Sunday Morning, August 25, 2019 AM

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I pray that in doing so that you would prepare us for our meal together with him on this day.

I pray that you would sustain us and nourish us today through your word and through our fellowship with Christ.

Lord, we pray all of these things, trusting that you will hear us and that you will answer us for the sake of your son who is at your right hand.

We pray these things in his name. Amen. Please open your

Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 31. Jeremiah chapter 31, we'll be reading verses 27 through 34 in a

Jeremiah beginning of chapter 30 and he has instructed Jeremiah to write a book and to send that book to exiles in Babylon.

In this book, Jeremiah is going to be explaining to them what happens next, how it is that God is not done with them, that all is not lost, all is not over, but they need to know what's going to happen next.

Just as God has promised, they have been taken to exile and just as God has promised, Jerusalem and the temple are about to be destroyed.

Jeremiah is writing about a year prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and so they're going to need to know what's next and what

Jeremiah is writing about is something new and when the old is about to be destroyed, it's good news that something new is in place, that there's something new that is in God's plans.

The other day I went out to my, what used to be a greenhouse and then it turned into a shed that was covered in tarps and the tarps were so old that I could poke my finger at it and it would disintegrate.

Had nothing to do with my raw strength. It was just, it was so brittle and I realized this thing's about to come apart, so I immediately ordered a new one and it took it about a week to show up.

In the meantime, the thing shredded and went everywhere, but I was not concerned. I knew it was going to shred,

I knew it was going to come apart, I knew it was going to look bad. I was not concerned at all. The new one was on the way and that's something of what

Jeremiah is writing to them. It's going to be bad, things are going to fall apart, but there is something new and he wants them to focus on what

God is going to do that's new, a new covenant.

So I invite you now to stand with me as I read this word from the

Holy Scripture, Jeremiah 31 verses 27 through 34.

Through his spirit, here are the words of Christ. Behold, the days are coming.

Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beast.

As I have watched over them to pluck up, to break down, to overthrow, to destroy, and to bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, declares the

Lord. In those days, they will not say again, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge, but everyone will die for his own iniquity.

Each man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge. 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, know 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.

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. The title of this morning's sermon does not come from this text but another one out of Mark chapter 2,

Mark 2 verses 18 through 22. You might, if you have a paper

Bible and I'm so glad that you do, go ahead and put a ribbon or a bookmark there in Jeremiah 31 and head over to Mark 2.

It'd be helpful. There is a telling interaction between Jesus and his

Jewish critics in Mark 2 and just like Jeremiah, Jesus is speaking at a time that is nearing the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.

And so they are in a similar type of vantage point and both of them are talking about what is new.

There needs to be something new. And so in Mark chapter 2, we have this interaction where the

Jewish religious leaders don't agree with the way in which

Jesus is conducting his teaching ministry. He's not functioning like the other rabbis.

He's not preaching like the other or teaching like the other scribes.

He's doing things that are differently. And in verse 18, John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting and it was the custom for the

Pharisees to fast twice a week. And they came and said to him, why do John's disciples and the disciples of the

Pharisees fast but your disciples do not fast? And Jesus said to them, while the bridegroom is with them, the attendants of the bridegroom cannot fast, can they?

So long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast in that day.

No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.

Otherwise the patch will pull away from it and the new from the old and a worse tear results.

No one puts new wine into old wine skins. Otherwise the wine will burst the skins and the wine is lost and the skins as well.

But one puts new wine into fresh wine skins. And there we have the title of this morning's sermon, new wine goes into fresh wine skins.

Which I think everybody in Jesus' day knew and didn't have to be told that that was the case.

But then again they had to be told that it was the case. That new wine goes into fresh wine skins.

Why? Well because wine is going to ferment, gases are going to come off of it, there's going to be an expansion.

And if you put it into old brittle hardened wine skins then it will expand but it won't flex and then it'll break and then the whole thing is going to be ruined.

And so you have to put new wine into fresh wine skins so that the two will age together.

And they knew that but here they were pointing fingers at Jesus and saying you're not doing things our way.

You're not doing things the old established way. And he says yes, good. New wine goes into fresh wine skins.

That's the way it's supposed to work. And to punctuate this point so that nobody should miss it,

Mark then tells the story of how Jesus relocates Sinai's covenant sign of the

Sabbath to himself. Just to let them know just how new the new really is.

