The Gospel: New Covenant — Peter Simms

Hebrews 8 and the Better Covenant

Hebrews chapter 8. We're going to talk about the new covenant tonight. Hebrews chapter 8 and we'll read verse 6 from verse 6. Now this is talking about the Lord Jesus. But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he said, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts. And I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.

And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother's saying, Know the Lord. For all shall know me from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

In that he saith a new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxes old is ready to vanish away. Colossians chapter 2. Colossians chapter 2 verse 13. And you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.

And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. And let's go back to Job chapter 9. Job chapter 9 and verse 33. Neither is there any day's man betwixt us, that he might lay his hand upon us both.

The Old and New Covenants Contrasted

So we just want to refer to that verse in a simple way as we're going along. Now we're all acquainted with the fact that our Bible is divided into two sections. We have an Old Testament or an Old Covenant and the New Testament, the New Covenant.

And we're all acquainted too with the stories and the truths of that Old Covenant. Most of us anyway are acquainted. We would just simply not have time to go over the Old Testament Scriptures, nor in any detail go into the New Covenant that was given to Israel, other than we're going to show how the Lord Jesus secured the benefits, the spiritual benefits of it for us.

The Old Covenant was two-sided. Remember when we read here, the Lord Jesus is the mediator of a better covenant. And it's established upon better promises. It's a better covenant because the New One has only got one person signature on it.

The Old Covenant, Israel obeyed, God blessed. Israel disobeyed, then God cursed. And so it's better as to its quality, and it's established upon better promises, which we will see when we come to them in our reading.

Now to bring this about, what will we do? We have to look at that Old Covenant at least a little bit. That Old Covenant was put and written on stone and put in the hands of Moses. Do you remember the story on Mount Sinai?

Moses went up there and God gave him the Ten Commandments on the tables of stone. The first thing I want you to notice and think about is it's stone. It's hard. It's brittle. You can't bend it. If you bend it, you break it.

It's brittle. Now we're going to contrast that when we come to the New. And it was put in Moses' hands. There it is in Moses' hands, the commandments of God. And now it's for Moses and the nation of Israel to obey.

And they said they would obey. God told Moses, I've brought you out of Egypt as on eagle's wings, and I've brought you to where you are and so on. And give them the choice of going on that way or going the rest of the way themselves.

Now, when you think about brought you on eagle wings, you understand what that means. The eagle has its nest way up on the side of the cliff over the water. And there's the egg's hatch. And so the mother eagle comes and pushes the little one out.

And it flops and flutters and flaps its wings. And then it goes down underneath it. And then the little eagle puts its claws into its mother's back. And then she soars back up and takes it back to the nest and pushes the other one out.

She's teaching them how to fly. So she's doing everything for them to keep them alive. So they don't crash into the water or the rocks below. So God is saying to Moses, tell the children of Israel, I brought you out of Egypt just like that mother eagle looked after her little ones.

I've been looking after you all this way through the willingness. You want to continue that way or do you want to go on your own? Now, if they'd have been smart, they'd have said no. But this is the lesson the law is to teach.

The lesson of the law is to teach them their weakness and to show them they will never make it on their own. But they said, yes, all that the Lord said, we will do. Anything the Lord wants, we're prepared to do it.

And so then God, in chapter 19, wrote the moral law. And in 21, 22 and 23, you get the civil and the social law. And then in chapter 24 of Exodus, there that whole system is ratified with blood. Now it's binding.

They obey, God blesses. They disobey, God curses. There's no way out. The covenant has been ratified. And you come to Deuteronomy chapter 28, 29, 30, 31 and 32. There you get where God gave the blessings.

He'll bless them in the field, bless them in the womb, bless them within wartime, bless them in whatever. Always blessing if they continue to obey. But then he said, if you disobey, then I'll curse you in the womb.

I'll curse you in the field. I'll curse you by your enemies overtaking you. And instead of you being the head of the nations, you'll be the tail. And so the cursings and the blessings are laid out. I was reading through the minor prophets here some time ago, and I thought to myself, my, everything's cursing, everything's judgment.

It's just awful. Every minor prophet and every story you come to, it was all down. It was all punishment. And I got thinking to myself, why? And then it dawned on me when I read in one of those minor prophets that they are the people of the covenant.

Yeah, and they broke the covenant. And that's why they're being cursed. So that nation was really, really brought under heel by God because of its sin. And then for individuals, for us to look at the old covenant individually, Aaron had two boys.

The two boys went in and disobeyed God when he said they were not to take strange fire to ignite the incense when they went into the holiest of all, but they took strange fire. They both died. Yeah. And in Leviticus chapter 24, the man there blasphemed God's name.

