WE Have Such a High Priest – Part 2 – Hebrews 8:1-5

This was the foundation of the faith of the church of Israel in all generations. Their faith in God was not confined unto the outward things they enjoyed, but [rested] on Christ in them, and represented by them. They believed that they were only resemblances of him and his mediation; which when they lost the faith of, they lost all acceptance with God in their worship. The relation of their ordinances unto him, their expression of him as their prototype and substance, was the line of life, wisdom, beauty, glory, and usefulness, that ran through them all. This being now taken away, they are all as a dead thing. When Christ was in them they were the delight of God, and the joy of the souls of his saints. Now he hath unclothed himself of them, and left them to be rolled up as a vesture, as a monument of the garments he thought meet to wear in the immature age of the church, they are of no more use at all. Who now could see any beauty, any glory, in the old temple administrations, should they be revived? Where Christ is, there is glory, if we have the light of faith to discern it; and we may say of every thing wherein he is not, be it never so pompous unto the eyes of flesh, “Ichabod,”—”Where is the glory of it?” or, “It hath no glory.” – John Owen