We'll come back to this in a moment but it's important for us to remember just as Hebrews tells us that Christ is the mediator of a new and better covenant.

Jesus Christ is our mediator. There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus and we are in need of a mediator.

If we're going to know God and be right with God we have to have a mediator. God reveals himself to us and then redeems us to himself through a mediator.

And Christ is our mediator. He mediates

God's truth to us through his spirit, through this word. He mediates

God's forgiveness to us through his blood applied at the right hand of the Father. So the admonition this morning is this, don't live in the ways of the old covenant in these days of the new covenant.

Don't live in the ways of the old covenant in these days of the new covenant. The new covenant is not a patch, it is not a refill, it's a whole new cloak, it's a whole new cask.

There's no truce to be made between the old life and the new life. Christ has not come to patch you up or top you off.

Christ has come to make all things new. New covenant wine goes into new creation wine skins.

To sum it up, let's just say this, keep true to what's new in Christ. Keep true to what's new in Christ.

Okay, let's talk about the ways the old covenant from our text, Jeremiah 31, references these.

We hear things about the old covenant, the way that things used to be done are not going to be done again.

For instance, in verse 29, it says, in those days they will not say again, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.

Let's mark that down as an old covenant way. Look down a little bit in verse 34 and we read, they will not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother saying, know the

Lord for they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them declares the

Lord. Now let's mark that down as an old covenant way.

These are the old covenant ways and God's saying through Jeremiah, I'm going to make a new covenant and these will not be the ways of my people anymore.

These things are going to change. Now to understand the old covenant, the old covenant is like real estate.

It's about three things, location, location, location. That's what the old covenant was.

If you want to sum up the old covenant, it's location, location, location. Remember that the ingredients of a covenant that God makes with man, the ingredients of the covenant are these three things.

That God's people live in God's place, blessed under God's rule. Those are the ingredients of the covenants that God makes with man.

God's people live in God's place, blessed under his rule. And the ways of the old covenant, the way that God's people were in his place, the way that they were blessed under his rule, were all focused around location.

Location, location, location. For example, where were the 10 commandments located?

Well, they were located in the ark of the covenant underneath the mercy seat inside the holy of holies, next to the holy place inside the courtyard of the tabernacle in the middle of a ring of Levites who had swords who would gut you if you came in unclean.

That's where God's law was located. So you better show up and you better have your ducks in a row because if you needed forgiveness from God, you better bring your best offering to the tabernacle.

Pass muster with the Levites and get in through the front entryway and offer and give your sacrifice to be offered.

You knew what location you had to come to if you needed forgiveness. You knew what location you had to come to if you wanted a revelation from God.

Location, location, location. And as God's word was revealed and as it was written down, who was it who had the scrolls?

Who was it who had the understanding of the scriptures? It was the Levites to whom God gave no tribal inheritance in the form of a land, but he gave them cities which he sprinkled like salt all over the promised land so that when you needed to know what

God had said, you knew what location you had to go to. You had to go to a Levitical city. You had to go hunt up a

Levite. What does God say? What happens when my neighbor's ox gores my ox?

What was that again? You got to go hunt up a Levite. Location, location, location.

We could go on and on talking about examples, but the reason why they had to go to the location of the tabernacle or later on the temple was because that was where the brightest figures and clearest types of the gospel were contained.

There you would know forgiveness from God when you put your faith in the shadows of Christ. To be located, for instance, outside of the camp, that was a very bad thing.

It was all about location. You cannot be right with God or know God unless you have a mediator, and in the case of Israel, and this is very important for us to understand before we look at these old covenant ways in detail.

When it came to the case of Israel, the whole nation, the society, the culture as a whole served as a caretaker, a caretaking mediator of truth and forgiveness.

So for instance, let's just start if you're on the complete outside, let's say you're Rahab. Where does

Rahab need to go if she wants to know what the truth is and the truth about God?

Where does she have to go? She has to go to Israel. What if she wants forgiveness for her sins?

Where does she have to go? She has to go to Israel. You have to go to a location, you have to go to a culture, a

God -designed, gospel -shaped culture of Israel so that when you showed up, if they were living right, if the nation was doing right, if they had eschewed idolatry, if they were following faithfulness and holiness, if they had everything together, they would be a shining example and they would clearly communicate the truth of God to you and how it is that you could be forgiven when they were living faithfully as a whole and as a group.

