Christ and the Law - Part III

Christ and the Law, the Covenant of Works, and the Threefold Division of the Law

Well, this morning, as we continue on from the past two weeks where we've begun sort of laying the foundation for what we'll be building through the remainder of Matthew chapter 5, we've been trying to wrap our minds around Christ and the law.

So this is a little detour from our passage, Matthew 5, 17 and 18, but as we've said, we're taking the time to do this so that we can continue to draw from it as we work our way through Matthew 5 all the way up to verse 48.

So it's very important that we build the foundation correctly. Of course, with a foundation, you're not building a finished home. So there's a lot we could say that we won't say, but there's a lot that we'll be building from and drawing from in weeks to come.

Matthew 5, beginning in verse 17, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

So we began by setting out sort of contours of gospel obedience versus legal obedience. This gospel law contrast that will become very important practically, and we'll even have a little more to say about that next week.

Of course, we considered last week the covenant of works in the law, and that was reflected in the first two paragraphs of chapter 19 in our confession. As we said, the gospel turns on the covenant of works.

If you want to understand how we can have a righteous standing before our God, how we can be counted as justified by His blood, we must understand the way that Christ is the last Adam. You cannot understand the widest frame of the gospel in the way that Paul does if you don't plant it in the Garden of Eden and see Genesis 1 -3 as the horizon of all that redemption accomplishes.

So last week we considered the covenant of works in the law. This morning we're going to consider the threefold division of the law, the threefold division of the law. Practical, very practical, very important, I might add, very reformed.

This is sort of bedrock for reformed interpretation of the law. Sadly, it's easily absconded with more recently. There's been seasons here and there over the past centuries where this doctrine has played fast and loose with.

We need to recover it confessionally. Many errors spring out when you don't understand the law according to this threefold division, so pay attention. And then next week we're going to consider the threefold use of the law.

How do we actually apply the law in our lives? Another sort of reformed bedrock is the three uses of the law. Not that there's only three, but there's generally three main ways that we apply the law to our lives as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

What makes us distinctive is especially the third use of the law, and so we'll cover that next week. All of this is background for Matthew chapter 5. So the threefold division of the law. I'm going to be decidedly brief on describing each of these three divisions because I really want to draw out some riches from the Scripture.

In fact, we could spend years doing this, just looking at various Old Testament passages as they're fulfilled and pointed to, cited, explained, and elaborated upon by the New Testament. We could do that, and I had to sort of settle for one, but I think it's one that's so rich it will show how all of these uses come together.

So I want to make sure we have plenty of time to get to that. The threefold division of the law. Let me begin with a question. How do you understand and apply the law? How do you understand and apply the law?

There was a mini-series many years ago that my sister and I, my family, we would watch. It was a nightly series on NBC called The West Wing. I don't know why we grew up always watching NBC. It's not a way to grow up, but we all did it.

And we watched this series with a fictional president played by Martin Sheen. His name was President Bartlett, and of course, there was always these political dramas and intrigues in the series, and you saw sort of an imagined sense of how the Oval Office was functioning in the early 2000s.

Well, I remember one episode, and I looked up the script as it came to mind, and in this episode, the president, President Bartlett, keeps being sort of lobbied by a very smarmy and arrogant Christian woman.

And she was a spokeswoman of sorts for some church ministry, and she was trying to engage the president because of her concerns about homosexuality and some of the legal weight that it was beginning to carry.

And so she was trying to have audience with the president to say, you know, the Bible's very clear, homosexuality is an abomination in the Lord's sight, and he's always very kind to her and somewhat dismissive, and then finally there's a moment where she's really trying to have her sort of John Knox engagement, and President Bartlett, in the daydream of the script writer, lets her have it, and this is how it goes.

This is President Bartlett, sarcastically sneering. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination. Mrs. Jacobs, the smarmy Christian. Well, I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President.

The Bible does. Yes, it does, says the president, Leviticus, Ms. Jacobs, 1822, chapter and verse. You know, we've got a lot of sports fans, Ms. Jacobs, in this town, and touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean, Leviticus 11 .7.

If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins, no longer called the Redskins, still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John when he plants different crops side by side?

Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering when she wears garments made from two different threads? Think about these questions, Ms. Jacobs, won't you? Of course, you can understand what happens as a result of that.

