Sunday Morning, July 21, 2019 AM Part 2

Let me pray for us. Father, I thank you for gathering us together this day, this morning. Give you praise for the way you provide for us so faithfully as our Heavenly Father. To know that you know what we need because you are the one who has made us.

You know our frame. You know that we are but dust. You know our weaknesses. You know our wantings, our desires. You know our fears. God, for the sake of your son, I pray that you would feed us from your word today this most necessary food.

Lord, there's a lot of confusion in the world. A lot of people that you've made in your own image either don't know Christ or they don't care. But Father, here today, I ask for a shining light of clarity by your Holy Spirit in accordance with your word that we would see Christ clearly.

That in him, we would see who you have made us to be. Your children made in your image, made for your glory. I ask that you would give us a fresh joy in the salvation that you have brought to us in Christ.

We would go forth in that joy, comforted, counseled, directed. We pray for all these graces and looking only to Christ, the one with whom you are well-pleased, amen. Jeremiah 31 and 32, if you've been reading ahead, you've been reading a lot about the covenant, been reading a lot about the new covenant.

I thought it important, we began the project last week to try to understand what in the world is a covenant since we're gonna be talking about it a lot and what's new in the new covenant. There are many themes throughout chapters 30, 31 and 32.

We hear this repetition of God saying, I will be your God, you will be my people. And that formula, that refrain is covenantal language. You can find it all the way back in God's dealings with Abraham.

You certainly have the pattern of it all the way back to the creation of Adam and Eve. And so it's important for us to understand what is a covenant and then what's new in the new covenant. We have in our Bibles two testaments and there is a title page in front of each one, a whole lot of white space given to a single title, the Old Testament, and then another title page, the New Testament.

And that word testament is translating the same word that we have in the Bible, most often translated as covenant, which is an identity binding agreement. And we have, just in a way of review, we talked about the three ingredients of a covenant that when God is making a covenant with his people, that there's three ingredients.

And those are people, place, and rule. God says, you will be my people. He defines who those people are. And then he says, you are going to live in this place that I have chosen for you or I have prepared for you.

And this is the place in which his people are to live. And then they are blessed to live as his people in God's place that he has chosen under his rule. He gives them rules to live by, laws to live by, commandments to follow.

And those are the three ingredients that we find throughout the scripture. We deal with the theme of covenant. So for instance, God made Adam and Eve. He made them in his own image. They were his people and he put them in his place.

Not just the earth and not just Eden, but the garden of Eden that he specially prepared for them. And then he gave them instructions about how they were to live. A lot of positive instructions of eat freely of all the trees in the garden.

Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. And then he gave them a prohibition. Do not eat of this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So there was God's people living in God's place, blessed under God's rule.

We see that theme repeated again as God deals with Noah and as God deals with Abraham, as God deals with Israel, as God deals with David. We talked about the various signs that God gave through these covenants and how they are best realized, best understood, fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

But I thought this morning as we get going, I would like to read for us again, Jeremiah 31, verses one through six, and verses 31 through 34. So I invite you to stand with me as I read these two passages from Jeremiah 31, verses one through six, and also verses 31 through 34.

This is the word of the Lord. At that time declares the Lord, I will be the God of all the families of Israel and they shall be my people. Thus says the Lord, the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness.

Israel, when it went to find its rest, the Lord appeared to him from afar saying, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore I have drawn you with loving kindness. Again, I will build you and you will be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel.

Again, you will take up your tambourines and go forth to the dances of the merrymakers. Again, you will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria. The planters will plant and will enjoy them for there will be a day when watchmen on the hills of Ephraim call out, arise and let us go up to Zion to the Lord our God.

And then verses 31 through 34. Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord.

But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it and I will be their God and they shall be my people.

They will not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother saying, no, the Lord, for they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin, I will remember no more.

You may be seated. This is the word of the Lord. Sometimes we have difficulty in understanding the connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament. New Testament is sizably larger than the New Testament and very often you will find the New Testament sold in a volume just by itself and maybe with the Psalms and the Proverbs scattered in, and the Psalms are so beautiful, they touch the emotion of the Christian in a very deep way.

The Proverbs are so practical and so it makes sense that these two are often pinned to the back of a New Testament and sold as a single volume. I wonder if you've ever found an Old Testament by itself sold as a single volume.