And if you individually were an Israelite, if you were located personally within this God -designed, gospel -shaped culture, then you are responsible as an individual for your contribution to the effectiveness of the whole.

And since the whole served as a caretaker mediator for you, you had a vested interest to keep things going well.

But you also exposed yourself to great risk because the failures of one generation could drastically affect the next.

What happens when parents were a little less careful about bringing up their children and writing the truths of God on their foreheads and on their hands, whatever they did, understanding the truth of God?

What happens if one generation was a little less faithful and that generation was a little less faithful and the natural decay of sin occurred?

And then we read in the Old Testament these cycles when everything would go bad and then they had to come back to the Lord and everything would go bad and then come back to the

Lord and that's what that's what was like to be in Israel, in the Old Covenant life of Israel.

And these Old Covenant ways are obvious in Jeremiah. So the first one there about fault lines, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.

We have jokes like this today, you know, I'm gonna hit you so hard your grandchildren are gonna hurt, you know.

This one is, the fathers ate such sour grapes that their children came out puckering, okay?

And that was the saying that went around. This is directly related to the unique position of Israel as a corporate mediator, as a whole nation serving as a caretaker mediator of God's truth and showing people the way of forgiveness.

This is why when any time you had someone who severely broke covenant, greatly harmed the situation, then there was punishment, multiple generation punishment.

This is why Achan did not die alone for his sin but his whole family died. This is why the first generation out of Egypt died.

See, God made covenant with them and said this is the way you're to live and he wanted a clean, bright, holy, sharp instrument to bring judgment against the

Canaanites with whom he had been patient for 430 years. But this first generation was not bright, clean, and sharp.

They were dull, broken, and useless. And so the whole generation had to die out and a new generation had to come that was forged and made ready for the essential work that God had for his mediating nation to do, which was judgment on the land of Canaan.

So we see this. We see that the sins that sometimes, for instance, the sins of the fathers greatly harmed their children and their descendants.

Example, Manasseh. Manasseh was incredibly wicked.

It says that he filled Jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood. And so egregious was his breaking of the covenant that even though Josiah came along, a man more on fire for God than King David ever was, and he brought the people back to God and focused them on how to live as the covenant people of God, even though he did all these amazing things for the nation,

God said, you're still gonna get destroyed. And that's what it means living in these old covenant ways that the fathers eat sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.

This has nothing to do with the legal system in Israel. Nothing whatsoever.

Deuteronomy 24 16 clearly says that children will not be killed for the sins of the fathers, for the crimes of the fathers.

Has nothing to do with the legal system whatsoever. It was about their role as a covenant nation.

For example, Jeremiah's Lamentations, Lamentations 5 7, our fathers sinned and are no more.

It is we who have borne their iniquities. These are the fault lines. The earthquake started somewhere, the epicenter was somewhere, but then it came out and brought great destruction to the latter generations.

So God says it's time for a new covenant. This is not because God's design of the old covenant was faulty and wrong.

He said, I made covenant with them, they broke it with me. And so his forging of a new covenant is really not a claim that the old covenant was some kind of disaster, he was actually ratifying and affirming everything that the old covenant pointed forward to.

So the first way of the old covenant is the father's eating sour grapes and the children teeth being set on edge.

The second old covenant way we see is this, in verse 34, they will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, know the

Lord. Now what's wrong with that? I mean, aren't we supposed to do that?

Aren't we supposed to teach each other and help disciple one another and share the scriptures with each other and stir one another up to love and good works and hold fast the confession of our faith?

What's wrong with that? This sounds like it's a ban on discipleship and evangelism. But that's not what this is.

Remember the context of the nation of Israel as the national mediator, the culture of mediation that God had forged.

What is it they need to do? They need to say it again. When you watch the Andy Griffith show, you get the idea that it would be hard to find someone dumber than Barney Fife.

But then you meet Gomer Pyle, and after a while you feel like Gomer, with Gomer you have discovered the ground level.

But then out of the basement of absurdity, Goober appears. And every time

Andy or Barney gives Goober some two -step plan with just a tad of monosyllabic justification, he just stands there with a whole beak, his mouth partially open, and then says, say it again.

