went by, you recognize, hey, you can have an Android phone. It has more features. You could do other things with it. It's not just for you to make a call, but these days, we've gone many versions higher. And technology, not just for a phone, but so many other gadgets. It's just getting better and better and better. Now you tell me, if there was an iPhone, today's model and Nokia phone that I was talking about earlier, which can only barely make a call, kept before you, which one would you pick? You would pick something which is way better, isn't it? So in the same manner, we understand that the Lord Jesus, whenever you think of this high priest, we think about more excellent ministry. He is the mediator of a better covenant. It is established on better promises. So the believer is being told, you have great hope, believer. And you have no excuse to go back to your old ways of life. You have no excuse to go back to your old traditions, particularly the Jewish believer. He's being told or she is being told that if you go back and again, if you go back to your temple practices, how would it make sense? Because Jesus has already paid the price once for all. It's no longer required the daily sacrifices that the priests used to make. All of those things, it's redundant or it's no longer applicable. You have a better covenant through the mediator. What is a mediator? A mediator is somebody, that word mediator from the Greek is a messitus. It means one who stands in the middle between two people and brings them together. So if you have, let's say two groups are fighting, a mediator comes, he patches them up and says, okay, come on, let's work together. That's a mediator. So for the old covenant, which is, you know, you could say an inferior, it's okay to use that one. Inferior covenant, you had Moses, who is the mediator. So he was the mediator between God and the people and he introduced that old covenant that God gave and people could see the goodness of God through that old covenant itself. But now you have Jesus, who is there, right? Okay, God, the people at the Lord Jesus, who has become our mediator of a better covenant with better promises. And so the Jewish believers, if anyone, you know, I told you, right, the situations that they were going through. So in a sense, you know, if things got really hard, they could have said, okay, you know, forget about Jesus and all, because excuse me, we are really struggling and we don't have the kind of life that we used to have. So I'm not going to fully leave the faith, but you know, I'll just go back to practicing my traditions. In a very subtle way, it could have kept them happy because the Jewish practices talked about the Lord Jesus, isn't it? So they could have deceived themselves in a way and settled with the old covenant and an old, you know, like an inferior covenant. But we are being encouraged and particularly the Jewish believers of that day were being encouraged and told, when you have something better, how could you pick something, you know, that was just her shadow. So please don't go back to the worldly ways or the traditional practices, your customs and be satisfied with that. When you have the real deal before you and Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant. Now, he also tries to tell these believers, you know, some of them might have had a doubt in their hearts and said, no, that was good. That was really good, whatever we did, the way we worshiped God, it was really good. So they are being reminded in verse seven, they're being told for if that first covenant had been faultless. So let's say, you know, what was the covenant that Moses gave? It was a covenant which was based on law. So if man was able to keep the law, fulfill the law and walk blameless and walk righteous and all of it, why would there be a need for another covenant? But there was a problem with the old covenant, though, you know, we also see this in the book of Romans, though the covenant and the commandments which Moses gave were able to bring the understanding of sin to us. What is right? What is wrong? There was no empowering. There was no, you know, that strength that each human being had to keep the law and fulfill the law. So they were constantly breaking the promises and when you break the promise, what should you do? You have to make atonement. That's where they went to the temple. That's where they gave a sacrifice. That's where they asked for God's forgiveness. So that's how they lived. The law will tell you right and wrong. If you break anything, go ask for forgiveness. But that's not complete and that's not the way God wanted it to be. And they are being reminded, look, if that old covenant was faultless, then why should you have a new one? No, whenever God does something new, particularly, you know, when it comes to these covenants and all that, He establishes a new one. It means that the old one was inferior. So even when we do our interpretation, when you do your hermeneutics, when you want to know there is a practice in the Old Testament. Is that a good practice? A bad practice? Should we still continue it or not? Then what we do is you come back to the New Testament, look at the cross and see after the cross what has changed. If something given in the New Testament says, okay, change it. For example, here you have all these temple practices. It's over. It's part of the old covenant. You don't have to do it because Jesus once and for all, He has paid the price for us and so it stops. But if there are certain things, for example, in the Old Testament we saw Melchizedek, you know, in Genesis, Abraham gave him a tithe. It's repeated here in the New Testament. So if the question comes, is tithe okay? Should we tithe as the believers of today? Yes, because God did not close that chapter and say don't tithe. You get it? So that's how we interpret. If there's something that God says, okay, close it. If you remember the vision that Peter had in Acts 10, where he sees this whole scroll, sorry, a tent come down with all the animals, the unclean animals, the clean animals. So when you see things like that, you know, okay, it's about the food laws which were given during the times of Moses, which changed in the New Covenant. So look for the changes that God makes in the