Now that don't mean blaspheme as we think of it. The word blaspheme there means to put a hole in. Same word is in Haggai when Haggai tells him you're carrying your bucket with goods in it, but your bucket got a hole in it.

So by the time you get wherever you're going, it's empty. It's empty. You've emptied the valuable things out of the bucket because you put a hole in it. So it's the idea of we take the name of God and we devaluate it.

We take out of the name of God is holiness and a sacredness. I don't know how far we can go with this, but there are some of our good brethren would tell us you call God you. You're putting a hole in the bucket.

You call the Lord Jesus Christ. You just call him Jesus. You're putting a hole in it. He is the Lord Jesus. Now I know they can put up a pretty good argument on the grammar and so on, but I'm just putting this out.

That young man blaspheme God's name. He put a hole in it and they went to Moses and Moses went to God and God said, take him out and stole him to death. The Lord Jesus, when they asked the Lord Jesus, teach us how to pray.

What did he say? He says, when you pray, you say, our father, which art in heaven, hallowed, sacred, holy be thy name. Don't do anything to degrade or extract out of the name of God. It's holiness. And then you go to over to Deuteronomy and you meet a little young fellow there.

It was on the Sabbath day and on the Sabbath day, you're not supposed to gather sticks. You're supposed to gather all you want on Friday for Saturday. And you're not supposed to boil your food. It's supposed to be all done on Friday.

And all you'd have to do on Saturday, the Sabbath is eaten. Well, this boy got hungry. He went out and gathered sticks and he brought it home, boiled his food, broke the commandment the Sabbath day. He had to die.

Stole him. Kill him. Pretty severe, huh? He went to war in the book of Joshua. And Achan, they were told, anything you get in Jericho now, any valuables you get, you take and you put it into the coffers of the Lord.

It all goes to him. Don't take anything for yourself. So Achan's a young soldier and in they went into Jericho and they're defeating the battle and they're winning. And Achan come across some nice gold and a wedge of silver and a nice Babylonish garment.

And he didn't think anybody was watching. So he took them. Took them home and hid them under the floor of his tent. And true to the word of God, be sure your sins will find you out. Achan's sin was found out.

And Achan and his whole family were stolen. They were burned. Now, you ask yourself. I'll ask myself. As a Christian, have I ever taken anything that's not mine? Have I taken from the Lord something that's rightfully his and I've taken it for myself?

Come on now. Have we? Have I ever degraded in any way, as it were, put a hole in the name of our God? Have I? Have I ever done anything on the Lord's day that I know shouldn't be done on the Lord's day?

We're not on the Sabbath day, but we have the Lord's day. This is his day. Sunday is the Lord's day. It's his. Do we do things on that day for me? When the Lord said, this is my day. Well, anyway, that's the old covenant.

You can't break it. It's on stone. You bend it the slightest little bit and you break it. And you break it, you die without mercy. Now, I want to show you tonight and try and show you tonight how thankful we ought to be that the Lord Jesus mediated a new covenant and got us out from underneath that one.

Because true to the word of God, cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them. You break it, you're cursed. And the only reason that's not true for us today is the Lord Jesus redeemed us out from underneath the curse of that law, being made a curse for us, for free.

And he wrote up a new covenant. He established a new covenant. The old one has failed. And Paul says in Colossians chapter 2 and 14, the Lord Jesus took it out of the way, spiked it to his cross. He honored it fully in his life.

He was born of a woman, born under the law, honored that law perfectly. And then for us, he compensated God for every infringement that we have committed in breaking that law. He died and spiked that old thing to his cross.

Christ the Mediator Between God and Man

Now, let's look at that verse. I just want to draw the idea of the daismon from Job 9 and 33. It says there we need a daismon, someone who could put our hand on God. It doesn't say that in Job. It's just the hand on two people.

But one put a hand on God and a hand on man. And now make a covenant that will bring these two together and both be satisfied. Because they weren't satisfied in the old covenant. Man was not happy on it.

It was a burden. Peter said to them in that day when they were going to put them under the burden of the law, and Peter said, why should you bring our brethren again underneath that burden? Which our fathers could not carry.

They couldn't handle it. So why go about to bring that thing back again? The law was a burden to the people. And it was grievous to God because He looked at these people who made a covenant with Him to obey and they disobeyed.

And God's not happy to curse people. Bring God any pleasure. Judgment is His strange work, especially with His own people. But they constantly break it. So the covenant, He's faithful is signs of the covenant.

