The New Covenant

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

3 views

0 comments

00:00
Hebrews chapter 8, and those of you that know me, Hebrews is my favorite book of the Bible.
00:20
It is a book that I read constantly through the year.
00:27
There are passages that I do have completely memorized from the repetition of constantly reading it.
00:33
I do have a deep desire for the Old Testament, and this is a clear connection from the Old and the New in the book of Hebrews, and if there was any book that I could have stranded somewhere or got locked up for the faith, and they said you can have one book, I would want Hebrews.
00:54
And before we get started, let's open up with a word of prayer, and then I'll walk us through this chapter.
01:05
Father God, as we begin to look at what your word says through the writer of Hebrews, Father, I will try to my best ability and through the power of your spirit to make much of your word.
01:24
Father, I will try to make much of your son, and I know that I will fail, for Father, even if there were 10,000 angels here to proclaim the glory of your word and your son, they would fail, because you are incomprehensible, and your word is inexhaustible.
01:43
So Father, I would pray that right now you would give me, as my brother has already prayed, give me an extra measure of your grace, fill me with an extra measure of your spirit that I would preach the oracles of God in such a way that, Father, it would strengthen and equip your sheep.
02:02
For Father, once again, I stand behind your pulpit to preach your word, to proclaim your truth to your people as your servant, in Christ's name, amen.
02:16
Well just some facts about the book of Hebrews.
02:19
There are 37 direct quotations in the book from the Old Testament, 37, remember there's only 13 chapters in the whole book.
02:30
There's also 31 allusions to the Old Testament in the book, and then there are 19 summarizations of the Old Testament.
02:42
So now you know why I like the connection from the old to the new.
02:48
But, the most important thing about Hebrews is that it contains the longest quotation of the Old Testament in the new.
03:00
And it is Jeremiah 31 verses 31 through 34, and that is what we will look at today.
03:07
I'm going to read the whole chapter, it's only 13 verses, and then we will focus in on 7 through 13.
03:17
He said, now the main point in what is being said in this, we have such a high priest who has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the sanctuary in the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man.
03:33
For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices, so it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer.
03:42
Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer gifts according to the law, who serve as a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle when he was told, See, the Lord said, that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown to you on the mountain.
04:09
But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry, but as much as is also the mediator of a better covenant which has been enacted on better promises.
04:21
For if the first covenant had been faultless, there would not have been an occasion sought for a second.
04:27
For finding fault with them, he says, Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, and it will not be like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant, and I did not care for them, says the Lord.
04:52
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord, that I will put my laws into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people, and they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen and everyone his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all will know me, from the least to the greatest of them.
05:14
For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.
05:20
And when he set a new covenant, he has made the first obsolete.
05:26
But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
05:34
That is the sermon in itself.
05:37
The book is a sermon.
05:40
The book of Hebrews is a sermon.
05:43
It is in sermonic language.
05:44
It is not epistolary literature.
05:46
It doesn't open up with the writer saying, I'm so-and-so writing to so-and-so.
05:49
It doesn't have a salutation.
05:51
It actually begins in the English translation, the new American standard, God.
05:58
God in times past, in various times and in various ways, he spoke to the fathers through the prophets.
06:07
That's what the book is about.
06:11
So you had seven chapters of him giving the exposition of a number of Old Testament texts.
06:18
And you can tell it's a sermon because when he gets to chapter 8, verse 1, he says this.
06:25
Hey, the main point is this.
06:26
It's like, wait a minute, this guy just expounded for seven chapters and now he's saying he's just starting.
06:32
That sounds like Keith on Sunday.
06:36
So he gets to the point and you're like, man, I love this because now he's gotten to the point.
06:40
And the point is this, is that Jesus Christ is a better mediator.
06:46
Because he is a better mediator, we have a better covenant.
06:49
And because we have a better mediator with a better covenant, we have better promises.
06:53
And as we look through verses 7 through 13, there are going to be six promises that make the new new.
07:01
When he said new, he did not mean it was going to be a re-administration of the old.
07:06
He meant new.
07:08
That's why he said the old has gone away and the new has come.
07:11
Even Jesus, he was carrying his cross out and the women came running up to him weeping.
07:16
He says, don't weep for me.
07:17
I've come to make things new again.
07:19
And that's the new covenant.
07:22
Verse 7 says, for if the first covenant would have been faultless, there would have not have been an occasion or sought for a second.
07:32
You first read that you go with the first covenant would have been faultless.
07:35
Wait a minute.
07:36
You're saying there was something wrong with the first covenant, with the Mosaic legislation, the Sinai covenant? No, it was not God or the covenant that was faultless.
07:49
It was the people that they found fault.
07:51
And he says that.