Because he didn't get it. But we see some from verse 34 that it was necessary for every neighbor and brother to say to each other, know the

Lord. But at some point the stupidity of sin set in so deep that a denseness even more subterranean than Goober manifested, they just stopped trying.

They just stopped saying, know the Lord. They stopped saying, what does it say?

They stopped saying it. You know how bad it got? It got so bad that they had forgotten the law, they had lost every copy of the law, and it wasn't until Hilkiah was in the middle of trying to do a restoration project on the temple that he found a copy of the law of God.

He had never seen this before, and he takes it and he gives it to Shaphan the scribe, and he goes in front of Josiah and reads the

Word of God to the king. That's how bad it got. Because they weren't saying to one another, say it again.

Say it again. What does the Word of God say? Know the Lord. Know covenant, evangelism and discipleship should cease.

This is simply pointing out that in the old covenant where Israel served as a caretaking mediator, the law of God, the instruction and understanding of God was located and sourced from the

Ark of the Covenant through the Levites to the rest of the people, and that's why the law needed to be continuously given out and spread to the entirety of the national social cultural mediator,

Israel, if they were going to do their job right. So they had to keep on saying, know the

Lord. Know the Lord. What does it say again? What does it say again? So members of the old covenant participated in the efficacy of their own placeholder mediator, of their own culture, their own nation.

They had to keep up their individual faithfulness for their corporate effectiveness. Now hear me, corporate

Israel, the nation, never forgave sins and they never saved a single soul.

Their mediation was temporary, it was shadowy, it was typical, it was picture painting, that kind of ministry.

Their effectiveness, however, is gauged by how accurately they forecasted the

Messiah's revealing saving ministry. And so they had to walk in the ways of the old covenant.

Location, location, location. But God says, the days are coming. There's a new covenant

I'm going to make. A new covenant. If the old covenant's about location, well the new covenant's about, it's like Christmas.

Incarnation, incarnation, incarnation. And wherever you find the old covenant focusing in on location, the new covenant replaces that with incarnation.

Every time. This is the way that Jesus taught, it's the way his apostles taught. In other words, we're leaving brick and mortar, okay?

No more brick and mortar, doing something else. So remember in the context just previously to this, we heard that God was calling

Rachel's children to come home, to come back to the land. Because there, God said, I'm going to create a new thing.

A woman will encompass a man. Not just a man, but a Gabor, a mighty one. So with this promise of a new creation, beginning with the virgin birth of Christ, with the incarnation of God the

Son in the context, we're said to understand what the new covenant is about. The new covenant is for the new creation, which begins in Christ and spreads through all his people, who are called in the

New Testament, new creations, new creatures. And we have to remember not to put fresh wine into old wineskins.

So let's think about this just for a little bit. When we read about the new covenant,

God says, days are coming when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beasts, verse 27.

He's talking about rebuilding, replanting, making things good again, because they were about to get very, very bad.

Verse 28, as I have watched over them to pluck up, break down, overthrow, destroy, bring disaster. Why would he ever do that to Israel?

Because they had an agreement. They had a covenant. And he said, if you walk in my ways, these are the blessings you will know.

If you break my ways and go away from me, these are the curses you will know. So he's keeping his word.

But he says, I will also watch over them to plant and to build. And he says, in those days they will not say again.

They're going to stop saying this. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. They're going to stop saying that.

Why? Not because our children suffer because of our sins. They do.

Our children suffer because of our sins. There's an impact of sin that goes on beyond us.

And part of the heinousness of sin has nothing to do with this passage. This passage is talking about the fact that there's not going to be a generational nation as a caretaking mediator underneath covenant curses.

That's not going to be that way anymore. So if a man insists on eating sour grapes, perhaps due to his intense jealousy that the

Messiah would welcome repentant tax collectors and converted prostitutes before self -righteous

Pharisees, perhaps he's eating sour grapes over that, then the failure of that man will not damage the efficacy of a locational mediator because it's been replaced by the incarnational mediator.

Just because the Pharisees had sour grapes didn't stop Jesus from being the mediator who we needed him to be.

He says that verse 30, but everyone will die for his own iniquity. Each man eats sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge.

Verse 31, 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.

He's going to make a new covenant and it's not like the covenant, he says, which I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.

It's not like that one because they broke that one. The one he's making, the new covenant, is not going to be broken.

That's the first difference. The old covenant could be broken, the new covenant will never be broken by the mediator,

Christ. It's unbreakable. But notice how different this new covenant is.