And the people of the day was not faithful to their side. So the conflict was there. And God wants to bring that thing to an end. Now there's one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all to be testified on due time.

On the basis of that ransom, He's going to mediate a new covenant. He's going to satisfy God, what God demands. And He's going to meet our need, our need, what we need. He's going to satisfy the two and bring us together in a covenant.

That's wonderful. What does God demand? Well, God demands that He be compensated for every infringement of the law. And the Lord Jesus compensates Him for that on the cross. So God is satisfied. So we can go to the...

Now we're going to look at it when we go further down in Hebrews chapter 8, that these things here, propitiation, reconciliation, redemption, regeneration, justification, sanctification, are all a part of the terms of the new covenant.

They're going to fit into Hebrews chapter 8 here. But they all spring out of the fact that the Lord Jesus upon the cross compensated God for the infringements or the failures or the sins of the people who broke that law.

He took it out of the way. It's gone. Spiked it to His cross. And then He established a new covenant that's based upon better promises. In Israel's day it was, you obey, I bless. You disobey, I curse.

In the new we're going to see, it's all one-sided. God says, I will, I will, I will, I will. We don't have nothing to do with it. Our signature's not on it. Because that was the weakness of the old covenant.

There was nothing wrong with the law. The law is good and holy, said Paul in Romans 7. But it's me. What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, you see. I can't keep it. Nothing wrong with the law.

Israel, the Olive Tree, and the Gentiles

The problem is me. We cannot keep it. And so God being a realistic God in His overall plan, He knows that and He's going to write up a new covenant. Now here are some of the things that He says. Now I know it says to the nation of Israel.

And if we go into Romans and we get involved down there in chapter 11, we might never get out. But you remember the story the Apostle Paul was talking about the olive tree. There's a wild one and there's the natural one.

And the children of Israel were the branches of the natural. And they were broken off because of unbelief. And then the branches of the wild, that's a Gentile, was grafted in. Now that tree in which those branches are grafted into, the root is Abraham.

And the fat is the blessings of that covenant that God made with Abraham. Not the one He made with Moses, the one He made with Abraham. So when you take that there into account now, we're going to look at it in this way.

That the covenant that was made with Israel, Israel will still see the full and final benefits of it in its completion, spiritually and nationally. But we're going to see in 1 Corinthians 15 that God, through Christ, has secured for us the spiritual elements of that covenant, which is the fat.

Now you see what could happen? You have to ask Paul, some of these theologians, about that. And they will help you through that chapter in Romans chapter 11. But we're going to keep it here because of time.

All right now, this new covenant is not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they continued not in my covenant and I regarded them not, or discarded them, with saith the Lord.

For this is the covenant that He made with Israel and so on. And now that's where you'll have to go to Romans chapter 11 to follow in on that. And they shall not, let me see now, I don't want to get ahead of myself.

For this is the covenant that I made with the house of Israel after those days saith the Lord. Here's the first one. I will put my laws into their mind. Where did you put the law in the first covenant?

Where did he put it? Well, he put it into Moses' hands. This time he's going to put it into their mind. Now what doctrine would you see here that that has to do with? What one of these doctrines changes the person's mind?

We've talked about them. They made a fundamental change in the man. When the sinner got saved, he was born again. Regeneration. That's a brand new creation. A new man in Christ. Now because he has now got a new mind, he is willing, ready, able to acknowledge that the Word of God is true and the things of God that he was rejected and despised, he now accepts as right and good and profitable.

For instance, before a person's saved, they're quite happy to blaspheme God's name. I didn't mean anything by that. That's nothing to that. Or dishonesty. I mean, you can't make your way through life without being a little dishonest.

So there's no great problem with being dishonest. But when a man gets saved, something changes the way he thinks. He don't think like he used to think anymore. Now he hears the man blaspheme the name of God and right away he recoils.

That's not right. As soon as he now sees somebody doing something dishonest, he used to do it himself. But now he's opposed to it. He don't go that route. Why? What's happened? Because God has now, in the terms of the new covenant, the Lord Jesus has mediated for us.

One of the terms is, I will write my law upon your heart and you will want to do my will. You will know that my will is right and honorable. Not like in the old. The old covenant just stirred up rebellion.

The more the laws you brought, the more the people seemed to rebel. But now he's written it in their heart. That's regeneration. And what's the next one say? I will put my laws into their mind and write them in their heart.

Where did you write them before? The first time he read them on those tables of stone. Hard, hard, brittle rock that you can't bend. The first thing he did, he wrote them, put them in their hands. Now he's writing it on stones.