07:53
All right.
07:53
First of all, if we want to say why, why did they find fault with the people? Here is why.
07:59
One, the old covenant was an external covenant.
08:03
It did nothing to the inside of the person.
08:07
It also was a national ethnic covenant between a king, basically God and his people.
08:17
It is also very understood as a Caesarian treaty.
08:20
And those of you that know anything about history of Caesarian treaty had where you had a king and a vassal and they come together and one says, you do this, I will do that.
08:31
You do this, I will do that.
08:33
You don't do this, I will do this.
08:37
If you break my laws, this is what I'll do.
08:40
And you can look at it as just promise and punishment.
08:43
That was the, that was basically the structure of the old covenant.
08:49
When they came out of the land of Egypt, when he had led them out, they get to the Sinai Peninsula and Exodus 19, they get the, uh, the 10 words and it is said right in there, you obey me.
09:05
And they said, we will do all that the Lord requires.
09:09
Hey, he ain't even given all 613 commands of prohibitions.
09:12
But they were, they were, they were happy to be freed and they says, whatever you tell us to do, we will do.
09:18
So he gives them the 10 commandments.
09:21
He gives them some sundry laws, gives them some property laws.
09:24
And then God says, Moses, come back on up here and let me give it to you on tablets.
09:29
And the people agreed.
09:32
Not only did they agree then, but then after wandering around in disobedience for 40 years, when he was about to let them cross over the Jordan with Joshua, after slaying the unbelieving people for 40 years, you know how many people died in the wilderness for years? About 1.2 million people.
09:56
You do the math.
09:57
See how many people you were burying a day.
09:59
When those people were gone, he says, you're going to cross the Jordan.
10:03
You're going to go to the land that I promised.
10:04
And when you get there, they'll be filled with milk and honey and all the blessings.
10:10
And they stood, one group stood on Mount Ebal and the other on, on Mount Gerizim.
10:16
And it was the blessing and cursings of the law.
10:20
Once again, they reaffirmed.
10:22
You do this, God will do this.
10:26
You fall off into idolatry, I will punish you.
10:30
You continue to follow me, I will bless you.
10:34
How long did it take for them, once they got the first time they got the covenant, did it take them to fall off into idolatry? Think about it.
10:44
If you want to look at chapters, they got it in 19, by Exodus 37, they were bowing down to a calf that Aaron, the first priest, had made.
10:54
So finding fault with them, he found fault with them immediately.
10:58
They were idolaters.
11:02
And then he says, but there'll be days coming, says the Lord in verse 8, when I will effect a new covenant.
11:09
But when he says, behold, days are coming, there was going to be a new day that would come because of all the years of their disobedience.
11:18
And then our conference broke just briefly on this.
11:20
You had them falling off and the, and the Northern kingdom being hauled off in 722 and then 586, the destruction of Judah.
11:30
And it's actually the, the prophecy of Jeremiah comes in the book of consolation of them saying, look, I know the plans that God has for you and it's to restore you.
11:40
And there are days coming when God's going to make a new covenant with you.
11:44
And this is the quote.
11:46
They had been so rejecting God that God finally said, you know what? I'm done with it.
11:53
And he hauled them off into captivity.
11:55
But he says, behold, days are coming when I will make a new covenant with you.
12:02
It says, when I will effect every, most people's translations in here probably says make, but the word is actually effect.
12:14
It's sent to less.
12:15
Oh, that's the, that's the Greek word.
12:17
And it does not mean to make as poi, and we'll talk about that because he does say make again, but it's sent to less.
12:24
Oh, which means to, I will ratify, I will establish, I will affirm.
12:30
God says, I am going to accomplish this covenant.
12:34
That means the other one was not accomplished.
12:37
It was never completed.
12:39
It was always broken.
12:41
He says novel effect in a new covenant.
12:44
And I will do it with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, meaning collectively member.
12:48
The house of Israel was the Northern kingdom hauled off in seven 22, the Southern kingdom, Judah hauled off in five 86.
12:56
And then they trickled back into the land after that and five 38, five 36.
13:00
And then God established them back in the land, but it was never the same.
13:04
They never had another king.
13:08
They never had the new covenant.
13:12
And in verse nine, it says, it won't be like the one that he made poi, meaning agreement with their fathers.
13:21
Well, what do you mean it won't be like that? Well, it's not going to be like the one that they broke.
13:28
There was a deficiency in the old covenant.
13:32
The deficiency in the old covenant is it could never get life and it could never remove sin.
13:39
Look, time and time and time again, they pull off a head of a turtle dove, cut the throat of a, uh, a goat or a lamb.
13:51
And that blood didn't do anything for God.
13:55
All it did was take their sins and just push it on down the road and just push it on down the road and push it on down the road.
