Thu July 2

Listen up, little ones

Especially for the littles in your household.

Listen for the words holy place.

Reading

Hebrews 9:1–10—Divinely Given Regulations

Optional Reading

Exodus 26:30-35

Keys for kids

Also for the littles. Young households might choose, after Keys for Kids, to go directly to praise and prayer.

The entire Old Testament system was God-given.
Since God gave it, we know it was good.
Now God has given us a better system through Jesus Christ.

Questions

(Some read the ?s before the notes/ ask them after.)

What elements of the Old Covenant are given in our reading?
How did the Holy Spirit make clear that the way into the Most Holy Place was not fully opened in the Old Covenant?
How can a worshipper’s conscience be perfected?

Notes

(See Saturday for authors.)

The Old Covenant was good and glorious. The furnishings, buildings, regulations, and worship practices were God-given. These Hebrew Christians knew of this glory. They struggled to see how much more glorious the New Covenant and its mediator were. In many ways the good and glory of the Old Covenant was more visible with the senses—smells and bells. But the glory of Jesus and the New Covenant are spiritually visible. We walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:7).

This greater glory never diminishes the lesser glory of the past. Gooding notes that it is no part of the case for Christianity to deny the importance or belittle the glory of the old covenant. True enough, in verse 6 of this chapter the author will begin to point out the severe limitations of the old covenant’s system of worship. But for all those limitations that system, while it lasted, was exceedingly magnificent.

These magnificent divinely-given regulations were for that time, for the old order. But now a better time and a better order and a better covenant, with its better mediator, have come. Even we, who likely didn’t grow up with a Jewish understanding of God and His ways, rejoice that God’s better way has come.

Swedish Method questions

See the Sunday notes for meaning of the symbols.

Praise

Psalm 99b, 51a

Prayer

Give thanks that the Old Covenant was good, but the New Covenant is better.
Pray for the preparation for preaching God’s Word this Lord's Day.
Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.