The True Children of Abraham

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Amen, and while we're standing, let's open the Bibles together.
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We'll turn to the 22nd chapter of the Gospel of Luke, and we'll remain standing for the reading of God's Word, and then we'll pray, and we'll have our message for the evening.
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Tonight's message comes from Luke 22, verses 14 to 20, and the title of the message is, The True Children of Abraham.
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And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him.
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And he said to them, I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
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For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
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And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, Take this and divide it among yourselves.
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For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.
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And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you.
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Do this in remembrance of me.
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And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the opportunity to preach your word again.
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I pray that as we open the word together, that you by your spirit would be the teacher.
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That you would cause me to decrease, that Christ might increase.
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And Lord God, that you would keep me from error.
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For I am certainly capable of teaching that which is untrue.
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And I pray that you would protect your people and my own conscience for my sake, Lord, and for their sake, and for the sake of your name.
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I pray for the truthfulness of the message, Lord, because we are going to deal with a subject that is sometimes fraught with controversy.
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Who are the children of Abraham? Jesus gave us that answer clearly.
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He told us that those who are of the seed of Abraham are those who believe in Him.
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And so tonight I pray that we will understand that the new covenant has brought a new relationship that we might enter in by faith in your Son.
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And I pray, Lord, that we would better understand that covenant as we study together tonight.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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Please be seated.
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As I was sitting in the fellowship hall, considering the fact that we have had this Seder meal together as a church every year that I can remember, and having been in this church since I was 8 years old, I would say this is my, well, almost 30th time having the Seder meal.
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I know that it's at least the 12th time since my becoming the minister here.
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Tonight we have participated in a grand celebration which spans back thousands of years.
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And though our practice is not meticulous in detail as some might prefer, it certainly maintains much of the regalia which is intended to accompany such a feast.
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And I'm grateful again for all those who took the time to prepare it in honor of the Lord's Passover.
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2,000 years ago, in the upper room in Jerusalem, Jesus Christ celebrated a similar meal with His apostles on the night that He was to be betrayed and the night before He was crucified.
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This was likely the third time that Jesus had celebrated this meal with His apostles.
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Him having been in ministry for three years at this point, this was probably the third time He had sat down and had this meal, and the 33rd time that He'd been there in His life.
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In fact, it is possible that Jesus Himself may have been the child at some point asking the traditional questions because He would have at some point been the youngest child, youngest man in the house.
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But during this final Passover with His disciples, Jesus interrupted the flow of the meal.
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And He established a new ordinance for the church, which is to be recognized for all time.
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He used two of the elements, bread and wine, to point to the significance of a new reality, a new promise, a new covenant.
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And tonight, I want us to study about that new covenant.
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And I want us to study about what it is that makes the new covenant both different and unique in regard to how it relates to the old covenant.
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In fact, if you have your Bible still, we've already read Luke 22 where he says specifically in verse 20, this cup that is poured out is the new covenant in my blood.
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I'd like for you to do me a favor.
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Would you turn to the New Testament? Okay, I like it when everybody stops and looks at me.
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You understand that there's in your Bible two testaments.
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There's an Old Testament and a New Testament.
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And we know that that's a division in our Bibles that is very significant.
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If I ask you to turn to the New Testament, you could probably find a page somewhere in your Bible that actually is the heading page for the New Testament.
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But you understand when I say turn to the New Testament, I'm not talking about just one book, but I'm talking about 27 books that make up that New Testament.
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And another word for the name of the New Testament is called the New Covenant.
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We have the Old Covenant Scriptures, which begin in the book of Genesis and go to the book of Malachi.
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And then we have the New Covenant Scriptures, which begins in the book of Matthew and goes to Revelation.
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And again, we might not be used to using that language.
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Even the word testament is somewhat of an archaic term, but the word covenant, even more archaic still.
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We don't use that language very much, so it's hard sometimes for us to understand what it means when we say New Covenant.
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A covenant, as most of you probably at least understand the definition, a covenant is an agreement or a promise.
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And the Bible mentions several covenants.
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In fact, there are some covenants in the Bible that we see from the very beginning.