14:02
The day of atonement, they would go in and there'd be the hands laid on the scapegoat and the other one would have its throat cut and the blood would be sprinkled.
14:10
They would go into the holy of holies and he would do it one time a year.
14:13
Hey, and that didn't do, that didn't have anything to do with this willful sin.
14:18
That only took care of the sins that were committed by the congregation for the covenant people in ignorance.
14:25
So their sins were never done away with.
14:30
He says that I'm going to make a new covenant with their fathers.
14:34
And on that day, I will make a new covenant, not like the one that I made with them when I took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt.
14:43
Do you see when he says here on the day when I took them by their hand and led them out of the land of Egypt, God had to lead them out of the land because they could not do it.
14:56
Israel had inability.
14:59
Hey, we all have inability if God doesn't do something for us.
15:03
They could not even have entered into the old covenant had God not enabled them to come out of the land by sending the plagues upon Pharaoh.
15:15
They were unable.
15:18
And then when they get out, they got cowardly.
15:22
They get, God just put 10 plagues on Pharaoh and his armies.
15:28
He just slayed the firstborn.
15:30
Everything that happened in Egypt didn't happen in Goshen.
15:34
And then they get out to the, to the, uh, the Dead Sea and oh my goodness, what are we going to do? And they start, you brought us all the way out here, Moses, for us to die.
15:43
And what does Moses say? Stand and watch the salvation of the Lord.
15:50
Your enemy you see today, you ain't ever going to see him again.
15:54
And they did see him again though, but it wasn't alive.
15:56
They were floating corpses up on the other side, but God had to do something.
16:02
They did not have the ability to come out of the land of Egypt.
16:05
So God did something for them.
16:07
He loved them.
16:08
He provided for them.
16:09
He gave them food, even in their disobedience.
16:12
He gave them manna.
16:14
Matter of fact, he gave manna before he ever gave him the law.
16:16
He provided for them.
16:18
And we often wonder, well, man, how did their clothes not wear out? Well, if you were burying that many people a day, they didn't get to wear their clothes long.
16:26
Their clothes didn't wear out for 40 years and God provided for them.
16:32
But then it says on in verse 9, it says, and they did not continue in my covenant because they were constantly disobedient.
16:41
And he says this, and I did not care for them, says the Lord.
16:46
He did not care for them.
16:48
God got fed up with their idolatry.
16:53
You can go home and read this, write it down.
16:55
You go to Jeremiah, and I would suggest anybody in here that likes the Old Testament, even if you don't like it, read Jeremiah anyway.
17:03
Read Jeremiah.
17:04
That guy had it rough.
17:07
He did not take his persecution with a stiff upper lip, but he did what God called him to do.
17:14
And he constantly called out their disobedience.
17:17
He constantly called them for their idolatry.
17:20
But he did make a point in chapter 3, when he says, look, your sister, Israel, Northern Kingdom, did all this idolatry.
17:31
I slayed them, hauled them off into slavery with the Assyrians, and you didn't even pay attention.
17:38
And now you being the treacherous sister are doing the exact same thing that I punished them for.
17:44
And God says, I will put a certificate of divorce on you and put you away.
17:48
And that is what God did.
17:51
He put them away for 70 years because they continually broke his covenant.
17:59
He didn't care for them.
18:01
He didn't care for them, but why? Because they were covenant breakers.
18:05
Because they agreed to do all that God required, and then they did not.
18:10
Is there anybody in here that would say today, I will do all that God requires? I'm going to make you sure.
18:22
One more time, anybody? Man, you imagine those people, the audacity to say, yes, whatever you tell us to do, we'll do.
18:31
And they did not.
18:34
And then in verse 10, it says, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel.
18:41
So you had the first one, which from our perspective, we go, man, that was kind of bad.
18:47
No, it was holy, righteous, and good, but it never had the ability to save.
18:52
It never had the ability to give righteousness.
18:56
It did not have the ability to give life.
18:59
The law could only do one thing, point out error in your life, point out sins in your life, point out transgressions, and point you to something that you could go kill in your place.
19:12
That's all it could do.
19:14
But he says, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days says the Lord.
19:21
And here it is.
19:22
Here's the six promises of the new covenant.
19:25
And there are actually six messages here, but Keith said, I don't have six weeks.
19:31
So we will look at them quickly.
19:35
It says that I will put my laws into their minds.
19:39
That's the first one.
19:40
What does God do under the new covenant? He puts his law in your mind.
19:45
Where was the law, the old covenant law, where was it? It was inside the ark of the covenant, inside the holy of holies, a cube inside a cube inside a cube.
19:57
That's where it was at.
20:00
And it all it was, was handwriting ordinances against the people of everything that they had done.