Look, I will make this with the house of Israel after those days, I will put my law within them and on their little heart

I will write it. I will be their God and they shall be my people. We've heard that, I will be their God, they should be my people, that's covenant language time and time again throughout the scriptures.

But notice, I will put my law within them and on their heart I shall write it. Where did

God write his law in the old covenant? Where did he write it? On stone tablets.

And where did he place his law? What did he put his law within?

The Ark of the Covenant. Now, where is the law placed in the new covenant?

In his own people. And what does he write it on?

Not stone tablets, what does he write it on? Their hearts. So this is why the

New Testament writes and talks about Christians being a temple. Because it was in the

Ark of the Covenant, inside the temple, that the law was placed and written.

And now the law is placed and written on our hearts if we're in Christ, because we are now being made the temple.

You see the difference? You see the change? We're done with brick and mortar, there's a new location.

Well, a new location is in the incarnation. Now how in the world does that work?

How can these people be carrying around the law of God within them and not be destroyed because of God's holiness and our imperfections and our sinfulness?

How is that even possible? Well, the end of verse 34, I will forgive their iniquity and their sin

I'll remember no more. Because he will make us holy, he will make us righteous, and that's why we can carry around his law in our hearts as the

Ark of the Covenant used to. And this works because, so it says, know the

Lord, they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them. So from the least of those in the New Covenant to the greatest of those in the

New Covenant, they're all forgiven and their sin he remembers no more.

You don't put New Covenant wine into Old Covenant wineskins.

It doesn't work. You have to put New Covenant wine into New Covenant wineskins,

New Creation wineskins. So let's go ahead and turn to Luke chapter 22 because we're told in Jeremiah 31, in those days

I will make a New Covenant. God promises that. He says, I'm going to make a New Covenant with the house of Judah, with the house of Israel, in those days.

So in Luke chapter 22, and we'll begin reading in verse 19, and when he had taken some bread, this is

Christ with his disciples at the Last Supper, this is the Passover, and when he had taken some bread and given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, this is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way, he took the cup after they had eaten, saying, this cup which is poured out for you is the

New Covenant in my blood. It's poured out for who?

He says, for you, he's saying to his disciples. So with whom is he establishing the

New Covenant? Who's there in the room? His disciples. And how many did he originally pick?

Twelve. How many tribes of Israel were there? Twelve. Do you think Jesus is just tripping over these things or is he doing it intentionally?

He says it to them in the room. He says, with you, this covenant, this New Covenant is for you. The cup poured out for you is the

New Covenant in my blood. Now that's not probably the way that I would write the story.

That seems to be very surprising to me that Jeremiah's chapter 31 promises of the

New Covenant come focused into this time, in this place, in this venue, in this way.

That's so surprised to me. I would not have written it that way. But this is the way that God reveals the

New Covenant. It is through the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

And so that we are to remember to share in this meal together, recognizing that Jesus Christ has forged the

New Covenant where once it was location, location, location, it is incarnation, incarnation, incarnation.

Which is why Jesus says of the temple in John 2, destroy it and in three days

I will raise it up. Speaking of himself, speaking of his own body, which is why he tells the Samaritan woman in John 4, it's not in that mountain or this mountain that we'll worship but a day is coming and now is when those who worship the

Lord will worship him in spirit and in truth. And this is why all these different things are being changed to be focused upon Jesus Christ.

It's not about the location, it's about the incarnation now.

That's the new of the New Covenant. In the Old Covenant, the fathers ate sour grapes and the children's teeth were set on edge.

In the New Covenant, Christ drinks the bitter dregs of God's judgment so that his brethren's mouths are given to praise.

Salvation belongs to God and to the Lamb on the throne. We have to pay much closer attention to these things so we will not drift away from them.

So we have to come to the table in three ways, I think, keeping true to what's new in Christ.

And the first one is that of a matter of faith. It's a matter of faith. Where is your focus?

Don't try to pour New Covenant wine into Old Covenant wine skins. I remember

I was with a man, he was about 10 years my senior, when I was pastoring in Tennessee and we were driving back from somewhere in his truck and we stopped at the corner gas station and he was fueling up and I just took the top opportunity to ask him, where are you with God?

Where are you with God? He said, you know, I just kind of leave all that up to my wife.

