Ongoing growth was a challenge for the Hebrew Christians. In this section of the Epistle (Hebrews 5:11–6:12), the writer inserted this aside to exhort people to Christian maturity.

A heart that becomes hard can all too quickly become unbelieving. A hard heart can test the Lord, but an unbelieving heart can cause a person to turn away from God.

Under the Old Covenant, priests would bring animals to the tabernacle and sacrifice them. By contrast, the Messiah not only administers the sacrifice, he is the sacrifice.

This text (Hebrews 8:1–9:10) is at the heart of the writer’s argument about how the high priesthood of Jesus interfaces with the old and New Covenants.

As the writer moved his argument along about Jesus’ priesthood and New Covenant, Melchizedek became the perfect type of Christ in the Old Testament to connect some interpretative dots between Jesus and his non-Aaronic tribe.