20:05
And everything, we'll do it, and it should, okay, we'll execute one of them, did this, we violated this, violated this, violated that.
20:14
That's what it was.
20:17
But here it says that God will put those laws in our heart.
20:21
It says he will write them on our mind and write them on our heart.
20:24
It's a, the Ezekiel's passage and let's, I wasn't going to turn over, let's turn over there real quick.
20:29
Go to Ezekiel 36.
20:30
And when we often quote this, we quote it and don't quote this part, Ezekiel 36.
20:57
We like the, and remember God's going to take out that heart of stone and put in that heart of flesh.
21:02
And that's good and great.
21:03
But you know what? We, we often don't remember what he says before that.
21:09
Here's what it says in verse 26, we'll read 26 through 27.
21:17
Moreover, I will give you a new heart and I will put within you, what a new spirit within you.
21:25
And then I will remove that heart of stone from you and I will give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and it will cause you to walk in my ways and observe my statutes and my ordinances.
21:38
Do you hear that? The spirit, that's the promise of the spirit.
21:43
Old Testament people did not have the spirit.
21:47
They did not have the Holy Spirit.
21:49
Did they have an act of God in the life of the Old Testament believer? Yes, but that was under the Old Testament coined at a circumcision of heart.
21:58
And we know that there is something different because here he says there's coming a day when I will put my spirit within you.
22:06
I will put my laws in your mind.
22:09
I will take out your heart of stone and I will put in a heart of flesh and it'll be pliable.
22:15
It'll be not obstinate and calloused against me, but will be pliable and bent towards me.
22:21
Why? Because if God's going to do something and wants us to obey, he's got to do something within us.
22:28
Why? Because we're unable.
22:31
Just as the children of Israel could not walk out of the land of Egypt on their own, neither can anybody in this room come to God apart from the person and work of the spirit in their life.
22:44
I'll even say you can't even obey him.
22:50
Romans 8 says that the natural man does not obey the law of God.
22:57
He wouldn't even if he could.
23:02
Inability.
23:03
But it says here that God's going to do something for us.
23:07
And the promise of the first promise is this, I will put my laws into their minds.
23:13
Those laws that God requires of us are no longer going to be transgressions and offenses that we look at and go, I can't, I can't, I can't.
23:23
Now we can look at them and go, God's given me the ability to, and by faith and through the power of the spirit, I can obey.
23:32
And he says I will write them on their hearts.
23:36
That's the second promise.
23:37
Not only does he put the laws in our minds, he writes them on our hearts.
23:41
They're no longer written on hard tablets of stone, but they're written on that heart that God has taken out that's no longer hard, but it's now pliable and bent towards him.
23:51
And then we delight in the law of the Lord and we meditate on it day and night.
24:00
And then the third promise of the new covenant is I will be their God.
24:09
And by extension, if he's our God, then they shall be my people.
24:15
We're going to be God's peeps.
24:19
He's going to be our God.
24:21
Look, this is totally contrary to idolatry.
24:26
The prophets all said, prophet Isaiah says, a guy goes out there, he takes his ax, he chops down a tree, he brings it back home, he strips the bark of it, part of it he chops up.
24:36
He takes it down there, he fires it up, he cooks his food on it, okay? Then the other part, he fashions an idol of his own making, he doctors it up, he paints it, shellacs it, puts gold on it, then he holds it up with chains or cords to it, then he bows down and talks to it.
24:55
And then he offers fruit to it.
24:58
Anybody been to a Hindu temple? I hope not in here.
25:01
You ever seen Hindu temples, there'll be rotten fruit by these idols.
25:09
The idol can't eat it because it's dead.
25:13
It's a dead God.
25:15
And then people bow down and pray to it, and they give it something to eat that it can't eat.
25:22
And it's always taunted by the prophets in the Old Testament, you bow down and talk to something that can't talk nor it can't hear.
25:30
But God says, you'll be my people, meaning I am the God that doesn't need to be upheld by chains and cords.
25:39
I'm not the one that you need to bring fruit to me because I'm hungry.
25:42
I'm the God of all things, I'm lack of nothing.
25:44
But I will be your God, and you will be my people, and I will sustain you, and I will take care of you, and I will make sure you have everything that you need.
25:58
You may not always have what you want.
26:01
And what do we want? We want everything.
26:04
But he says, you're my people, and I'm gonna take care of you because I love you.
26:14
And then verse 11, and they shall not teach every one his fellow citizen, and every one his brother saying, know the Lord.
26:30
And here's the fourth promise, for all will know me from the least to the greatest.
26:37
Now we're gonna look at this one a little bit longer than the last one.