Have you ever seen that? Maybe if you've gone into a Jewish bookstore, you might find the Tanakh sold by itself. But you just don't find it in Christian bookstores or on Christian book websites, the Old Testament sold by itself.

You just don't find that. Have you ever wondered why that is? Why is there such a favor, maybe favoritism, but a favored reading of the New Testament over the Old? Well, the New Testament is, it's shorter, maybe that's why.

It perhaps, it seems more clear. It definitely seems to address us in our particular condition as Christians more directly than when we read in the Old Testament and there's all those sacrifices and all these Old Testament ceremonial laws and the geography is really hard to grab hold of.

Not to mention all the names and the list of names which you don't run into as often in the New Testament. So sometimes we have a hard time understanding the connection between the two. I think the helpful illustration from last week still is worth mentioning again that in many ways, it is like the connection between David and Solomon that David was not allowed to build the temple, but his son Solomon was the one who was to build the temple.

And while David could not build the temple, he spent a lot of time compiling together all the supplies for the temple to be built. He gathered a lot of gold, he gathered a lot of silver, he gathered stones, he made provisions for the temple and God had given him the plans for the temple which he wrote out and preserved and he handed off to his son Solomon the plans for the temple, all the supplies for the temple and then Solomon, the son of David, brought about the building of the temple.

And then he used all the supplies already gathered, he used the plans already in place. And I think that's a helpful analogy of how the Old and New Testament work together. All the supplies, all the basic ingredients, all the basic material, the plan itself was all here in the Old Testament for the New Testament.

It is the coalescing, the coming together of all the various themes in the Old Testament. It is the coming together, the fulfillment of all the promises of the Old Testament. And I think in some ways, like sometimes we like to skip ahead to the end of the story to see how it all turns out.

We just favor the New Testament over the Old. But we know that somehow we're impoverishing ourselves by not really getting into the Old Testament and making the most out of it. And so as we've been, and I actually, as an aside, when I first came here, one of the first things I did as I went to the back table underneath here in the mission map, and there was a catalog of all the sermons that had been recorded here.

Thank you, Brother Edgar, and the great work that was done there over the years. As I sat there and I flipped through the catalog, Brother Harry and Brother Jack and Brother Ken did preach from the Old Testament, but they preached from the New Testament a whole lot more than the Old over the whole course of time.

I understand the inclination. It's hard sometimes to spend a long time digging deep into the Old Testament. We should not be afraid to do so, and I'm hoping that throughout today as we spend time together thinking about this, that we'll be blessed by digging into the Old as well as the New.

So what's new in the New Covenant? Well, what's new in the Covenant is what's true in Christ. What's new in Covenant is what's shown true in Christ. There's newness in continuity. There's newness in continuity, and then there's newness in character.

And we're gonna talk about the continuity first. If you were gonna find students of the Old Testament, some of the best students of the Old Testament that we would know of today would be, historically, it would be the Pharisees.

It would be those who were very word-centered. In John chapter five, Jesus is engaging with the Jews. He's engaging with the Jewish religious leaders who are challenging him, and he says in verse 39 of John five, he says this.

"'You search the Scriptures,' and he's saying this when all they have is the Old Testament, okay? So he says, "'You search the Scriptures "'because you think that in them you have eternal life.'". Okay, so they think that they have in the Scriptures, through their understanding of it, through their use of it, eternal life.

Jesus says, "'It is these that testify of me. "'It is these that testify of me, "'and you are unwilling to come to me.'". So that you may have life. So what are you looking for when you open the Bible?

What are you looking for? Are you looking for the emotional comfort that the Psalms may offer, the practical wisdom that Proverbs may offer, the historical interest that 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings offers?

What are you looking for when you open the Word? When you open the Scriptures, what are you looking for? Jesus says, "'It is these that testify of me.'". If we're going to go to the Word, it's because we want to see Christ.

It is because we want to know the salvation that we have in Christ, the life that only Christ can offer. And Jesus says to the Pharisees who were steeped in the Old Testament, who had memorized vast sections of the Old Testament, he says, "'You've been looking in there "'for the tools and the patterns "'and the ways of eternal life, "'but don't you understand, "'it is these that testify of me.'".

"'It is these that testify of me, "'and you'll be in the Scriptures day in and day out, "'but you'd refuse to come to me,' Christ says, "'so you don't have life.'". People have spent lifetimes studying the Scriptures as an academic career or in the pursuit of some cult, and they never come to Christ because they read the Scriptures wrong.