What does he do in the new covenant? Where does he put them? What one of those there doctrines now would tell you that the man who once was in, I don't want to give it away if I say it that way, I was going to, the man that was in Adam, a godless fellow, what one of those doctrines now would tell us that maybe that fellow might come to like God.

He might just learn to like God. Which doctrine would it be? Well, at one point he was a rebel, opposed to God, didn't like God, fled from God. But on the grounds of reconciliation, the enmity that existed between man and God, the Lord Jesus took it out of the way.

He put away sin, He put away the law, and He did away with the flesh. Everything that stood between the sinner and God to keep them in a state of alienation has been removed. And now the terms of the new covenant are, I will write my law upon your heart.

Well, the heart is the place of affection. And because he writ that on my heart, how come it is now, you who were once an enemy of God, how come now you, you never used to like to read the Bible, for instance.

It was a closed book, it was put someplace, maybe you didn't even own one. And all at once, now that you're saved, and you've been reconciled to God, you like to read the Bible. What's the big change?

You never could have ever seen yourself being, standing up here and preaching the gospel. You just could never have imagined that would ever happen with you. And yet it happened. What about the change?

Because the new covenant that the Lord Jesus mediated between God and you and I, He satisfied God about the old, so the old is a settled matter. And now God demands from us still fidelity, true, but He's going to do something for us.

He's going to write a law upon our heart. We're going to love to do it. He's going to put it in our mind. We're going to see the good of it and the worth of it. And we're going to be willing to obey it.

We're going to want to obey it. We have been regenerated and we have been reconciled to God. And the next one is, I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a people. Well, God wanted that down through the old covenant as well.

But there came a time when the nation of Israel was so far away, God had to say, not my people, not my people. On what grounds tonight do you belong to God? On what grounds? What one of these doctrines here would tell you that you now belong to God?

You're no longer here. You're now the property of somebody else. Well, that's redemption. And that's what was written into the terms of this new covenant. The Lord Jesus mediated this for us, a way in which we could be regenerated, born again, reconciled to God and redeemed to God.

We are now the property of God. Just like it says here, and I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a people. Are you happy you're the people of God? Well, the only reason you are is because of the terms of this here new covenant.

If it weren't for this, you wouldn't be where you are tonight. You would still be in your old headship, Adam. And verse 11, and they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

Access to God Through the New Covenant

Now, in the old covenant, if you were there, you wouldn't really know the Lord. You couldn't. Because you had no right to go into the sanctuary. You had no right to be there. The only way, the only person that could go into the sanctuary under the old covenant was Aaron.

And he could really only go there once a year. Everybody didn't really know the Lord. Not in a personal way. Because they were barred from entering into the presence of God. They could not go behind that veil.

And if they did, they died. Aaron alone, once a year, was allowed to go in behind that veil. But under the terms of the new covenant that the Lord Jesus has mediated for us, he has satisfied God perfectly about sin when he died for our sins upon the cross.

And that gave us the freedom, because we're now in Christ, to enter into that sanctuary. It's not a physical sanctuary. You know, some people say this is a sanctuary. Well, it's a term people use for the church gatherings and so on, the sanctuary.

But really, we don't worship here. We worship in spirit and truth. We go right into the presence of God in spirit and worship in the sanctuary. And everybody has a right to go there. Now, if you were living in the days of the Old Testament, for instance, suppose David was to say to Jonathan, you know, let's go up to the temple and let's go into the temple, right into the sanctuary, and we'll sing some psalms to Jehovah.

They'd both die. They couldn't go there. Good King Uzziah tried it. God plagued him with leprosy. He had no business of going behind that veil. Nobody had a right to there but the high priest. But today, you and I can go there anytime we like, into the sanctuary to worship and to pray and to get to know the Lord.

Let me ask you, were you in the sanctuary today? Were you there? Young people, do you pray much? Do you read the Bible much? You remember one time King David, I think it's Psalm 73. He got looking out there in the ungodly and his heart become envious.

And he saw the ungodly, they were having success and business and they were having a great time. Everything was going fine for them. And yet for him, things seemed to be going bad. Things weren't going right for him.

And he says, I was envious of the wicked until I went into the sanctuary and I saw their end. Going into the sanctuary is where you learn. And going into the sanctuary is getting your little corner, wherever it might be, in your home or wherever.

And you go alone there with your Bible and you get down on your knees and you talk to God about everything, anything you want. And there you will get to know the Lord. And that's what we call sanctification.

