THE HOPE OF ISRAEL - The Preterist Archive

The Hope of Israel: What Is It? 95
hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
And . . .
they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto
the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their
iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (Jer. 31:31-34).
The Epistle to the Hebrews contains (in Chapters
VII-X) the Holy Spirit's comments upon this great
prophecy; prominence being given to the truth that
Jesus Christ is "the Surety" of this covenant, as well
as "the Mediator" thereof (7:22; 8:6; 12:24) ; that it
has been ratified "by His own blood" (9 :12-24 ; 13 :20) ;
and that it is therefore "a better covenant, established
upon better promises" (8:6).
Further it is revealed in those chapters that, when
Christ had offered that "one sacrifice for sins forever,
and sat down on the right hand of God," not only was
the new covenant put into operation, but the old covenant
and all its appointments people, temple, priesthood,
sacrifices, etc. were forever abolished. Which
things in fact were, even in their own era, nothing but
"a shadow of good things to come" (10:1).
Moreover, God had never any pleasure in them, because
"it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of
goats should take away sins" And surely, as we meditate
upon the contents of Hebrews IX and X, we must
perceive that God would abhor the very thought of
setting up again that same system of vain sacrifices
and ceremonies, which He abolished at the awful cost
of the sacrifice of His own Son, and which had their
complete fulfilment in the "one sacrifice for sins forever"
offered at Golgotha.
And besides, we have in this connection the plain
statement that Christ, in coming to do His Father's
will by the sacrifice of Himself, "taketh away the first,
that He may establish the second" (10:9); which