Ms. Jacobs is bewildered, stunned. She was so focused on one aspect of what the law said, she forgot how ridiculous all these other laws are, and so in embarrassed silence, she sulks away. And the script writer for this episode has this gotcha daydream that is meant to go unanswered.

You know, if you Christians actually knew the Bible, you'd have nothing to say about anything. How ridiculous these laws are. And this is the assumption, circa early 2000s, that secular minds, secular thinkers have about Christian engagement with the law.

The idea was if you actually understood and even proof texted the law consistently, you'd have nothing to say about anything. You'd be morally incapable of making any sort of claim. And they begin to imagine that the Bible itself is incapable of distinguishing, say, between eating oysters or condemning bestiality.

And the scene is actually laughable if you know anything about Christian interpretation or theology or history, but the sneaking fear, my sneaking fear, is that it actually reflects the prevailing secular opinion of our day.

And it's not only the prevailing secular opinion, but sadly, it reflects the poor, misinformed views of most Christians. There's a reason that Andy Stanley is, as popular as he is, says we need to unhitch the Bible from the Old Testament.

There's a reason that he is a voice that gains traction. When a century ago, he would have been condemned as a fool, if not a heretic, probably both. So I ask the question, how do you understand and apply the law?

How would you engage President Bartlett when he collapses everything together and says, therefore, you have nothing to say? Well, let me tell you how you ought to engage. Let me give you a better way.

In the Reformed tradition, though it's not unique to Reformed theology, this is biblical. I think it's evidenced biblically. You certainly find the fathers picking it up, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, all down through the ages.

We distinguish the law in three ways. We distinguish between the moral aspects of the law, the civil aspects of the law, and the ceremonial aspects of the law. The script writer in this imagined episode could only conflate all of these things together.

He could see in no way how these different aspects have elements that are binding, elements that were binding temporarily for their purpose in redemptive history, and those that are no longer binding.

They've been abrogated because they've been fulfilled in the person and work of Christ.

Jesus.

So the answer, to begin, is you need to understand the law and you need to rightly apply the law according to this threefold division, moral, civil, ceremonial. Looking first at the moral, and I'm going a little out of order here because our confession, for some reason, begins with the ceremonial, then the civil, and then ends with the moral.

In almost every treatment you read, usually the order that's given is moral, civil, ceremonial. So I'm just going to follow that traditional order in part because by ending with ceremony it'll be a good segue into some of the passages we'll look at.

Let's consider first the moral law. The moral law is forever binding. The moral law is forever binding. I hope you understand why I can say that in light of last week. The moral law reflects the character of God.

For the moral law to all of a sudden vanish is to say that God's character must somehow vanish. For the moral law to alter is to say that God's character must be altered. So the moral law is forever binding.

It reflects God's character and it's the kind of law that was written on man's heart as an image bearer of God by virtue of creation. So I'm going to begin with paragraph five from our confession. Listen to this.

The moral law does forever bind all. The moral law does forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience.

Thereof.

And that not only in regard of the matter contained in it, not only what the moral law contains is the reason you obey it, but by virtue of the authority of God the creator. It's not just what it contains.

It's who gives it. It's how it is given. It's a reflection of God himself. Neither does Christ in the gospel in any way dissolve, but rather much strengthens this obligation. Now what do you think they're drawing from in that last part of that statement?

Christ in the gospel does not dissolve the obligation of the moral law. He actually strengthens it. Well, they're looking at Matthew chapter five, verses 17 through 48. It's exactly where we're going.

Christ does not dissolve. As far as the moral law is concerned, he strengthens the obligation of man. So the only part of the law that the church has claimed should be ever binding is the moral law. That is situated by man's relationship to God in creation as an image of God, as a reflection.

Of God.

Christ does not arbitrarily choose certain commandments to function as a new law. That is a grave mistake. As we will see, Christ rather clarifies and affirms what has been binding from the beginning because at the beginning God created man in his image.

Christ also clarifies and affirms that which is prophetic or written of him as he's accomplishing redemption. Truly, Christ did not come to destroy the law, rather he came to fulfill it. So Christ gives us the proper revelation of God's law.

