God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. Genesis 1:8
Yesterday I looked at how God separated the water below from the water above. The heavenly water was kept separate from us and an expanse was put between us. God called that expanse “sky”. God’s throne is above the heavens, or as God puts it in Genesis 1:8, above the sky.
The sky marked the barrier. No one, it seems, could pass through it in order to receive the heavenly water, the water of life. Yet God opens up his communication with mankind, in the account of Genesis, by making it clear that there is more from God, it was just wasn’t available to us yet.
God was already making a promise to us. He was making a promise of better things to come. The writer of Hebrews testifies of these better things that God has now given us through Jesus.
The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God. Hebrews 7:18-19
Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant. Hebrews 7:22
But the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises. Hebrews 8:6
God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. Hebrews 11:40
In the Old Testament, all the promises God had made also had a barrier to them. No matter how hard God’s people tried to break through those barriers, they failed. Because the Law demanded from them what they simply could not give. And so, although all these promises were made by God, mankind still had the problem of the barrier. How can anyone break through that expanse God had established in order to get to the better water, and the better promises?
What we could never do, God allowed His Son to do on our behalf!
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. Hebrews 4:14
Jesus is the reason we now receive all the better things that God promised through the Old Testament. The most important of those being the New Covenant! God himself saw fault with the Old, and promised to introduce a better one, and He did that through His Son Jesus!
For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. Hebrews 9:15
We can rest with assurance that we will now receive from our Father all his promises, because in the New Covenant that Christ established for us, all the promises are given as a gift based on God’s grace, and not as a payment for our good works. Praise God, by faith in Jesus we may receive our promised inheritance!