She helps me understand what it's all about. See, she was his

Levite. She was his Levite. He wasn't opposed, really, to God in his mind.

He wasn't opposed to God. He wasn't antithetical to the church, to the Bible. He just, you know, when he needed to know something spiritual, he'd just check in with his wife.

She was his Levite. But did he personally know

Christ? Was he united with Christ by faith? Had he come to that understanding that Christ died upon the cross for his sins?

That he might be forgiven and raised to newness of life through Christ's resurrection? Did he know, did he believe, did he confess that Christ was his

King ascended at the right hand of the Father? Did he know that himself? And the answer was no. And he didn't turn to Christ that night, unfortunately.

So don't go hunting up a Levite. Do you need forgiveness from God? Go to Christ directly.

Do you need to know who God is? Go to Christ. Ask him to teach you through his

Spirit what the Word of God says. The New Covenant, the

New Covenant saints, every single last one of them is called a priest. It's not a special selection out of the

Levites that are called priests. In the New Covenant, every single last one of us in the New Covenant is a priest.

So we can go directly to God. So, secondly, we come by faith, make sure that we're trusting in Christ directly.

Secondly, it's repentance. First Corinthians 5, 7 -8 says this, clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump.

Have you always wanted to be a new lump? Clean out the old leavens that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened.

For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

See, Passover happened on the 14th of Nisan, and so also at the beginning of Passover was the feast of unleavened bread.

For seven days they ate no bread with yeast in it, they only ate unleavened bread.

Notice that the picture of their forgiveness, the picture of their forgiveness and cleansing, the picture of them being satisfied in the same sacrifice that God was satisfied in, that that starts, and then comes their holiness.

It's forgiveness first, then holiness. It's justification first, then sanctification.

It says, clean out the old leaven just as in fact you are unleavened. How is it that I am righteous in the sight of God?

Because Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. And if we have that right, then we'll come in a right understanding.

A right understanding. Romans 10 1 through 5, Paul says this, brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them, meaning his fellow

Jews, his people, those who do not trust in Christ, he said, my heart's desire, my prayer to God for them is therefore their salvation.

For their salvation. I just want to tell you, there are all kinds of people who are full of the

Scriptures, full of a zeal for God, full of desire for spiritual experiences, who do not know

God. He doesn't say that his heart's desire and his prayer to God for them was thankfulness that they had got so much right.

How could God ever possibly call them wrong? He knew they needed salvation.

Verse 2, for I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.

For not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.

And what, and let's say, who is the righteousness of God? It's Jesus Christ.

For Christ, verse 4, is the end, the talos, the goal, the fulfillment of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

When we come to this meal together, it is not in the pursuit of accomplishing righteousness that makes

God happy with us. We're coming to this meal and eating unleavened bread because Christ our

Passover has already died for us and he is raised to the right hand and pleads for us.

We have to have this right. Are you pursuing a righteousness that is alien to Christ?

You have to think about this. Is there someone pushing you towards a righteousness saying that you are inadequate, incomplete, need something else?

If you're going to be a real Christian, then you need this following list active in your life.

If God's really going to be happy with you, please follow these next three steps, or 85.

The three -step list always ends up being 85. That's what

Galatians is about. To put it into the modern parlance, is there some demon justice warrior cracking the whip in your ear, making you walk around ashamed that your great -granddaddy was a white man?

There is a frenetic urging to a worldly so -called righteousness fueled by the fear of man, centered on fashionable virtue signaling, resolving an incoherence of Babel.

But here, see, the answer in every generation is still right here in front of us, isn't it? Here in the communion of Christ, we have the dissolving of racial animosity,

Ephesians 2, Ephesians 3. Here in the communion of Christ, we have the dissolving of all racial animosity, all social bitterness, and assurance of God's divine justice and his grace reconciled.

So Christ offers all who are weary and heavy laden, his body for food, his blood for drink. This is new covenant nourishment for new creatures.

So will you rejoice together with me today in this meal? Let me close with a word of prayer, and then we'll sing a hymn, and then share in our meal together.

Father, we come before you this morning, and we thank you for your grace that you have given us in Christ.

Please help us to believe your message about the new covenant, even if it doesn't look like in the initial glance what we would have thought or planned.

There it is, Christ offering himself for us. Father, please help us to come to this meal, and to do so in faith in Christ, trusting only in his righteousness.