Not only does he clarify its teaching, he also gives us his own example of perfectly obeying the law in flesh in the midst of a fallen world. And yet living in perfect and blessed conformity to it. Not only that, Christ doesn't only clarify the law, Christ doesn't only provide an example in his life, Christ also gives us the presence and the power of his Holy Spirit so that we may abide by the law.

Now the moral law as we said from the first two paragraphs of our confession, that same law that was written on man's heart was also given at Sinai in the form of ten commandments. So the moral law, as reflected by the ten commandments, is forever binding, as our confession rightly states, even to justified persons.

You don't get saved away from the law, you get saved to the law. Christ takes away the condemnation of it and sanctification conforms you in to the very character of Christ. What is the perfect express image of the character of God?

It is Christ Jesus. That's where your sanctification is heading. So we must remember that believers obey the law as the contours of their sanctification, as they are led by the Spirit and freed by the blood of Christ from the condemnation.

Of the law.

We must remember, and of course Reformation Day helps us to remember as we celebrate this, obedience to the law has never been the means by which sinners are justified before God. Obedience to the law has never been the means for our justification, and yet those who have been justified by the blood of Christ will live in obedience by the Spirit's leading to the moral law, and they'll learn from the entirety of Scripture how to see that law and apply it to their lives.

You remember what Ryan McGraw said, for those who were at the Bolton yesterday, they love the law of the Lord because they love the Lord of the law. That's Christian responsiveness to God's law. For those in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation under the law, and yet when they're filled by the Spirit of Christ, they can say with the psalmist in Psalm 119, Make me to go in the path of your commandments, for in them I delight.

This is a result of the pardon of God, the liberating justification of God, and the Spirit imploring the believer to seek after God in all of His ways. So that's the moral law. Secondly, the civil. The moral law was binding forever.

The civil law was only binding on Israel, and we're not done with that sentence yet, but I want to say it fully, I want to say it fully. The civil law was only binding on Israel by virtue of the covenant God made with them at Sinai.

He did not make a covenant with another nation at Mount Sinai. He covenanted with the people of Israel that he called to himself, the people that he had rescued out of Egypt, and so the civil laws, they were bound to.

And yet, and yet, here's where the qualification comes, and yet, since, as 1 John 3 says, sin is lawlessness, and as Proverbs says, sin is a reproach to any nation, nations are to be bound by the revelation of civil law insofar as general equity applies, and that's a confessional statement to use that phrase, general equity.

What is generally equal, generally true, generally transferable out of the commonwealth of Israel established by God's covenant to any other nation of any other age. So we don't say it's become entirely irrelevant, it's not to say we'll just come up with something for ourselves.

We receive it as blessed light that we are to take and apply in some equitable way, knowing that we are not the covenanted people of God having conditions for our life in Canaan, but we are still nations accountable to a holy and just God who will bring blessings and cursings upon those who spurn His laws or otherwise keep them.

Now, by the way, the confessional statements in Westminster, Savoy, our Second London Confession, they're all uniform in using this idea of general equity, and none of them go into detail about what that means.

They say, well, the general equity of the civil law applies, and you're like, oh, great.

How?

Figure it out. That's pretty much what they do. General equity applies, you go and figure out how it applies. Here's our confessional statement. To them also God gave sundry or many judicial laws, which, notice the language, which expired, which expired together with the state of that people, understanding that that covenantal relationship, that context of Canaan was about what God was doing in redemptive history, typologically pointing to the fulfillment of Christ and the church.

So these various judicial laws expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any now by virtue of that institution, no, but their general equity being of moral use. Very, very helpful. If we understand the two-pronged approach of the civil law.

It's expired, it's no longer binding in the way that it was, and yet the force of the moral law shining through those judicial laws, through that civil law, certainly applies and binds, and blessing and cursing flows from it.

So from the outset, the civil laws are binding the people in the land. It's very significant. When we find the apostles calling for obedience, giving various vice lists or whatnot, we often find them, in a way, elaborating upon the Ten Commandments.

When it comes to civil law, they seem to refrain from applying any of the civil laws in ways that we would expect. In fact, they're often, as we see in 1 Corinthians 5, applying judicial laws in ways that are surprising to us.