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We know that God, before the world was created, before there was ever a star in the sky, before the earth had ever been formed, before the water was on the earth, before the land came forth from the earth, before any of that, we know that God made a covenant with Himself.
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The Bible tells us that God entered into a covenant within the Trinity, that there would be salvation, that there would be a work done.
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It is called the covenant of redemption.
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And God made that choice before the world was ever formed, that He was going to create the world, and that His Son, and remember Jesus didn't come into the world at Bethlehem, Jesus existed forever.
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He is the second person of the Trinity.
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And Him being in covenant with the Father, that He would be the Redeemer, and the Spirit would be the one who would apply the work of redemption.
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But in the Scripture we see other covenants come along.
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We see God made the covenant with Noah.
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You remember when the flood came, and the world was destroyed.
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After the flood was over, there was something put in the sky.
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It was called a rainbow.
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And that rainbow was the promise of God.
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And God said, I'll make a covenant never to destroy the world again by water.
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Later there was a covenant made with a man named Abraham.
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And do you remember what the covenant of Abraham was? That God is going to bless you, and He is going to multiply you, and He is going to bless the whole world through you.
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God gave that promise to Abraham, and He gave him the picture of that covenant, which was circumcision, which was given to all of His children.
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Later God made a covenant with Moses, and He gave him the law.
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And later He made a covenant with David, and He gave him the throne, which He said would last forever.
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So all throughout the Bible, there are these promises from God.
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But then, between the time of David, and the time of Jesus, there was a promise that was made.
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It's in the book of Jeremiah.
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If you have your Bibles, I do want to show you this.
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In the book of Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 31, Jeremiah 31 and 31, God speaking to the prophet says this, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a covenant, a new covenant, with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
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Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
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My covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
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For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.
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I will put my law within them.
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I will write it on their hearts.
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And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
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And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me.
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From the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.
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For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.
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This is the only time, prior to Jesus Christ coming, that we see the phrase, New Covenant in the Bible.
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So it is safe to assume when Jesus on the night before He was crucified, took the cup and He lifted up the cup before His disciples, and He said, This is the New Covenant, it is safe to conclude that what Jeremiah promised in Jeremiah 31 is fulfilled in Jesus when He holds up the cup.
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It's the only time that phrase, New Covenant, is used in the Old Testament.
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It is the only time that we see a fulfillment of it is when Jesus held up that cup and He said, This is the New Covenant.
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Now, I want you to understand, not everyone believes this.
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And that's why I said tonight in my prayer that this is somewhat of a controversial thing.
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It shouldn't be.
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And I hope to demonstrate to you tonight that if it is controversial, it is only because men are more happy with their own ideas than they are with what the Bible teaches.
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Because it should not be controversial.
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But some believe that the New Covenant that Jeremiah speaks of in Jeremiah 31 is not the covenant initiated by Christ.
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They argue that this covenant is only for ethnic Israel because it says that God is making the covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
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They go on to say that we are in one New Covenant, but there's another New Covenant coming and that's the New Covenant that God's going to make with Israel, the ethnic Israel.
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But here's what you need to understand.
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The covenant that Jesus made when He held up His cup and He said, This is the New Covenant in My blood.
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That was and is the New Covenant promised by Jeremiah.
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Because that covenant was made with Israel.
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When Jeremiah said, I'm going to make a covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
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Jesus broke the bread and He gave the wine and He gave it to men who were what? Israelites.
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And He made a covenant with men who were Israelites.
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And when the Spirit fell at Pentecost, it fell on men and women who were Israelites.
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And when the Gospel was first proclaimed, it was proclaimed to whom? To the Israelites who were visiting Jerusalem for Pentecost.
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And when Paul would go into the cities, where would he go first? To the synagogue.
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To the Jew first.
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But not only.
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You see, you have to understand this.
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When the Gospel was proclaimed, it was not in opposition to the Jews.
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It was in fulfillment of what God had given to the Jews.
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When Paul faced his accusers in the book of Acts, he looked to them and he said, no, I am preaching what the Old Covenant says.
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I am teaching the true Judaism which is in Christ.
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The true fulfillment of the promises of God to Israel are in Jesus.
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And here's the beauty of the promises.
