They will disappear into nothingness, but you will remain forever. They will become worn out like old clothes,

And the future world we are talking about will not be controlled by angels.

And you have put him in complete charge of everything there is. Nothing is left out.” We have not yet seen all of this take place,

We who have been made holy by Jesus, now have the same Father he has. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call us his brothers.

Only in that way could he deliver those who through fear of death have been living all their lives as slaves to constant dread.

We all know he did not come as an angel but as a human being—yes, a Jew.

And since Christ is so much superior, the Holy Spirit warns us to listen to him, to be careful to hear his voice today and not let our hearts become set against him, as the people of Israel did. They steeled themselves against his love and complained against him in the desert while he was testing them.

But now is the time. Never forget the warning, “Today if you hear God’s voice speaking to you, do not harden your hearts against him, as the people of Israel did when they rebelled against him in the desert.”

Although God’s promise still stands—his promise that all may enter his place of rest—we ought to tremble with fear because some of you may be on the verge of failing to get there after all.

Yet the promise remains and some get in—but not those who had the first chance, for they disobeyed God and failed to enter.

But he has set another time for coming in, and that time is now. He announced this through King David long years after man’s first failure to enter, saying in the words already quoted, “Today when you hear him calling, do not harden your hearts against him.”

This new place of rest he is talking about does not mean the land of Israel that Joshua led them into. If that were what God meant, he would not have spoken long afterwards about “today” being the time to get in.

Let us do our best to go into that place of rest, too, being careful not to disobey God as the children of Israel did, thus failing to get in.

He knows about everyone, everywhere. Everything about us is bare and wide open to the all-seeing eyes of our living God; nothing can be hidden from him to whom we must explain all that we have done.

That is why Christ did not elect himself to the honor of being High Priest; no, he was chosen by God. God said to him, “My Son, today I have honored you.”

You have been Christians a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others, but instead you have dropped back to the place where you need someone to teach you all over again the very first principles in God’s Word. You are like babies who can drink only milk, not old enough for solid food. And when a person is still living on milk it shows he isn’t very far along in the Christian life, and doesn’t know much about the difference between right and wrong. He is still a baby Christian!

For God is not unfair. How can he forget your hard work for him, or forget the way you used to show your love for him—and still do—by helping his children?

But Melchizedek was not a relative, and yet Abraham paid him. (b) Melchizedek placed a blessing upon mighty Abraham,

And when God sends a new kind of priest, his law must be changed to permit it. As we all know, Christ did not belong to the priest-tribe of Levi, but came from the tribe of Judah, which had not been chosen for priesthood; Moses had never given them that work.

did not become a priest by meeting the old requirement of belonging to the tribe of Levi, but on the basis of power flowing from a life that cannot end.

Under the old system, even the high priests were weak and sinful men who could not keep from doing wrong, but later God appointed by his oath his Son who is perfect forever.

He ministers in the temple in heaven, the true place of worship built by the Lord and not by human hands.

This new agreement will not be like the old one I gave to their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; they did not keep their part in that agreement, so I had to cancel it.

And the Holy Spirit uses all this to point out to us that under the old system the common people could not go into the Holy of Holies as long as the outer room and the entire system it represents were still in use.

He came as High Priest of this better system that we now have. He went into that greater, perfect tabernacle in heaven, not made by men nor part of this world,