Brothers and sisters and friends, we want to read the Scripture right. We want to read the Scriptures right, the way that Jesus taught us to read the Bible. He says at the end of John 5, Jesus is still talking to these Pharisees.

Verse 46, he said, "'If you believed Moses, you would believe me, "'for he wrote about me, "'but if you do not believe his writings, "'how will you believe my words?''. Do you see what Jesus says? He says, if you don't believe that Moses wrote of me, how will you believe what I'm telling you?

In other words, if we don't believe the Christ revealed in the Old Testament, we're not gonna believe the Christ revealed in the New Testament. He's the same one. So we've got to read the Scriptures right.

Another passage, 2 Corinthians 3. 2 Corinthians 3 and verses 14 through 16. You can hear Paul in his burden for his fellow Jews. And he says in verse 14, "'But their minds were hardened, "'for until this very day, "'at the reading of the Old Covenant,''.

When the Old Testament is read, when the Old Covenant is read, "'the same veil remains unlifted.'". Moses used to walk around with a veil over his face because he spent so much time with God, his face glowed and the people were scared of him.

And so he put a veil over his face and Paul uses it as an illustration. He says, now when Moses is read today, the veil is still there because listen, it is removed in Christ. But to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart.

But whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. The veil is taken away. So that when you come to see Christ, that's now how you see Scripture. That when you come to Christ, the veil is taken off and no longer are we reading Moses with a veil over our faces, but we're reading Moses in light of who Jesus Christ is.

So what's new in covenant is what's shown true in Christ. You have to ask yourself when you're getting to the Word, has the veil been removed? Has the veil been removed? It is all, is it all bleak and muddled and meaningless to you?

You're afraid to tell someone. You don't get the same joy out of the Scriptures that somebody else does. You watch someone and you feel even jealous of them as they read this Psalm or that Proverb and they rejoice in glory in God and they read this passage of Scripture and their love for Christ just seems to flow out of them and you try to read and there's just nothing there.

It's dead to you, but you're afraid to say so. Well, if the veil has not been lifted up off your heart, do you know Christ? Have you really come to know Christ? And you should not be afraid to say so.

You should be calling out to the one, the only one who can remove the veil. If you know that it's there, if you are convicted that it's there, that you need to know Christ, cry out, call out, pray, ask God to remove that veil, to give you the new life that Christ continually speaks of.

And Jesus says, he searched the Scriptures, but these that testify of me, we have to come to Christ for that new life. Well, Jesus says there's newness, there is newness, but it's in continuity. It's not a clean break when we go from Old Testament to New Testament.

We're not talking about two competing religions. We're not talking about two different Gospels. It's not two economies of redemption. There is continuity even in the newness. Essentially what is new in the New Testament is revelation.

Herman Bavinck gives an illustration that the sun is always shining no matter what angle the earth is at, or what part of the rotation the earth is in. You know, at midnight tonight is going to be dark, but that doesn't mean that the sun stops shining.

At six o 'clock tomorrow morning, it's going to be light gray outside, and it's not because the sun is just now getting lit. Right? And noonday blazing tomorrow, I'm praying that it is the 85 degrees that's being promised us, but it's going to be bright, bright, bright, hardly a shadow on the ground.

And it's not the sun that has changed. It's not the source of light that has changed, but in the passage of time, our relationship to the source of light has now become more direct. And that's what we have in the passing of the Old Testament to the New Testament.

Christ, righteous, crucified, risen and reigning is the noonday blazing sun of God's revelation. That's Hebrews 1, one through three. How we identify God's people, how we locate God's place, how we submit to God's rule, the three ingredients of covenant, all of these are made new in the light of Christ.

There's still continuity, but it is new in the revelation of Christ. We do not have, we do not have a clean break, absolutely new gospel. It is the same gospel. In Romans 1, one through six, in verses 16 through 17, it says that the gospel goes to the Jew first and also to the Gentile.

When did the gospel go to the Jew first? Paul says in Romans 1, one through six, it went to the Jews through the prophets. Paul says in Galatians that the scripture preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham.

The gospel has been going to the Jews for a very long time. What's new in Christ is that now the gospel through Christ goes to all the nations. So there's newness and there's also continuity. It's the same gospel.