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If you are in Christ, you have been grafted in to those promises.
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Romans chapter 11 says it like this.
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It says Israel was like a root tree and some of the branches were broken off because they didn't believe.
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But God took wild branches, that's the Gentiles.
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We are the wild branches.
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God took the wild branches and He grafted them in like someone who works with trees might take one branch from a tree that's dying and graft it onto a tree that's alive and that live tree will give life to that dying branch and it will come alive again.
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That's the same thing that God did with the Gentiles.
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God took us, and I don't know anybody here, but if anybody here is an ethnic Jew, that's wonderful.
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But I know I ain't.
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But I know this.
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I know that by faith, I'm a child of Abraham.
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Let me show you this from Scripture if I can.
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I'm starting to preach, so I'm getting a little excited.
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I don't want to get too hot because it's warm in here.
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But I want to show you just a few verses and you can go there with me or you can just listen because I'm going to read them.
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But in Acts chapter 8, Jesus is speaking and He's speaking to the Pharisees.
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And He says this, He says, I know that you are the offspring of Abraham.
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This is John 8 verse 37.
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He says, I know that you are the offspring of Abraham physically, yet you still seek to kill Me because My Word finds no place in you.
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I speak of what I have seen with My Father and you do what you have heard from the Father.
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They answered Him, Abraham is our father.
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And Jesus said to him, If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works that Abraham did.
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Later on in that same passage, verse 44, He says, You are of your father the devil.
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You are not Abraham's children.
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You are of your father the devil.
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Now these men were Jews.
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These men were the Jews of Jews.
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These men were the Pharisees.
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They were the most religious, right wing, religious, fanatical Jews you've ever seen.
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And Jesus looked at them and He says, You are not the sons of Abraham.
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You are the sons of your father the devil.
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Paul tells us in Romans 9, Not all who are born of Israel are Israel.
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And not everyone born of Abraham is a child of the promise.
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It is a gift of God and an elective work of God.
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You want another verse? Galatians chapter 3.
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By the way, the whole book of Galatians really addresses this issue.
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But Galatians 3, verses 6-9, Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.
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What does it say? Those who are of faith are the sons of Abraham.
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And the Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preached the Gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed.
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So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham the man of faith.
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And it goes on to say in that same chapter, verse 27, For as many of you...
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Listen to this, it's so important.
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For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, therefore there is now neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.
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For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
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And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.
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I don't know why this is controversial.
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I don't know why this is an argument.
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You remember when you were young? I'm starting to remember less of when I was young.
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But when I was little, we would, in the church, march into the church singing Father Abraham.
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And you remember how it goes? Father Abraham had many sons, and many sons had Father Abraham.
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I am one of them, and so are you.
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So let's all praise the Lord.
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And then the right arm, left arm.
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But you understand that that song is actually theologically correct.
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As simple as the lyrics are, it's just saying what Galatians 3 says.
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If you believe in Jesus, you are the offspring of Abraham by faith.
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This is incontrovertible.
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Now, I've said all this only to say that when we look at Jeremiah, and he makes the promise of the new covenant, you need to understand that that new covenant that he's talking about is not something that's going to happen in the future.
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That's not something that's still yet to come.
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The new covenant is here, and it has been inaugurated in the blood of the Messiah who has already come and shed that blood.
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It is not going to come later.
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It has come now.
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And I wish that I had time tonight to bring out all the blessings of the new covenant.
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I don't, and I know that you would probably are glad that I don't have time to enunciate the blessings of the new covenant.
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But do you know what, though? I want to give you a few things to think about.
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One is this.
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The new covenant does something to the old covenant.
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And this is where a lot of people don't want to get on the fence.
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People want to step back because they get nervous.
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You know what the new covenant did to the old covenant? Made it obsolete.
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You say, wait, whoa.
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I don't like that.
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Hebrews 8, verse 13.
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And speaking of a new covenant, He makes the first one obsolete, and what is becoming obsolete is growing old and ready to vanish away.
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You know, that's why tonight when we went in there, we could have chicken and we didn't have to kill a lamb.
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That's why we didn't have to all gather seven days ago and sweep all the leaven out of our house.