New Testament. And here very clearly, Old Covenant, we are done with it. Moses and the law, not that it was removed because we know that Jesus said, I fulfilled the law, but the grace aspect came in through the Lord, Jesus Christ. So that's how we understand it. So if the old one was perfect, there would be no need to change it. Okay, let me quickly pause for a moment. You know, I'm going on and on. I hope you're getting it and I hope, you know, it's making sense to you. So yeah, is this okay? Are you understanding? Is it getting too heavy? Please let me know. Okay, so Arendt says okay, Dave says okay. Yeah, that's good. Okay, Kiran also okay. So that way at least I know that you all are listening to me because I can't hear any of your voices. Okay, good, you're there and you are connected. Okay, we will go further from here. So we are at verse eight now. Okay, yeah. So we once again see in the next passage here, the promise of God, I'm not going to read the whole thing for you. But basically he's saying that, you know, the days are coming when I'm going to make a better covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Okay, and this will be a new one. It will not be according to the covenant which your fathers had in the day when, you know, God let them out of Egypt. But he's saying that he will make a new covenant and then we also see that God speaks to the people and says, I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts. Now if you look at the old covenant, if you look at the laws which Moses gave, those were written out for the people. And we know that even the commandments, they were written out on the tablets or stone. But we also recognize that, you know, there is a work of the Holy Spirit which is available to believers after the cross. And so what does God say? He says, look, this law or right and wrong, right? According to the nature of God, all of this will not just be an external thing, but even in our own hearts. God says, I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts. So that is something special for us as believers, you know, through the sacrifice of the Lord. Jesus Christ. And God says, look, 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. You know, you see a more personal approach and you also see the grace of God which has come upon the people through the new covenant. Because who is the mediator of this new covenant? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. And through his sacrifice, what has happened now, we can live a victorious life. We can live a life where we can constantly walk with God, we can receive his mercy, we can receive his forgiveness. So overall, you know, if you ask me, okay, what do I take back from what you're teaching, ma'am? It's too much. Melchizedek and better covenant and mediator. One key aspect is, as believers, we can be overcomers. We can live a victorious life. So that is something that I wish we can take back with us. We are not like those old covenant believers who had to really struggle to live a life of righteousness. If they failed, they had to go make sacrifice, you know. You can imagine it would have been so hard for them. But now we are being told the spirit of God lives inside you. The law of God is written in our hearts. And also that God says he will be merciful to our unrighteousness and our sins, their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. So this kind of forgiveness is being extended to us. And we have the ministry of the Holy Spirit with us where we read here, none of them shall teach their neighbor. Obviously, when we interpret that, we don't mean that teaching is not required. I can be on my own as a believer because it says here nobody will teach his neighbor. Because we see other passages of scripture where teachers are there in the Word of God and we are supposed to teach one another. So what does this mean? It simply means that we all have the Holy Spirit to guide us. That even if there is nobody to tell us, we still have the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that, you know, this is right. That is wrong. We belong to God and, you know, so on and so forth. So we are in a better position as believers today and we can overcome the devil. We can be victorious in our walk here on earth. That is what all this understanding the new covenant should help us do. Verse 13, it says, 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. Obsolete means again, you know, it's saying old. It has become old. The first one is old. So it's ready to vanish away. So pick up the new, like the example that I gave you. If there is something that is new and improved, you would rather have that. So let us hold on to this new covenant. Let's quickly make a distinction between the two covenants so that we have better understanding. So when was the old covenant given? It was given around, you know, 1400 BC and when was the new covenant given? Obviously through the sacrifice of Jesus. So we could trace it back to around 33 AD. Now, what else? We'll just see some comparison here. The old covenant, it was given to Moses on Mount Sinai. And we will read later that the new covenant is established for us at Mount Zion. So that's the difference. So the old covenant, Mount Sinai, the new covenant, Mount Sinai. The old covenant, even you talk about it, what comes to your mind? There's this sense of fear and awe and dread that even when the people thought of Moses going and speaking to God, they did not understand God for who he was and they had this fear and they would say, no, no, Moses, you go. We are not going. So the covenant for them came in that way. But today for us, when we think of the new covenant, you know, we know that God has made himself accessible. Remember, Hebrews 4, that we can go to the throne of God boldly, come boldly before the throne of God. So the access of the old covenant and the new covenant. There is a difference. The new covenant is inviting us. When you think about the new covenant, there is that thought that God is inviting us to receive from him. The old covenant has a mediator that would be Moses. But the new covenant has a mediator, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I just want to make a clarification here earlier. There was a mention that when we