And so they seem to understand there is a context, a temporary jurisdiction of Israel's life in Canaan that does not universally apply to God's people of other nations. But that does not make these laws irrelevant.

There is one standard for righteousness. That is God's law. And to the degree that we spurn what is revealed in God's law, we blur what is truly good, what is truly evil. Thirdly, the ceremonial law. The ceremonial law pointed to the person and work of Jesus Christ as the yes and amen of all that God had promised.

And as a result of His accomplishment of redemption, it is now abrogated. That's the language, abrogated. That means revoked, put away. Some of you right now are putting away all of your summer things, your summer decorations, your summer clothes, your swimsuits, your flip flops, you're putting it in some massive plastic tub and you're shoving it in a closet and you're not going to look at it for another nine months, right?

That's putting it away. That's abrogating what doesn't belong in light of a new set of circumstances. So now we're at the beginning, 19 paragraph 3, just coming off the heels of the covenant of works.

Remember the law written on man's heart, then given in Ten Commandments to Adam. And now here we are, paragraph 3, besides this law, what law? Again, the law, the moral law, the law written on the heart, the law of the Ten Commandments.

Besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel ceremonial laws. These contain several typical ordinances. In other words, they foreshadowed the person and work of Christ.

Partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, His graces, His actions, His sufferings, His benefits, and partly holding forth diverse instructions of moral duty, all which ceremonial laws being appointed only to the time of Reformation, that's a quote from Hebrews, are by Jesus Christ, the true Messiah and the only law giver, who was furnished with power from the Father, for that end, abrogated and taken away.

So we believe that the ceremonies, the symbols of the law, have ceased with the accomplishment of Christ. The Old Testament laws, the ceremonies, the feasts, as Colossians 2 says, were a shadow of things to come, but the substance is Christ Jesus.

In other words, Christ was the content of the ceremonial law. The ceremonial law was given in order to give way to Christ. Christ did not come to conform and find neat ways to parallel the ceremonial law.

There would be no ceremonial law unless it was meant to foreshadow and give way to the substance who is Christ Jesus. And as He accomplished His great work through His perfect life, His death, and His resurrection, the substance finally parted ways with the shadow, though that shadow was long.

If you've ever been on a street corner, and perhaps the sun is on the other side, shining behind someone, and you see this long shadow in front of you, and that shadow is sort of moving and moving, and you're heading forward in this way, you can't see the light, but you can see the shadow.

And then finally, as you turn, there's that person. That shadow had projected all across that sidewalk, and now you see what the shadow was of. You see the substance of the shadow. And that's Christ along the aeon of human history.

This long shadow begun from Genesis 3 .15 and the promise given to the woman. This shadow that's running down the corridor of history. And the prophets of old and those anointed by the Spirit of God are looking at that shadow, longing for it, anticipating its coming, and finally, in the fullness of time, Christ comes and the substance turns the corner.

Here is the promised one we've waited for. Here is the Savior of the ages. Here is the promised seat of the woman. Here is the serpent crusher. Here is the King in His glory. So truly in this way, the ceremonial aspects of the law are not destroyed.

Now, New Testament writers use that kind of language. They use this imagery of destruction, of divorce, of vanishing. It's so pitiful and weak and fleshly ordinances and commandments. You get this sense of almost vitriol that Paul has toward the Mosaic Covenant when he was a champion of it, born of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee of Pharisees.

You look at his CV in Philippians. The Mosaic law was everything to Paul until he turned the corner and found Christ. And now it's rubbish. Any of the gain he had in the law as far as his own life is rubbish compared to the beauties and the glories and the excellencies of Christ Jesus.

And so he uses this language of destruction. But what we understand rightly, truly the ceremonial laws are not destroyed in the sense that they're discarded as something worthless, arbitrary, meaningless.

We should never think of them as merely abolished, but rather as fulfilled by being abolished. The shadow must give way. And so their fulfillment is their destruction. They're old, now ready to vanish because a new wineskin has come with new wine.

The wine of Christ's own blood. And so the fulfillment of these laws, and we have to use this language of fulfillment to understand Matthew 5, 17. He didn't come to destroy. He came to fulfill. And he fulfilled the ceremonial law.

He fulfilled why those laws were given. He fulfilled their nature. He fulfilled their purpose. He fulfilled their trajectory.