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That's why we didn't have to go seven days eating nothing but unleavened bread.
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And that's why we didn't have to come here tonight and take a living lamb, slice its throat and take its blood and pour it on the doorposts of our house.
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Because we are no longer under the ceremonial law of the old covenant.
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Jesus said, I didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law.
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And He fulfilled every single bit of God's law.
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When you stand before God...
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I talked to a lady just last night who proclaimed...
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I've never had a lady proclaim her own righteousness so vehemently.
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But she was telling me how good of a person she was and how she was just so righteous and that she was expecting God to be happy with her.
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And I said, Ma'am, have you ever told a lie? And she said, yeah, but I'm not a liar.
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I said, how many murders? Do you have to murder somebody to be called a murderer? Just one.
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How many times do you have to commit adultery to be called an adulterer? Just one.
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You have lied and you've lied more than once.
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And the Bible says every liar will have his place in the lake of fire, outside of the grace of God.
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You stand before God guilty and you need forgiveness.
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You need atonement.
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And that's what the old covenant is.
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The old covenant shows us our need of the new covenant because no one was perfectly atoned under the old covenant.
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In fact, Hebrews tells us that.
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It says that the blood of bulls and goats forgave no one.
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All they did was, as it were, one of my professors used to say, put it on a credit card.
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He was putting it off until Jesus came.
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It was pointing to a greater sacrifice.
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The blood of the Passover lamb, the blood of the goats, the blood of the bulls that was sacrificed was pointing forward to the new covenant.
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And when the new covenant came, that old covenant became obsolete.
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That's why in AD 70, I believe that God did what He did to Jerusalem.
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Do you know what happened 40 years after Jesus went to the cross? Within one generation of Jesus going to the cross, do you know what happened? Jerusalem was leveled by Emperor Titus.
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And there has not been one single sacrifice made in Israel in 2,000 years.
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There's no place to do it anymore.
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There's no temple to go to anymore.
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There's a wall, a part of a wall that Jews gather around and they look at that wall and they pray for the restoration of Israel.
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The restoration of Israel has come! And it's not coming in a physical temple.
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It's coming in Jesus Christ! He is the restoration of Israel and He's already here! When we pray for our Jewish brothers and sisters, we need to pray that they come to Messiah.
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We need to pray that they come to their Lord.
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Because He came to them first.
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He even told a woman.
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A woman came to Him with a daughter that was sick.
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And she was a Gentile.
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And Jesus said, should I take the food for the children and give it to the dogs? People say, oh, I don't like Jesus talking like that.
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But Jesus was pointing out that He came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
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And that lady looked at Jesus and she said, yes, but food that falls off the Master's table can be eaten by the dogs.
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And Jesus did heal her.
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Because He did show His love for the Gentiles.
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But know this, if you're a Gentile, you have been grafted in to a new family by a new covenant that was made with the house of Israel.
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And you have been made part of that covenant by the grace of God.
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Not of works, but purely by grace.
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And members of this covenant, according to Jeremiah, will experience so many blessings.
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We experience the law of God written on our hearts.
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If you go back to Jeremiah 31, I'm just going to do this quickly.
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He says, the law of God will be written on their hearts.
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And you say, wait a minute, all men have the law of God written on their hearts.
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Yes, all men do.
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According to Romans 2, every man has the law of God on their hearts.
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But what's the difference for the believer? The believer has the desire to follow God in his heart.
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That's the difference.
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The believer has been given a new heart.
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In fact, according to Ezekiel, God took out our heart of stone and He put into us a heart of flesh.
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So now we not only have a heart that knows the law, we have a heart that desires the law.
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You know what, I had a heart that knew the law for 19 years.
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And you know what I knew about the law? I hated it.
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I knew the law, and I didn't want to follow it.
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But God gave me a new heart.
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And He changed my desires.
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And He gave me a new desire, and that desire was to serve Him.
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That's what He means when He says, I'll write my law on their hearts.
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It's not just knowing the law, but it's having a new desire.
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And then He goes on to say that everyone in the New Covenant will be in a relationship with God.
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If you go back again to Jeremiah 31, He says, they won't all have to teach each other, know the Lord.