We've been set apart from all that's of the world. We talked about last night and the flesh and the devil and so on. God wants to set us apart for himself. He did that in Christ. And because we're in Christ, who lives right now and stands and sits or whatever, appears before the face of God for us.

On the grounds and basis of that, we can come. And God wants us to come. He says, come boldly onto the throne of grace, that you may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. You couldn't do that in the Old Testament.

You couldn't. You could not enter the sanctuary. But the Lord Jesus mediated a new covenant. And in the terms of that covenant, he brought about our regeneration, our reconciliation, our redemption and our sanctification.

And what's he say down further in the next one? Verse 12. And I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. There you have propitiation. I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. Now Aaron's two boys, what really was their sin?

Those two boys that God had destroyed, they used strange fire to ignite the incense they took into the presence of God. What's wrong with that? What is strange fire? Well, the most of us who stand on Sunday morning, probably one fellow said there wouldn't be enough brethren in the meeting to carry out the dead corpse if this were a living fact for today.

It just simply means you come to the Lord's Supper on Sunday morning and you stand up and you worship supposedly God in the flesh. What you're saying and what's coming out of your mouth and is supposedly to be worshiped, it's not ignited by devotion to Christ and appreciation for Christ and a love for the man that brought all this into reality for you.

You're standing up just talking. You're worshiping in the flesh. Those two boys died. I wonder how many times I'd be dead if that were true of me today. You think about it for yourself. But because of the propitiatory sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, you did not die, neither will I.

And you and I won't die if we do something wrong on the Lord's Day. And you and I won't die if we put a hole in the sacred name of God. We won't die. He'll be merciful to our unrighteousness. Why? Because He is the propitiation for our sins.

That's one of the things that He incorporated into the new covenant. I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. He didn't show no mercy in the old. They died without mercy, said the Hebrew letter. I think it's in chapter 2.

And then it says in the last part of the verse 12, and their iniquities will I remember no more. In that one there we have a justification. Their iniquities, sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

That word remember is a legal term. On the day of atonement in the book of Leviticus chapter 16, every year the sins of the people come back into the mind of God. And He demanded a sacrifice be made for it.

So on the great day of atonement, every year back the sins came before the mind of God. And a lamb had to be put on the altar and so on as the ritual goes in Leviticus 16. But God says here, and your sins and iniquities, or not their sins, just, yes, their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.

You appreciate that? You have to be a pretty cold, calloused believer not to appreciate that. That I sin and my iniquities that I produce in my life day after day, because hardly a day goes by we don't sin in some way.

And God says I will not remember your iniquities and your sins no more forever. Why? Because the Lord Jesus put away our sin, Romans 9 and 26, and we are declared just. We're not innocent, we're just.

The Lord's Supper and the New Covenant in Christ's Blood

Now, let's look at 1 Corinthians chapter 11. Now these are verses we know very well. Verse 25. After the same manner also the Lord Jesus took the cup. When He had supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament, or the New Covenant, in my blood.

This do ye as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come. And so on. On Sunday morning, you and I come to remember the Lord Jesus.

And for years and years, this was a hidden thing to me. I always just took that cup as the blood of Christ. And so often our brethren say, when they take the cup, this is the blood. But Matthew links the covenant with the blood.

Mark links the blood and the covenant together as well. Luke links the blood and the covenant together as well. And the Apostle Paul, who got the information he writes here in chapter 11, he said, I got this directly from the Lord.

And he says, now this cup, he said, this is the New Covenant. As he said it is. He didn't say this is blood. He said, this is the New Covenant in my blood. And a man said one time, he said, now, what about the covenant part?

Well, I didn't know. Something new coming to me. He says, you mean that every Sunday morning, you remember the Lord and you don't know anything about the covenant? Well, I said to myself, I don't know a whole lot about right now what you're talking about, but I'm going home to find out.

If every Sunday morning I'm taking a cup and the Lord Jesus said, this is the New Covenant in my blood, and I don't know the terms of the covenant, there's something wrong with me. Something I've missed out along the way somewhere.

And so the Apostle Paul says here in chapter 11, the first time the breaking of bread is associated with a Gentile church. He says here, well, in chapter three it is, he says he's the minister of the New Covenant.

That's what he claims to be. And he's a servant of it. And here he's telling the believers, I got this directly from the Lord. And he talks about the bread. We're all acquainted with that. But I want to suggest to you that the next time you break bread and you take that cup in your hand, you think, this cup is the New Covenant.

And the terms of that covenant, the Lord Jesus won for us with his precious blood. That's a symbol in that cup. The New Covenant entails propitiation, reconciliation, redemption, regeneration, justification, and sanctification.