26:43
Could you go, okay, it says, shall not teach every one his fellow citizen, and every one his brother saying, know the Lord.
26:51
Understand, under the old covenant, everything was mediated knowledge, everything.
26:59
We could go back to Exodus, when Moses brought them out, and he says, hey, the Lord's here, he's with us, we can meet with him, he's gonna come, consecrate yourself.
27:11
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Moses, we don't meet God, we're scared, you go, you find out what he says, and whatever he says, you just tell us and we'll take care of it.
27:21
He says, no, no, no, no, no, no, he wants to meet with you, and they said, no, terrified.
27:28
So under the old covenant, everything was mediated, and when it first came, was mediated through Moses, 40 years, mediated through Moses.
27:39
Then it was 40 years, mediated through the priesthood, with Aaron and the Levites.
27:46
It was all mediated knowledge, and if you remember correctly, whose responsibility was it to teach the people the law of God? It was the Levites, it was the Levites, and if you look all through the history of the old covenant, it was the weight falls on the Levites for being a failure.
28:09
Go to Judges, you had Micah's idolatry, where he set up a shrine, he was a Levite, he was supposed to be teaching the law, and what did he do? He made himself an ephod of his own, and sacrificed for somebody for money, Moses' own grandson, same thing.
28:31
So the Levites were supposed to teach the people of God, knowledge was mediated first to Moses, from Moses to the priests, then as you get on, it gets mediated through the prophets.
28:45
God did not speak directly to everyone.
28:48
I would have been cool to hear God speak, hey, Mike, I need you to go here, that would be cool, we would probably shudder in fear, but it was not uncommon when Abraham or one of the prophets heard their name called, okay? But God didn't talk to everybody that way, and through that 1500 years of prophethood, I'm going to use, to coin it, all of that revelation that was given was fragmented, it was in pieces, it was like piece-mailed.
29:22
Now was it perfect knowledge? Yes, it was without error, but it wasn't exhaustive knowledge.
29:29
Sometimes one piece built upon another, and then another upon another, but it was always in pieces, and in types, and in shadows.
29:38
That's why the beginning of Hebrew says that in various times, in various ways, God spoke through the prophets, through the fathers, through the prophets, but in this last day, He has spoken through His Son, Jesus Christ is the final Word and authority of Christ.
29:58
That is it.
29:59
Joseph Smith's book and his funny little glasses have damned him to hell.
30:03
There is not another testament of the Lord Jesus Christ.
30:07
This is the last testament, and only testament.
30:20
He says, everyone is brother, saying, know the Lord.
30:23
Because it was piece-mailed, there was this constant going to one another, trying to find out what was meant, what was said, how do I understand this? He says, from the least to the great, only the priests and the prophets had it.
30:47
Under the new covenant, everybody's going to have it.
30:51
Now that doesn't mean Keith's out of a job.
30:54
Doesn't mean we don't need elders to help assist in the learning of Scripture, but let me tell you something.
31:01
Me, Keith, Andy, anybody that stands behind any pulpit does not have any special revelation.
31:08
Study to show yourself approved.
31:11
There's no special knowledge.
31:13
Now, I might have access, Keith might have access to some books or to the original language that some of you may not have access to, but you could.
31:22
It's there.
31:23
It's there for the learning.
31:25
Now, God has wired men in different ways to communicate the gospel better.
31:30
Okay, sure.
31:31
Why did God give preachers? Wanted to proclaim His Word.
31:34
Why did He give pastors? To help shepherd God's people.
31:38
Why did He give evangelists? To help equip those so that when you leave here on Sundays or Wednesdays or whenever you're here, you can leave here knowing how to evangelize the lost.
31:50
But under the old covenant, it wasn't like that.
31:53
Under the new covenant, from the least to the greatest.
31:56
No elitism.
32:03
This will be one of the reasons why I'll never be a Presbyterian.
32:10
You've got to know God to be in the covenant.
32:16
You've got to know God.
32:21
I don't care if you sprinkled a baby.
32:23
What was that cool little thing Keith did to figure eight? I don't care how you baptize them.
32:29
They don't know God.
32:31
I don't care if you've been baptized in a fire truck, a basin.
32:35
It doesn't matter if you've been poured, sprinkled, thrown on.
32:38
I don't care if you've got a baptismal certificate tattooed on your back.
32:42
If you don't know God, you ain't in the covenant.
32:53
And then he says, this is eternal life.
33:03
Jesus says this.
33:06
This is eternal life.
33:09
On the night he was crucified.
33:11
This is eternal life.
33:13
That you know the true and living God and his son whom he sent.
33:19
That's how you know God.
33:22
It's through his son.
33:24
And if you don't know his son, you don't know God.
33:28
You reject the son, you reject God.