He fulfilled those laws.

The point is that however we characterize or discern the law of God, however, and there's always some overlap and blur, they never divide as neatly as you'd want. The law truly is given as the law. That's how it's referred to consistently throughout the Gospels and the New Testament letters.

We don't arbitrarily divide up sections of the law. There is overlap. We see that in 1 Corinthians 5. You see ceremonial being applied almost in a civil way for the life of the church. But the point is, however we characterize, however we distinguish the threefold division of the law of God, all of it is fulfilled by the person and work of Christ Jesus.

Don't think he came to destroy. He came to fulfill it. Let me give a slightly more precise understanding of what's occurring in the Mosaic Covenant at Sinai. This is from A .W. Pink's book, The Divine Covenants, which is tremendous.

Many, many books have been shed on covenant theology, especially according to a Baptist framework, a confessional Baptist view, and a lot of them are great. Few of them transcend A .W. Pink's book, The Divine Covenants.

He's excellent. Now listen to this. He says, much confusion will be avoided and much help obtained if the Sinai economy, the Mosaic Covenant, is contemplated separately under two leading aspects, namely, first, as a system of religion and government designed for the immediate use of Israel during its dispensation in Canaan, during its time in Canaan.

So that's the first level, a system of religion and government conditioned upon life in Canaan as God's covenant people. And secondly, as a scheme of preparation for another and better economy. We'll be seeing this shortly from Hebrews 10.

Something pointing to its own obsolescence. Something better is coming. What is coming, what is second, is going to take away what is first. So a scheme of preparation for another, for a better economy by which it was to be superseded when its temporal purpose has been fulfilled.

The first design and the immediate end of what God revealed through Moses was to instruct and order the life of Israel now formed as a nation. The second and ultimate intention of God was to prepare the people by a lengthy course of discipline for the coming of Christ.

You see what he's saying? If you want to understand the Mosaic economy, the Mosaic Covenant rightly, first you must understand how the law is given to instruct and order the life of Israel in Canaan. That's a typological construct.

But secondly it's given in order to prepare the way for Christ. And both of these things run throughout the course of the law. Pink again. The character of the Sinai Covenant was in itself neither purely evangelical nor exclusively legal.

Divine wisdom devised a wondrous and blessed commingling of righteousness and grace, justice and mercy. We see that, don't we? The requirements of the high and unchanging holiness of God are clearly revealed.

While his goodness, kindness, long-suffering are also manifest. The moral and the ceremonial law run together side-by-side presented in maintaining a perfect.

Balance.

That's the right way to understand the Mosaic Covenant. The moral and the ceremonial law demonstrating God's justice, God's wrath, God's holiness, but also God's mercy, God's love, God's covenant faithfulness.

The moral and the ceremonial running side-by-side. John Owen, picking this up from Hebrews 8, his commentary on Hebrews, he says the Sinai Covenant thus made with these ends and promises never saved anyone eternally.

It never condemned anyone eternally. Believers were saved under it but not by it. Sinners perished eternally under it but not by it, rather by the curse of the original law of works, by the covenant of works.

We'll unpack more of this in weeks to come. The point here is it's important to understand that Israelites situated in that national covenant with God in Canaan with all the blessings and curses contingent upon their obedience to outward conformity to that law were nevertheless still image bearers born to Adam.

And in Adam all die. And so the temporal death, the temporal punishments, the stoning, the various judgments that we see of the law that seems so harsh, these are all just downstream from the death that God's holiness requires by virtue of man being made in His image.

We shouldn't look at the Mosaic economy as something strange and bizarre. We were told back in Genesis, when you sin, you die. And if it's the moral law written in the heart that is then given as the Ten Commandments at Sinai, it should not be surprising that in the elaboration of that law situated in this conditional covenant of works, the penalty for sin is death.

That shouldn't surprise us. That should not embarrass us. We should not sulk away from President Bartlett. The wages of sin is death. God's pretty clear about that, isn't He? And so we have to understand the Mosaic economy are right.

Yes, they were situated under this covenant as a nation, but they were image bearers of God with the law written on their heart, even as Gentiles were. And so though there was temporal death and temporal consequences in the confines of that land, the highest scope, the largest stream of reference, born out of Eden, was either eternal life or eternal death, either saved by the covenant of grace or damned by the covenant of works.

