Book of Common Prayer

8 The real point of what we are saying is this. We now have a high priest who sits beside God's throne or chief chair in heaven.

² He is priest in the true holy place where God lives. The Lord made that place, man did not.

³ Every high priest is chosen to offer gifts and sacrifices. So this high priest must have something to offer also.

⁴ If he were still on earth, he would not be a priest. There are priests on earth already who offer gifts the way the law says.

⁵ The work they do shows what the work of the priest in heaven is. When Moses made a house for God, here is what God told him to do. He said, `Be sure you make everything like I showed you on the mountain.'

⁶ But Christ has been given a much better work, because he is the man who is between God and men in making an agreement. This is a much better agreement. It was made by better promises.

⁷ If the first agreement had been all right, there would have been no need to make another.

⁸ When the people had done wrong, God's words to them were, `The days will come, the Lord says, when I will make a new agreement with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.

⁹ It will not be like the agreement that I made with their fathers. I made that agreement the day I led them by the hand out of the country of Egypt. But they did not keep their part of my agreement, so I left them alone, the Lord says.

¹⁰ After those days, the Lord says, I will make an agreement with the people of Israel. This is my agreement. I will put my laws in their minds. I will write them in their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.

¹¹ A man will not need to teach another man, or his brother. He will not say, "Know the Lord," because everyone from the youngest to the oldest will know me.

¹² I will be kind even when they do what is not right, and I will never remember the wrong things they do.'

¹³ God says this is a new agreement, and that makes the first one old. When a thing is old and no good, it is about ready to be thrown away.

⁴³ Jesus himself said, `No prophet is honoured by the people in his own country.'

⁴⁴ When he came to Galilee, the people of that country were glad to see him. They had seen all the things he did when he was at the feast in Jerusalem. They had been at the feast also.

⁴⁵ So Jesus came back to the town of Cana in Galilee. That was the place where he had changed water into wine. One of the king's officers was there. His son was sick in the town of Capernaum.

⁴⁶ He heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, and he went to Jesus and said, `I beg you, come and heal my son. He is dying.'

⁴⁷ Jesus said to him, `If you do not see some signs and big works, then you will not believe.'

⁴⁸ The officer said, `Sir, I beg you. Come right away before my son dies.'

⁴⁹ Jesus said, `Go home. Your son will not die.' The man believed what Jesus said and went home.

⁵⁰ On the way, his servants met him. They said, `Your son is living.'

⁵¹ He asked, `What time did he begin to get well?' They said, `Yesterday at one hour after midday the fever left him.'

⁵² The father knew that was the time when Jesus said to him `Your son will not die.' So he and all his family believed in Jesus.

⁵³ This was the second big work that Jesus did after he came back from Judea to Galilee.