Hebrews 9:10

Hebrews 9:10

The time of the new order

Look at how the author here dismisses the trappings and rituals of religion. After centuries of detailed attention to the Law and its practice, he writes to his Jewish contemporaries and scornfully rejects all that has passed before. These regulations were so engrained in Jewish thinking; they were such a huge part of their heritage and their national institutions that this scathing rejection must have hurt many of them. They were new believers, only just beginning to embrace the reality of the New Covenant and here is a fellow Jew trashing the whole system that identified them and their culture.! But wasn’t it the Lord God who instituted the practices in the first place? How could He now be jettisoning everything their ancestors had taught them? Yes, it was hurtful to some. That is why the writer must go on to stress the superiority of the New Covenant. Those ancient sacrificial practices were nothing by comparison, they were only food and drink, we might say fish and chips! “All that ceremonial stuff,” he claims, “What did it really achieve? What was the point of it all? These were just external regulations applying until the time of the new order.”  

 It still troubles some folk that the Lord put the Jews through centuries of testing and pointless ceremonial, religious observance to then dismiss everything that had been decreed and to replace it completely with a whole new contract and set of rules. What is so hard for devoted Jews is that this unique relationship that they enjoyed with the Lord God through the Old Covenant had been tossed aside in favour of the Gentiles! It only makes sense if we see that the Jews were divinely chosen and appointed to represent God and also to show the whole world the futility and pointlessness of religion. Some might argue that they were “used!” Yes, they were, used to declare God’s purposes and His plans to every individual human and every nation, and to demonstrate that true faith is in a God who does what no other religion can ever duplicate. No religion has sent its most treasured ambassador to earth. No religion can replicate the signs and miracles of Jesus. No religion can provide a human creation who speaks from the heart of God. No religion has come up with a Saviour who will give His perfect life for His people. Everything that God taught the world through the Jewish faith, was to demonstrate His love and His purposes for mankind. The Jews prepared the way, they revealed the hopelessness of the pagan faiths, they demonstrated the pointlessness of trying to reach God through human means, that true faith is not achieved by external regulation but by an internal transformation. That is why they have been so hated and still are, as are many believers in Messiah! Thank God for the “New Order” and that we are all, Jew and Gentile, included in it. Hallelujah! 

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