Commentary on Ezekiel 20:25 and Hebrews 8:7-13 (KJB) II

 Because of their excessive pride, the Israelites desired to make a covenant; that is, an agreement with God in which they would make laws good enough to create a perfect society that they thought would please God and make themselves acceptable to Him. Exodus 19:8 (KJB). But if a people were able to make themselves so good that they would be able to overcome all of their sins and evil, then they would no longer need God. The Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus' day were moving in that direction. In time, religion often turns into atheism. So God allowed the Israelites to write their own laws into His Word because that was the covenant that they wanted with Him. But God did this to give them His inerrant and infallible message that all of their manmade efforts to make themselves good enough to be acceptable to God would utterly fail. God displayed His fiery wrath against their evil when He spoke to His people from a dark cloud upon Mount Sinai. Exodus 19:9-25 (KJB). Then God gave to Moses His perfect Ten Commandments to show His people that they would always fail to keep them. Exodus 20:1-26 (KJB).

The Israelites had rejected God's covenant. God informed the Israelites that He had already made a covenant with them. God told them that He had liberated them from slavery in Egypt which was a prophetic demonstration that He would eventually liberate the entire living human race from slavery to the Devil. God desired to give the Israelites His covenant of grace. God had previously told them that they were already His people because of the blood of the lambs that they had put on their doorposts. Exodus 12:13 (KJB). Even in their sinful condition, they were already His people because of His grace, and He had given them their sin offerings and their burnt offerings which symbolized their trust that only God could cleanse them and forgive them of their sins and evil. God informed them that if they would accept His covenant of grace, then He would make them His "peculiar treasure," and a "kingdom of priests," and a "holy nation." Exodus 19:3-7 (KJB). When God extended His covenant of grace to His Church, He used these same words to describe His people who accepted by faith that God's Son sacrificed Himself to take away their sins, evil, and spiritual death. I Peter 2:9-10 (KJB).

After the Israelites had utterly failed to keep their covenant that they desired to have with God which He allowed them to try to do, God renewed His covenant of grace and mercy with the house of Israel. In the end of the world, God will resurrect the entire nation of Israel confined to the regions of death and recreate them all with new hearts that contains righteousness, and He will give them a new life on His recreated earth. Hebrews 8:9-13; Romans 11:26-27 (KJB).

But God will extend His covenant of mercy and grace to all the Gentiles confined to the regions of death as well when Christ appears to all the Israelites and Gentiles confined to the regions of death, and He will cause them all to repent and believe in Him as the Lamb of God who alone can save them. Acts 15:13-18; Revelation 5:11-14 (KJB). God perfectly describes the change that the Holy Spirit can effect in the hearts of all humans who believe in Christ as the Lamb of God. The Holy Spirit will take away their sinful natures and replace it with the laws of God written in their hearts. Hebrews 8:9-13 (KJB). The Holy Spirit can do the same with all repentant humans who believe in the Lamb of God while still alive in the flesh, and who become saved by His grace. Galatians 5:22-24 (KJB). When God writes His laws into human hearts, the Holy Spirit gives them the love of God toward everyone, and they will no longer need to strive to please God by trying to keep the written law of God.

The new covenant happens to be the perfect covenant which replaces the old covenant that the Israelites desired that God would accept. This means that the old covenant is ready "to vanish away." But the Bible means that only the manmade laws written into the old covenant will vanish away. The Ten Commandments and the rest of the Word of God will endure forever. Matthew 24:35; Hebrews 8:13 (KJB).