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.