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Because if you're in the New Covenant, you know the Lord.
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You realize that in Israel, in ancient Israel, you could be part of the covenant with God and not know God.
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You could not be saved.
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You could be part of the covenant, because how did you get into the covenant if you were in Israel? By birth.
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Physical birth.
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So, they would have to be born into the covenant and later learn about God.
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But according to the New Covenant, you don't come by birth.
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Nobody here, I've heard people say, well, I've been in church my whole life.
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And I appreciate what you mean by that.
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But you have to at least admit there was a time when you were lost.
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There was a time when you were not a member of the covenant.
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And God saved you if you were in the covenant.
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This is why we don't baptize babies.
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You see, the Presbyterians, and I love them, but the Presbyterians baptize babies because they believe that people are born into the New Covenant.
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That's not true.
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You are not born into the New Covenant.
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You are born again into the New Covenant.
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You are not in the New Covenant until you have received Jesus Christ by grace through faith alone.
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And then, when you make that profession of faith, we will baptize you in response to your profession of faith.
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And that really is what separates us from the Presbyterians.
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We're very close theologically.
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We have very similar theology to the Presbyterians.
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But where we differ is that covenant.
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You are not a member of the New Covenant until you come to faith in Jesus Christ.
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And made an heir to the kingdom.
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Adopted as sons.
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Romans chapter 8.
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Now, third and finally, and this will be where I end.
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Not only do members of the New Covenant have the law written on their heart, not only do members of the New Covenant have a relationship, everybody in the New Covenant is in a relationship with God.
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Third and finally, everybody that's in the New Covenant has received this perfect gift from God called forgiveness.
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Again, I'm not going to make you go back there, but in Jeremiah 31, it says, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.
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I think that sometimes, I think sometimes we forget our greatest blessing.
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I think sometimes we forget the forgiveness that we have.
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The old covenant had forgiveness, but it was predicated on a future payment.
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The forgiveness that we experience is right now, and it's complete, and it's total.
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And the Bible says that God has taken our sin from us and He has cast it away from us as far as the east is from the west.
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We have received full pardon.
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We are now full members of the covenant.
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Fully forgiven.
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Fully apart.
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So I want to ask you a question, and this will be where I draw to a close.
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Are you tonight, at this moment, a member of the New Covenant? Are you a member of the New Covenant? You may say, I don't know.
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I never even heard this until I came tonight.
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I don't know what that means.
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Well, here's how you know.
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Have you recognized yourself as a sinner before God? Have you repented of your sin and trusted in the completed, finished work of Jesus Christ? And has that faith, that trust, made a change in your life which has resulted in a desire to serve God? And then I want to ask you this.
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Does the Spirit bear witness with your spirit that you are a son of God? You know that's what Romans 8 says? It says that for those who are members of the New Covenant, those who are saved, it says we'll know internally that the Spirit of God will bear witness with our spirit that we're the sons of God and we can call Him Father.
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Abba Father.
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Dad.
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Do you know that you have forgiveness? Do you live in the forgiveness of the New Covenant tonight? If you don't know, I'd like to call upon you to turn to Christ and by repentance and faith be welcomed into the blessing of the New Covenant.
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But I can't change your heart.
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All I can do is point you to Christ and say in Him are all the fullness and blessings of God.
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And look to Him and trust in Him and know that in Him you will find a perfect Savior.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the New Covenant.
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I thank You that we are members of the New Covenant by faith in Jesus Christ.
31:54
And we have something to look forward to, Lord, but it is not a New Covenant.
32:00
We have to look forward to the day when our Savior will split the eastern sky and He will come back as the Lion of Judah and He will separate the wheat from the chaff and He will take His wheat into His barn where we will live forever serving Him in glorified bodies.
32:18
And I look forward to the day, Father, when our faith shall be sight, when our trust will be vindicated in the work of the Lamb in judgment and we will see Him who was pierced for our transgressions and who was wounded for our iniquities and we will know that our eternity is wrapped up in the work that He has done as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
32:48
And it's in His name we pray.
32:51
Amen.
32:52
Let's stand and sing and prepare our hearts for communion.