Let's talk about four relationships, how we can see this newness in continuity. The first is promise and fulfillment, and we can understand this. Very often when it comes time for Christmas, we might read an article or a book that counts up all the different promises of Christ's birth, and you'll be reading in various parts of the Old Testament about this promise and that promise, and then they'll show you in the New Testament just exactly how it was fulfilled, and you start tallying them all up.

And what an amazing thing that Christ in his birth filled dozens of Old Testament prophecies. That's always an encouraging thing, to see that God's promises are being fulfilled. And this is a pattern that is not limited to the birth of Christ, but it also extends to his righteous life.

It extends to his death upon the cross and his resurrection from the dead, his ascension to heaven, his reigning at the right hand of God and his return. So that all of God's promises, 2 Corinthians 1 .20 says, for as many as are the promises of God in Christ, they are yes.

For as many as are the promises of God in Christ, they are yes. And so how is that possible? There are many, many promises in the Old Testament that you read through, and it doesn't say a single thing about Jesus of Nazareth.

How is it that those promises could be really seen as true in Christ? Well, the way that all the promises are yes in Christ comes through the next three types of relationships. Firstly, is the sign and reality.

We talked about this last week, the different signs. We talked about the sign of the rainbow, the Noahic covenant, sign of circumcision, the Abrahamic covenant, the sign of the sprinkled blood in the covenant at Sinai with Israel, and the temple as a sign of the covenant God made with David.

And all throughout scripture, we see how Christ fulfills those signs. In two of the, three of the clearest really is the circumcision, the blood and the temple. Much material is given in the New Testament about how Christ is our circumcision in his death upon the cross.

How the old is done away with and we are given newness in Christ and that's called circumcision in Christ. And how Jesus points to his own blood shed on the cross as the blood of the covenant, he says.

And how Jesus himself says that destroy this temple in three days and in three days I will rise it up, I'll raise it up, speaking of himself. And so that all these Old Testament signs that were connected to the covenants are fulfilled in Christ.

It is as if there is this patchwork mantle of the different signs of the covenants in the Old Testament and that Christ comes along and he picks up the mantle all sewn together and he puts it on and says, this is about me.

This is about me. Another relationship that we'll look at in Colossians. Colossians chapter two, verses 16 through 17. We can talk about the relationship of shadow and fulfillment, shadow and fulfillment.

How is it that all the promises of God in Christ are yes? Especially when we think about some of the commandments that have eternal significance. God told Abraham, if anyone does not get circumcised, they are eternally cut off from his people.

That's a pretty big deal in the early church and they're trying to figure out how you can be saved if you're not circumcised, oh Gentile. Well, Christ is our circumcision. The Old Testament says that if you don't participate in the day of atonement or in the Passover, you're cut off forever from God's people, cut off forever from his grace.

Well, it's been quite some time since the people of God have been celebrating the Passover and Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, hasn't it? Are we cut off from God? Because it was an eternal commandment and those who disobey it would be cut off.

But Christ is our Passover. Christ is our Passover. Christ, it's Christ who is the one who propitiates the wrath of God and expiates our guilt. The animal that has sacrificed the blood sprinkled on the mercy seat, the animal that was led away into the wilderness to wander and stagger and die, symbolism of the sin being taken away forever and the sin being expunged before God.

It's Christ who fulfills that. Well, what about other commandments? What about the ceremonial law? What about, for instance, dietary laws and the Sabbath? Well, look in Colossians 2, verse 16 says, therefore, based on the fact that Christ has died upon the cross and is victorious in his resurrection, which is verses 13 through 15, therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day.

Simply because Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead, nobody can act as our judge in regard to dietary laws or in regard to the ceremonial laws about what feast days we keep. Nobody can be our judge about the Sabbath just because Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead.

How can that be? Look at verse 17, things, and this is not an exhaustive list, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. What were these things? What was this rich, faith-building culture that God crafted for his people Israel?

What was that? Paul says, shadow. What does he say when he says, but the substance belongs to Christ? That word in the Greek substance is actually soma, which is the Greek word for body. Now, I think it was two days ago, or maybe it was even yesterday, Toby and I took a little walk.

Okay, I've got to keep him interested in what I'm doing so he doesn't run towards the road and he doesn't like to hold hands. So off we go from my house to this house and it's hot outside and the sun is shining and our shadows are about six feet long or eight feet long.

And we're walking along and I tell him to chase his shadow. And I challenge him to see if he can hide his shadow inside of my shadow. We played with the shadows on the way here, we played with our shadows on the way back.

