Hebrews 8:13 – By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.  Well, there’s an encouraging thought for you eh?  Actually, it IS an encouraging thought.  Because those words are not what they seem at first.
When I first read those words, I thought, of course, of my own self.  How that I am aging, many of the things I leaned in the past are obsolete and in fact on day I will totally disappear from this earth.  An elderly pastor we know has even shared with us that many times he feels “invisible” to the younger generation.  But while these realties exist about our own obsolescence there is another reality that is in fact good news.
My study of Hebrews reveals that God’s “people” had great difficulting obeying the commandments of God and a covenant (The old covenant) was established where the priests from the tribe of Levi (Levitical Priesthood) had to make atonement for the people.  Only blood could atone for the sins of the people, and this blood came from a sacrificial system.  And so, when we read in Hebrews 8 that God established a “better covenant”, we see that this old sacrificial system has been done away with.
Now this is a very short summary* on what happened over a long period of time, but in the case of being obsolete, aging, and dissappearing, I am so glad that God has taken that old covenant and made it dissappear.  That’s one aspect of aging that does not have to worry me.
Hebrews 8 teaches that God’s new covenant, the covenant of grace allows a sacrifice once for all through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.  That God has written his law on my heart and put his law in my mind. l have come to understand and believe that because of the “finished” work of Jesus on the cross having made atonement for my sins, I am fully accepted by God.  I know that there is nothing I can “do” to be pleasing enough to merit God’s favor, especially the favor of eternal salvation.  But I do want to live my life as a thank you to God, and God’s Holy Spirit will remind me and/or prompt me of what to do or what not do to do to live a life pleasing to God while I am still on this earth.
The only authoritiy I am under is to love God, and love people.  Those directives will never grow old.  Thanks be to God for his indescrible gift.
Click here for a deeper understanding of the covenant of grace.