33:31
Me and Mike were just talking.
33:32
I'm not going to say his name, Mike, so don't worry.
33:35
We were talking yesterday morning.
33:36
We get together on Thursday mornings.
33:39
And we were talking about a well-known pastor.
33:42
And he had an opportunity to speak to a Jewish man.
33:45
And they were talking about the differences to rabbinical Judaism and Christianity.
33:50
And he made the statement.
33:52
And he said, well, you know, we believe in the same God.
33:55
And I about had epiplexy.
33:58
I was like, you've got to be kidding me.
34:01
The scripture is clear.
34:03
You reject the son, you reject the father.
34:06
You reject the son of the new, you rejected the old.
34:10
I was like, man, how do you say that? How do you say that? This is eternal life that you know.
34:22
The true and living God brought in Jesus Christ.
34:29
And then you have in verse 12, fifth promise.
34:39
For I will remember their iniquity.
34:43
I will be merciful to their iniquities.
34:47
And six, I will remember their sins no more.
34:55
That right there should make your heart sore.
35:02
Think it's in Isaiah 59.
35:04
It's your sins that separate you from God.
35:08
It's your sins that keep you away from God.
35:12
Well, once God says, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to get, I'm not going to, I'm going to wipe away your iniquities.
35:18
I'm not going to remember your sins anymore.
35:20
That means there is no longer a separation from God.
35:24
And that is, we are separated from God in the sense that we are disconnected from Koinonia with him.
35:31
And the only thing that connection we have with God apart from Jesus Christ is him being our judge and executioner.
35:39
And that the only thing that abides upon us is not the love of God, but the wrath of God.
35:46
And he says, I will be merciful to their iniquities.
35:52
And I will remember their sins no more.
35:56
It doesn't say I'll, I will remember their mistakes no more.
36:03
It doesn't say I'll remember their accidents no more.
36:09
It doesn't say I'll remember their oopsies no more.
36:16
Sins, violation of God's holy law.
36:19
Sins.
36:20
What is a sin? How is it defined in scripture? Transgression of God's law.
36:25
Sin is lawlessness.
36:28
So don't think of sin as just, oh, I had a bad thought.
36:31
You understand that one, quote, white lie will sink you into utter condemnation for all of eternity.
36:41
One.
36:46
That nanosecond.
36:47
That it says, love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
36:52
And love your neighbor as yourself.
36:54
Anybody in here done that for one nanosecond? Every time you take that breath, you're storing up wrath for the day of wrath.
37:04
You understand? It's every second, every nanosecond that you don't bow your knee to King Jesus.
37:11
You're taking that coin, boop, drop it into the bank of wrath, and it's compounding interest daily.
37:18
And one day, if you don't repent and turn to Christ, He's going to dump that out on your head.
37:24
But under the new covenant, He says, I'll be merciful to their iniquities, and I'll remember them no more.
37:34
Number 347 out of 922.
37:36
Why I'm not a Presbyterian.
37:41
Because little babies that get baptized, their sins ain't forgiven.
37:47
That is the most confusing thing for people to see.
37:53
They baptize that child, bring them into the covenant is what they said.
37:57
They become members of the new covenant.
37:59
I don't even know to go any further.
38:00
We can go right here, and who does it say is in the new covenant? Who? They got to know God and have their sins forgiven.
38:11
That's it.
38:13
And a baby, sins ain't forgiven, and they don't know God.
38:17
Now, we ain't going to get into how all that works out.
38:21
But they're not part of the new covenant.
38:22
Do we raise our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Yes.
38:26
They may go their own way.
38:27
But the responsibility of the parent is to raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and don't give them some false insecurity that you were sprinkled, christened, dunked, whatever, squirted when you were a child.
38:42
That does nothing but confuse.
38:46
The Bible says repent and be baptized for the remission of sin.
38:58
It says they'll remember their sins no more.
39:01
I'll read that.
39:02
And every time I read through the book of Hebrews, I get to that and I go, man, why can't we be like that with one another? Why can't we be like that with one another? Don't say forgive and forget, does it? Remember no more.
39:22
Does God forget? Really, does God forget? So it says remember no more.
39:28
What is He saying? He's saying that God ain't forgot anything you've done.
39:32
It's covered under the blood if you trust Him with faith and repentance.
39:37
He's not going to bring it up as a point of contention, a point of consternation between you and Him.
39:43
Why can't we be like that with one another? I love my wife.
39:52
I love my wife.
39:54
Not one time I was a bad man.
39:59
Not one time has my wife ever brought something back up to me that I did for 25 years.
40:08
I asked one time, I said, does none of that bother you? Mike, I forgave you.
40:16
I forgave you.
40:17
Now, I can tell when I've not given her enough attention.