Temporal blessing and cursing were part of the Mosaic covenant. Eternal blessing, eternal cursing are part of the Adamic covenant, the covenant of works. That's what we established last week. The gospel turns on the covenant of works.

So moving now to sort of draw these things together and actually have a text we can begin to look at. I want to establish this. We're not importing something unjustly upon the law. Truly it is the law.

Truly it's seen as a compact revelation of God. And yet the law itself distinguishes between itself. And God himself, even within the old covenant, distinguishes between aspects of the law. And the New Testament writers certainly lead us to distinguish the law.

The analogy here is understanding the Trinity. I was reminded in speaking with David Green yesterday, who some of you have heard me mention of years past of a saint that's gone to glory now named Douglas Vickers, who was so astute he would go, he would be so bold as to correct the Heidelberg.

And he did so and David Green was quoting it in relation to the Trinity. He said, three distinct persons, and Vickers had a problem with that. Is that really appropriate language to use of the triune God, to say distinct?

David Green, revolvers on his side, well, I'm just quoting the Heidelberg brother. And Vickers said, I understand that. I ask again, is that appropriate? And David Green, now flustered, said, well, what would you suggest?

Not distinct, but distinguishable. Now, there's a word that makes a difference. Not distinct as though we have three disparate persons in the Godhead, but distinguishable, three persons, one God. Well, it's analogous to the law, to one law.

And yet aspects of this law are distinguishable, distinguishable. The Old Testament does not treat all laws equally, much to the chagrin of President Bartlett. It recognizes, in fact, it commands us to see morality always outweighs ritual.

Morality always outweighs ritual. The principle is seen in passages that affirm God desires mercy and not sacrifice. We just don't allow the tectonic weight of those statements to land on us. The holy God, who is so precise about how He is to be approached and what must be done to rightly maintain a walk with Him, that God can say, I don't desire sacrifice, I desire mercy.

And not just once in some vague, strained application, but Isaiah 1, 1 Samuel 15, Psalm 51, Psalm 69. Micah 6 says, will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? And the expected answer is no, not if you neglect the weightier matters of the law.

What's that? That's distinguishing the law. Jesus, no wonder, quotes this language of mercy and not sacrifice twice. If you read on in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 9, chapter 12, He's using this to refute the Pharisees and their misapplication of the law of God.

The resounding claim within the Old Covenant itself is sacrifice and offering you did not desire, burnt offering and sin offering you did not require.

What?

Yes, you did. You did require, which meant you did desire.

How are we to reckon these things?

This is what we opened our service with from Psalm 40. We read this responsibly. Maybe you read past it. Let me read it for us again, beginning in verse 4. This is a Psalm of David. This is a prophetical Psalm, if we understand how the writer of Hebrews is going to use it, which I'll get to in a moment.

Listen to this. Psalm 40, beginning in verse 4, blessed is that man who makes the Lord his trust and does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies. Many, O Lord my God, are your wonderful works which you have done, and your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to you in order.

If I would declare and speak of them, there more than can be numbered.

Listen.

Sacrifice and offering you did not desire. My ears you have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering you did not require. Then I said, behold, I come. In the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O my God, and your law is within my heart.

I proclaim the good news of righteousness in the great assembly. Indeed, I do not restrain my lips, O Lord. You yourself know. Now how is that taken up? By Hebrews. We're going to be drawing from Hebrews 9 and 10.

These passages that show us how to understand the way that Christ fulfills the law. How we see the beauty of the moral law shining through and subsiding in. The civil law, the civil penalties of the law fulfilled in the crucifixion, cursed is every man who hangs on a tree, as well as the ceremonial law.

Hebrews is putting all of this together for us because the new and the better covenant is the one that had substance. Everything else is shadow. Listen to this. It's Hebrews 10, beginning in verse 1. For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come.

Shadow of good things to come. Shadow of substance. Shadow of promise fulfilled. For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they, the priests, offer continually, year by year, make those who approach perfect.

You see his point. If these sacrifices were effectual at all, you would just have it one time. It wouldn't be a yearly exercise. If the priest could sanctify any of the worshipers, he'd be out of a job.