talked about the law given to Moses through angels. Recall, we said it came to him through the law, came through the angel. And I explained to you because of the commentaries that I saw, I explained to you that it seems like God, there was probably an angel, you know, who had an assignment of doing something with regard to the law and it was given to Moses in that way. But I correct myself. The word angel in the Greek is messenger. So it is likely that even when the old covenant was given to Moses, who is he? He is a messenger. If you go to the book of Revelation, the angel of each church. So obviously churches don't have every church does not have an angel. That's how we will interpret it. But who is the angel of the church? The messenger, the one who brings the message or the pastor. So the same way we can look at Moses and understand that. Okay, it's just referring to a messenger who brought the old covenant to us. So it came through Moses and Moses was the mediator of the old covenant. And for us today, the Lord Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant. The old covenant, I told us, people had to work hard, they had to live right. So it's a covenant of works. But what about the new covenant? It is something that has been given to us by grace and we don't need works to receive it. Because Jesus has already paid the price for us. But of course, we have to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, which means we have to live a righteous life before the Lord. But to get it or obtain it, we don't have to work. We simply put our faith in the work that the Lord Jesus has done. Then the old covenant, for every covenant, I think you would have studied in your other courses, blood covenant. There is a need for the shedding of blood for a covenant to be made. The blood of animals was used for the old covenant. But whose blood was used for the new covenant? The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was applied to his people. So that is the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. In the old covenant, you had the priesthood of the law of Moses through the descendants of Aaron. But in the new covenant, we have the priesthood of all believers. We will understand that it's the priesthood of all believers and this is happening because of the high priest that we have according to the order of Melchizedek. Now the old covenant required many sacrifices, daily sacrifices even. But the new covenant, it has already been perfected because of one sacrifice of the Son of God himself. The old covenant was written on tablets of stone, but the new covenant has been written on our hearts. The old covenant had the goal of, keep away from sin. If you sin, then you will be condemned and you have to make the sacrifices and all of that. But the new covenant, it has these goals of receiving God's love, His grace, His mercy and for us to walk with repentance, for us to experience that remission of sin and also receive God's rewards, especially the eternal reward of eternal life. The old covenant, it sort of brought a very challenging life because of the way you had to fulfill the law. But when you look at the new covenant, there's so much freedom. We experience a lot of freedom because of the grace and mercy of God that we enjoy. The old covenant, people were not empowered by the Holy Spirit to keep the laws. But in the new covenant, we have the Holy Spirit working together with us so that we can live a victorious life. So there are lots of such differences that we see here. But the point again that I want to make is that from these passages, we understand that the believer today is greatly empowered. The believer today has the ability to walk a holy life and a fruitful life. Now, if one does not want to live like that, it's up to them. But as you read about the ministry of Jesus as a high priest and the new covenant that we have been given, there's really no excuse. And we can receive from what the Lord Jesus has done and we can live a life that glorifies God. And that really is the encouragement which we have and we must hold on to it. And we must trust God that yes, as a believer, particularly if you're called into the ministry, I can live a holy life. I can live a fruitful life. I can live an overcoming life because I have the new covenant. Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant. And we've understood about his priesthood so far. And as we proceed further in chapter 9, we will also see how the Lord Jesus has become that perfect sacrifice for us. He has become that atonement price for us. So the more you delve deeper, we are being encouraged. Look ahead, look forward. Don't ever think of going back because what you have right now is so much better. And it will strengthen you to fulfill the race that God has for us. So I'm just going to pause at this point and ask us any thoughts or anything that comes to your mind. If you want to comment, then you could talk about it and then we'll close soon after with a word of prayer. Okay, so no problem. You could continue to think and meditate on these things. For some of us, this might be a little difficult to understand because we may not have spent a lot of time in the tabernacle. The practices of the temple and all, but you could study it. So if you study that, you get an idea. And based on that, you could build further and understand what the book of Hebrews is talking about. So yeah, maybe some more time to study will be very, very helpful for us. So let's close with a word of prayer. I request anybody in the class to please go ahead and lead in prayer. So we keep our glory and our honor to you for being with us. Go ahead Kiran. Father we come before you throne. Father we want to just say thank you. Father for the subject. Father for thanking you for the high praise and mediator. Father for today we just receive your words. Father for your revelation and understanding. Father for thanking you for all things. Father for thanking you. Thank you Father for helping us to move forward. Father for thanking you. All mighty Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you Kiran. Thank you everyone. God bless you. This week I'll post your assignments so you can start working on it. Okay. So God bless. Have a blessing. Thank you. Bye.