40:21
My sock drawer, my underwear drawer looks like somebody with a little cake batter, just spins everything around.
40:28
Maybe underwear in the socks.
40:30
Socks in underwear.
40:32
Handkerchiefs in socks.
40:38
But she forgave me.
40:39
So when we forgive one another, why can't we just let it go? Remember the sins no more.
40:48
I'm so thankful that God doesn't remember my sins to hold them against me.
40:51
Because that is, hey, think about how many times you sinned on your way here.
40:56
I'll tell you what, before you get up and walk out.
41:00
And He'll remember them no more.
41:05
And verse 13, And when he said no, he made the first obsolete.
41:18
But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
41:27
When he said new, he meant new.
41:31
Like I said earlier, this ain't a re-administration of the old.
41:34
When he said new, it was done.
41:39
Everything that God required under the old covenant is done.
41:43
Ceremonial, however you want to look at it.
41:44
Ceremonial, civil, more.
41:45
If that's how you want to look at the law, it doesn't matter.
41:47
He fulfilled it all.
41:48
It's fulfilled in Christ.
41:51
None of it is needed as a covenant.
41:55
Now that does not mean that we don't look at the old covenant and say, Hey, look, there are things here that we can draw principles to live our lives.
42:05
Certainly, all Scripture is profitable.
42:07
And when he said all Scripture, they did not have what we have right now.
42:10
All they had was the old covenant to look at.
42:13
But it's no longer a covenant.
42:16
It has been wiped away.
42:18
Jesus said, I have not come to destroy the law or to do away with it but to fulfill it.
42:26
Notice Jesus didn't say, Hey, I'm not going to do away with it.
42:31
He said, I didn't come to destroy it.
42:33
My purpose for here is to do what? Fulfill it.
42:36
If you go all the way back, when they took the Mosaic legislation, when they received it, it was this law must be fulfilled or man is accursed.
42:46
I bet how many of y'all forgot that passage.
42:49
That's why Jesus came into the world and fulfilled every bit of it to the T, to the T.
42:59
And when he said no, he made the first obsolete.
43:05
And I, there has to have, we got to have a grammar lesson in this one alone.
43:10
Got to.
43:11
Because it says here, he made the first obsolete.
43:15
Well, made, okay, made is a verb.
43:19
And in Greek, it is in the perfect tense.
43:24
Okay.
43:24
It's in the perfect tense.
43:25
It says he made the first obsolete.
43:29
If it says he made the first obsolete and it's in the perfect tense, that means it's one time in history with abiding result forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
43:38
It can't go back.
43:40
Once it's made obsolete, there's no going back.
43:43
Okay.
43:44
He's made it obsolete.
43:45
Meaning it's done.
43:47
It's over.
43:49
When Jesus on that cross, he said it is finished.
43:56
The sun set on the Mosaic legislation.
44:00
It was over.
44:06
But whatever is becoming obsolete is growing old and ready to disappear.
44:18
Becoming obsolete and growing old are what's called participles.
44:24
They are connected to the main verb which is made.
44:28
And this has to do with understanding what happened to the law of Moses.
44:33
The law of Moses, the first part is a theological declaration.
44:39
The first one is made obsolete.
44:41
Theologically, it's done as a covenant.
44:45
Historically, now it's becoming old.
44:48
Participle meaning in the present tense, it's becoming old.
44:52
I'm sorry.
44:52
It's becoming obsolete and growing old.
44:55
A participle works like a verb.
44:58
So what it's saying is, all right, it's done away with, but now it's becoming old and obsolete.
45:05
Well, why would the writer of Hebrews say that? Well, if we know the book was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, what were men doing still in the temple? I believe the book was written between 64 and 66.
45:20
If you think something different, that's fine.
45:23
But we know this temple sacrifice has stopped around 66 with the Jewish wars.
45:27
You had a three-way civil war, and they came in, they killed the priest, and it stopped from 66 to the destruction of the temple.
45:34
So it had to, for him to say it's growing old and about, and it's becoming obsolete, there had to be the understanding that there was still something going on in the temple complex.
45:46
So he's saying, look, this thing's going old, it's already obsolete, for whatever purposes for God for 40 years allowed this to continue to go on, and my understanding of it is because that's where the Christians went to, the Jewish Christians went to evangelize.
46:01
I mean, no better way to evangelize than seeing a man and his son walking up with a lamb or something to slaughter and going, hey, brother, you don't have to do that no more.
46:12
That Christos they talked about, that Jesus Christos guy they saved from the grave, he's up, he's alive, and you don't need to do that any more.
46:19
Matter of fact, that's blasphemy.
46:24
But it was becoming obsolete and growing old, and here it is, and it's ready to disappear.
