This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

We'll continue our look through Hebrews chapter 7, this is day 3, we'll look at
verses 19 to 24 today. And I'd like to begin by reading those verses. Verse 19,
"For the law never made anything perfect, but now we have a confidence and a
better hope through which we draw near to God.

This new system was established with a solemn oath. Aaron's descendants became
priests without such an oath, but there was an oath regarding Jesus. For God
said to him, 'The Lord has taken an oath, and he will not break his vow.

You are a priest forever. ' Because of this oath, Jesus is the one who
guarantees this better covenant with God. There were many priests under the old
system, for death prevented them from remaining in But because Jesus lives
forever, his priesthood lasts forever.

" Now at the beginning of these verses, verse 19, "The law never made anything
perfect. " It could not finish the work that God desires to do in our lives. The
law points to the work that God desires to do in our lives.

When we say law, we're talking about the Old Testament law, but it can't finish
that work. Now this is a good opportunity, since we're talking about the
priesthood and how much of it is contained in the law, how the priests were
supposed to act, how they were supposed to give sacrifices, who was supposed to
be a priest. This is a good opportunity to answer the question, how do we as
followers of Jesus today, how do we as believers today relate to this law?

Because it's God's word, it's in the Old Testament, so how should I relate to
it? Well, the scripture is very clear on this. We relate to the law not as to
something that's abolished, but as to something that is fulfilled.

That's what Jesus told us to do. Matthew 5:17, "Do not think that I've come to
abolish the law or the prophets. I've not come to abolish them, but to fulfill
them.

" So you don't erase the law, you understand the law, and you see how Jesus
fulfilled the law. Now I'd even like to dig into this a little bit deeper,
because I think it's good for us to understand. There are three types of law
that are talked about by theologians when you look at the Old Testament.

The ceremonial law, the civil law, and the moral law. The ceremonial law is the
law that had to do with, obviously, some of the ceremonies of the times that
they would celebrate the Lord on the Sabbath and have Sabbath days, but they
also had to do with all the ceremonies that went along with the sacrifices of
God in the temple. How you made a sacrifice, when you made a sacrifice, who
could make a sacrifice?

The ceremonial law. Then there was the civil law. This was the law that regarded
how they were supposed to treat each other in the nation of Israel, the law of
the government of the nation of Israel.

And then there's the moral law, the most familiar of that being the Ten
Commandments, how we're to treat everybody, how we're to have an attitude
towards people that represents the character of God. Now let's just dig into
this. Ceremonial law, civil law, moral law.

Jesus just taught us, he didn't come to abolish the law, he came to fulfill it.
So how does he fulfill it? How does Jesus fulfill the ceremonial law?

We're going to see in a couple of verses, Hebrews 7, 27, unlike the other high
priest, he doesn't need to offer sacrifices day after day. First for his own
sins, then for the sins of the other people. He sacrificed for sins once for
all, when he offered himself.

So Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial law in the sacrifice of himself, in the giving
of himself. He is our sacrifice. He's also, the Bible teaches us in the New
Testament, he is our Passover.

So even though you might go to a Passover celebration and eat there, that's an
okay thing to do, the truth is Jesus is now our Passover. He's our Sabbath.
Jesus is superior to the ceremonial law.

He fulfilled the ceremonial law so it's no longer needed. Now it's still in
God's word for a purpose. It points us to who Jesus is.

So when I read in the book of Leviticus all these laws about how to make
sacrifices and exactly how it should be done, I don't say to myself, oh man,
look at all these rules and regulations. I wonder why I'm not keeping them today
and begin to get worried about something I'm not doing. Instead I just say, wow,
with a sense of awe.

Look at what Jesus did for me. The book of Leviticus is not about what you're
not doing now, it's really about what Jesus did for you, how he gave himself for
you, the ceremonial law fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ. And then you have
the civil law.

These were laws that were made to, in essence, set the nation of Israel apart
from all other people. Now when you hear civil law, you think, oh, that's the
municipal laws, that's the laws of a city or a county. Not when it comes to
Israel, it was more than that.

They are the same kinds of laws in some cases, but if you read them carefully,
you'll see that there's a lot of laws about purity. There's a lot of laws about
making them a people of purity, who they could relate to, who they could not
relate to, what they could touch, what they could not touch. Different from our
kinds of laws because God was saying to them in these civil laws, I'm setting
you apart to be a people for myself.