But you know, the light of the sun was shining down onto my body and there went my shadow across the ground. The light of God's revelation is centered on his son, Jesus Christ. And it casts a shadow throughout all of the Old Testament that is Christ-shaped.

That's why the sacrifices are Christ-shaped. That's why the law is Christ-shaped. That's why the covenants are Christ-shaped. It's all shaped somehow in Christ, but it's his shadow. It's his shadow.

And yes, it looks weird, but hey, my shadow on the ground up there looked weird. It was at a weird angle. It didn't exactly look like me, but it did track right back to my feet. And everything in the Old Testament in this faith-building culture that God gave to Israel, that's the shadow which traces all the way up to Christ so that when the people of God, by the grace of God, engaged in the shadow of Christ, in all of these pictures and shadows and types of Christ, when they grabbed hold of the shadow by faith, they were grabbing hold of Christ by faith.

It was him that was their savior. It wasn't the blood of bulls and goats that did away with the sins. It was this symbol that taught them about who Christ was that they grabbed hold of, and therefore they were saved by the same savior by which I am saved and by which you are saved.

Shadow and fulfillment. Hebrews uses the same language, Hebrews 8 and 10. These are shadows, but Christ is the substance. He's the body. Also, the relationship of mystery and revelation, mystery being revealed.

We like to read mysteries, not because of the tortured thoughts that they create about 2 3rds of the way through the book. Things get weirder and weirder, and what we thought was going to be the resolution was not, and we all feel a little foolish, and we're just waiting to figure out how it all ends.

And someone, some brilliant somebody comes out and says, look at this little detail right here. And everyone looks, and it just unravels the whole mystery, makes it plain. And then everyone says, oh, that makes so much sense.

Christ does this again and again and again in his ministry. Have you never read, he says, are you not the teacher of Israel and do not know these things? Time and time again, he's pointing at this detail and that detail in the old covenant, and he just unravels it for the people there.

And they marvel at his teaching, for he teaches as one who has authority, not like the scribes who were just repeating what other scribes had said. And so he searched the scriptures, but never found the Messiah.

Mystery being revealed. One of the greatest mysteries revealed that we read about in Romans 11 and 16, Ephesians three and Colossians one, one of the greatest mysteries that is revealed is just how it is that all the families of the earth are blessed in the seat of Abraham.

That all these promises that God made to Israel about them being a people and about them having a place and about them being blessed under his rule, how is it that anything that God ever said to Israel would ever have anything to do with the Gentiles?

And yet it does. And yet it does. One of the moments that we get to peek in on this mystery before it's fully revealed is in Isaiah 49. And in Isaiah 49, we read, it says, listen to me, O islands, people who live in a hard place to get to, listen to me, O islands, pay attention, you peoples from afar.

All the families of the earth, even the ones who live in remote areas, it's hard to get to. The Lord called me from the womb. From the body of my mother, he made me. He has made my mouth like a sharp sword.

In the shadow of his hand, he has concealed me. He has also made me a select arrow. He has hidden me in his quiver. Who is this? He said to me, you are my servant, capital S, Israel, in whom I will show my glory.

But I said, I have toiled in vain. I've spent my strength for nothing in vanity. Yet surely the justice due me is with the Lord and my reward is with my God. And now it says the Lord who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him so that Israel might be gathered to him.

Now, if you've been paying attention, this chosen servant formed from the body of his mother is called Israel and he was formed to gather Israel to him. Well, no wonder, as the New Testament says, some of the prophets looked at what they had written and said, what in the world is that?

But of course, it comes about that we know who this is. He says, verse six, it is too small a thing that you should be my servant, capital S servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel, which is a good thing and God promised, I will also make you a light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

Wow, when you begin to think about it, the newness and continuity is, God loves to conceal a matter, it's the glory of kings to search out a matter, we heard from Proverbs. And the way that he writes is not to keep us from knowing the truth, but to challenge us to dig for the truth so that when we find it, we give him glory.

What did he say at the very beginning when he made covenant with Adam and Eve? Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it. What does he do in Christ? Having brought along his covenant of grace through the life and times, the hard and happy history of Israel, he comes to Christ who he calls Israel, the fulfillment of everything Israel was supposed to do, Christ achieves, and lo and behold, all the earth will be filled with those who glorify God and know God and follow after God.