46:30
What other words we got? Vanishing? What else? What else? Vanishing, disappear, what else? That's it? That's it? The Greek word, aphanisimo, and it means to be destroyed.
46:47
That sounds a little harsher, doesn't it? It means to be deceased.
46:53
Old Covenant is about, and its shadow is about to be destroyed.
47:01
It happens in AD 70.
47:03
Jesus nailed on the cross, says it is finished.
47:06
Mosaic legislation, the sun set on it.
47:08
Forty years he allowed that to carry on, and in 70 AD, you know what happened to the Mosaic legislation and all of its increments and stuff that were in the temple and all that? They took that coffin, shut the door on it, nailed it shut.
47:28
Done.
47:29
Judaism is forever gone.
47:33
No priest, no temple, no sacrifice.
47:39
That makes Judaism, and I don't mean to be snarky, an irrelevant religion.
47:46
Irrelevant.
47:49
And why? Because a true temple had come.
47:55
Because Jesus ushered in the new and everlasting covenant with his own blood.
48:01
And with a new covenant comes a new mediator.
48:06
And that new mediator brought new promises.
48:11
Job, first book written in the Bible.
48:15
He couldn't foresee this, but he knew this.
48:18
Oh, God, if I could just have someone to put their hand on you and put their hand on me, I need a mediator.
48:26
That's what Job said.
48:27
He actually uses the word umpire, but that's what it is.
48:29
I need somebody to be in between.
48:31
I need the person that can be God, and I need the person that can be man, so that you and me can come together.
48:37
That came together in the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ.
48:42
Jesus is better than the angels.
48:46
That's what Hebrew says.
48:49
Hebrew says he's better than Moses.
48:52
You know why Moses even came along to introduce us to Jesus? Jesus is better than Aaron, the high priest.
49:04
Jesus was better than all the Levitical priests that could ever come, all combined.
49:11
Jesus is better than Melchizedek.
49:14
And if you don't know who Melchizedek is, there ain't a whole bunch.
49:17
It's only about four times in Scripture.
49:18
But there's enough there to know that, hey, he was an important dude.
49:26
And Jesus was better.
49:28
His blood was better than any one of a bull, of a goat, popping a head off of a turtle dove, or an ox.
49:39
Jesus' sacrifice was better than any other sacrifice.
49:42
Why? Because his sacrifice ushered in the new covenant, meaning Jesus is now the substance of the new.
49:50
His blood is the everlasting covenant that you and I were brought into by faith in Christ.
49:57
Now, if you're here today, and you don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the wrath of God abides on you.
50:05
That's it.
50:06
There is no question of, well, maybe I could be in, maybe.
50:11
If you have not bowed your knee to King Jesus, you are under the wrath of God.
50:16
And Jesus says, Come unto me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
50:20
That mediator of that covenant is no better than God himself.
50:31
I'll close with this.
50:37
I'm going to make a quote.
50:44
A quote of a man who's probably been the most instrumental man in my life, at least in my Christian life, and I hope in yours as well.
50:56
The Apostle Paul writes this.
51:01
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
51:07
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
51:14
And here it is.
51:15
You ready? For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and offering himself up for sin.
51:30
And he condemned sin in the flesh so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us so that we would not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
51:44
That's why this is a good Friday.
51:47
For what the law could not do.
51:51
The laws never intended to do that.
51:54
It was temporal and preparatory.
51:58
For when Christ came, just like it said, we were saying earlier, it says in the right time Christ was born under the law to redeem those under the law.
52:11
To redeem those under the law.
52:16
If you're here today and you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, Good Friday is good.
52:25
And it should be celebrated.
52:28
It should be a day that we gather in worship.
52:30
Because it is the day that Jesus stood suspended between heaven and hell and he bore the wrath of God in sinners place so that they could be reconciled to a holy God.
52:41
But if you're here today and you do not know Christ, when Jesus stood hung suspended between heaven and hell, if God will do that to his own Son, what would he do to you? Father God, thank you so much for your word.
53:06
Thank you for the new and everlasting covenant that is fulfilled in your Son.
53:12
Father, what we could not do for ourselves, your Son did in our place.
53:16
He was our penal substitutionary atonement.
53:18
He provided not only atonement, he provided propitiation.
53:23
And in not only providing that, he provided a way to be justified.
53:29
And then after you justified us, Father, then you took off that robe.
53:32
That was the robe of a judge.
53:36
And then you embraced us as sons and daughters of the Most High.
53:40
And Father, for that we say thank you.
53:43
Thank you for your Holy Spirit that leads and guides us into all truth.
53:50
And thank you for that Friday.
53:53
For sending your Son to accomplish what we could not do.
53:57
In Christ's name, Amen.