So the main purpose of the civil law was not as a legal code, but as a purifying
of God's chosen people. This civil law, in one sense, is fulfilled in the spirit
of God and in the body of Christ today. The church today, the people of God,
we're now the people of God, the church.

The church is purified by the blood of Christ, not by the keeping of a law,
purified through the spirit and not through the law. So the people of God has
shifted from a nation of Israel, so you don't need national laws to try to keep
them purified from other nations. Now we are a people who have been set apart
within all the other nations.

That's what the church is. We by God's spirit are set apart within the nations.
We don't have to move somewhere else and not touch this and not touch that.

There are things not to touch. There are things not to do. But within the
nations, we can be in the world but not of the world, and the only way you have
the power to do that is by the spirit of God.

We're to be the body of Christ in the world. That's what the church is to be.
That's how the civil law, being the people of God, has been fulfilled in Christ.

And then there's the moral law, the law that's so familiar in the Ten
Commandments. It's a guide to a great life, living the kind of life that God
wants us to, having the kind of character he wants us to. Galatians 5-14 reminds
us that the whole moral law is summed up in a single command and even in a
single word.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Love. The moral law is fulfilled through the
command of Christ to love.

So if you look at James 1-25 or James 2 verse 8, it tells us there that we're
now under a different kind of law, a royal law, a perfect law, and it's the law
to love. Now you may or may not have been interested in the law and how it works
in our lives, but we need to be. We need to see how the Old Testament fits with
the New Testament and how Jesus has fulfilled the law in all of these ways.

With this in mind, the fact that Jesus has done this, go back to verse 19.
Listen again to verse 19. "For the law never made anything perfect, but now we
have a confidence and a better hope through which we draw near to God.

" I want you to notice those words, "a better hope through which we draw near to
God. " There was this group of believers that were first written to for this
book of Hebrews who had begun to discover that even in Christ, life in this
world is not perfect. Have you begun to discover that?

Life in this world is not perfect. And so they had a thought. They thought,
"Let's go back.

Let's go back to the law. Let's go back to something we knew before. Maybe it'll
give us the perfection that we're looking for.

" And the writer of Hebrews says, "The law's not perfect. It never made anything
perfect. What do you think you're doing to go back to something that never made
anything perfect?

" In fact, the only purpose of it was to point to him who is perfect, to him who
would fulfill the law. He's telling them, he's telling us, "Stop looking for a
perfect life in this world and start looking for a better priest. Start looking
to the better priest who can give you a better hope, because that better hope
will give you the confidence to draw near to God.

" If I'm looking for a perfect life in this world, every time something goes
wrong, I think, "Oh, God must not love me. Oh, I must have done something wrong,
or God must have done something wrong, and it causes me to draw away from God. "
But when I look to Jesus as the better priest, and I have hope in him, that
gives me the confidence to draw near to God.

And that's what I need. That's what you need. What we're being told here is
this.

The better my hope, the better my relationship with God. Now think about this
with me for just a minute. The better your hope, the better your relationship
with God.

One of the reasons you need to focus on heaven is because it betters your
relationship with God right now here on this earth. One of the reasons you and I
need to not put all the stock we have in the circumstances of this life is
because when I put my hope in him and not those circumstances, it deepens my
relationship with him. If you have a relationship with God that's just based on
circumstances, God does good things for me, he must love me a lot, God allowed
something bad to happen in my life, he must not love me, you're never going to
have confidence in your relationship with him.

You need a hope that's above and beyond your circumstances, and you have one in
Christ. That's what the writer is saying here, you have that in Christ. So draw
near to God.

Let's do that right now. Our Father, we draw near to you in confidence that we
can because of what Jesus did for us. Whatever the circumstances in my life, in
others lives, in this world, I can draw near to you.

So I do it right now. I realize you're here listening to me, hearing me, caring
about me, and you have an eternity of hope for me. And Lord, I rest in that
today.

I don't only want to rest in that, I want to go from that place of rest to live
in that kind of hope today, to live in that relationship with you. Forgive me
for those times when I've drawn away from you because I've thought somehow the
circumstances of my life meant you didn't love me, or I wasn't loving you well
enough. Lord, I'll never love you well enough, but the truth of the matter is I
can draw near to you because of what Jesus has done for me.

Thank you. Thank you for that privilege. Thank you for that great joy.

In your name, I pray, Jesus, we pray, amen. Tomorrow we're going to see together
what Jesus is able to do that no one else can do.