That's the promise, all the nations, right? All the nations. The lamb is surrounded by those who were purchased by his blood men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. So there's newness and there's continuity.

Now there's also newness in character, newness in character. And we remember that the Old Testament and the New Testament are in the same binding, right? So they go together, but there is a difference, there is a difference, and we'll hear about that in more when we actually go through passage by passage in Jeremiah 31, and we also hear about that in the New Testament.

So let's look over in Hebrews chapter eight, Hebrews chapter eight. There is a difference, there's a newness in character, there's something better. Jesus said that the least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than John the Baptist, the greatest of the old covenant prophets.

So there is a difference. There's a difference about being on this side of Christ's death and resurrection and ascension and reign. There's a difference in the blessing of revelation. Hebrews chapter eight, in verse eight, we have a quote from Jeremiah.

For finding fault with them, well, verse seven, if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second, but for finding fault with them, he says, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

It is not like the covenant which I made with their fathers. There's gonna be something different. God's not giving up on Israel. He's not taking their name on the chalkboard and erasing them as if they never existed.

He's not starting completely over from scratch, but what is he doing? He's doing something new, he's doing something new. In verse 13, he says, when he said a new covenant, he has made the first obsolete, but whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear, ready to disappear.

So at the time that the writer to the Hebrews is talking about this, he's saying the old covenant is obsolete and at some point it's going to disappear. In fact, it's ready to disappear, but it had not yet disappeared.

When did the old covenant disappear? It was already obsolete. Well, what's the book of Hebrews about? I don't know if Paul wrote the book of Hebrews or if he ever read it, but it certainly has his heart for the Jews because this whole book is telling people who are steeped in the faith building culture of Israel, telling them Christ has come.

Don't stay with the shadows, go to the substance. Don't stop at the signs, go ahead to the destination. He's superior, he's greater. We have a better high priest. We have a better sacrifice. There's a holy of holies in heaven.

There's so much, he's telling Jews how to be saved and it's the same way that Gentiles get saved. There's a lot of details from the Old Testament that are very relevant to the Jew. And so he's saying, look, look at all these shadows, look at all these pictures and now look at Christ.

He's the fulfillment of these things. Here's how you get saved. Oh, ethnic descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So there's something new, there's something superior, something greater. And we see this in the three ingredients.

There's newness in the new covenant, in the people and in the place and in the rule. There's something new and they're all new in Christ. The people of God are new in Christ. The place of God is new in Christ.

The rule of God is new in Christ. Think about the people. The people are new in character. It is part of that mystery that is revealed that both Jews and Gentiles receive by faith the promises that God gave to Abraham.

Galatians 3, eight through nine. When Paul's dealing with those who would say that circumcision was necessary for salvation because they're holding on to the sign rather than going to the destination, he writes Galatians and says, don't you understand?

It is those who are of faith who are the children of Abraham because Abraham was the man of faith. He believed God and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. There's something new in the character of these people.

Their circumcision is not on the flesh but in Christ's death upon the cross. They were once said, lo, Ami, not my people, but now they are God's people, God's peculiar people. 1 Peter 2, nine through 10 says, a people for God's own possession.

The mystery is now revealed in Christ. Jew and Gentile together in Christ. Christ who is the true Israel. It doesn't mean that God's done with ethnic Israel. He's not done with, I don't think he's done with any ethnic group.

I think there's gonna be a grand number of redeemed. Revelation 7 says, there is an innumerable multitude. There is a multitude of redeemed which no man can count. We can't count them, there's gonna be so many.

That's good news. And Romans 11 says, the full number of the Jews will be saved. But Christ is the true Israel. And that's what made the people so jealous. That's what made the religious leaders so jealous.

It was like Saul and David all over again. The kingdom had passed from the previous anointed to the new anointed and the old ones were jealous of the new. It was all over again. But the people are new in character.

And one of the most important ways that this is seen is that God's people are no longer defined by externals which have now been fulfilled in Christ. God's people are no longer defined by externals which have now been fulfilled in Christ.

Our participation in Christ by faith defines the people of grace, the people of the covenant. Regeneration is the key, those who are truly born again. The sign of being born into Abraham has been fulfilled in Christ.

Now it's not about being born into Abraham, it's about being born again into Christ. That's why we don't sprinkle infants here. We don't sprinkle infants here because every member of the new covenant is born again.