The First Recorded Covenant

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I want to invite you to take out your Bible and turn with me to the book of Genesis, which is the first book of your Bible, and go to Genesis chapter 9.
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For those of you who are visiting with us today, I want to just tell you sort of where we are.
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We have been going through Genesis verse by verse, so you are coming into a series of messages, so hopefully that won't catch you too far off balance.
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I do try to explain where we are in the text and bring you up to speed.
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Last week we began our study of Genesis chapter 9.
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We looked at the cultural and civilizational mandate which is given there.
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It is given to Noah.
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You'll remember Noah was the one who God saved through having him build an ark.
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To take onto that ark his family, his wife, his three sons, and their three wives, and all of the animals, two of every kind, and seven pairs of all of the clean animals, and he brought them onto the ark to save them from his wrath.
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God poured down wrath in the form of water.
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The Bible says the earth exploded, the wells of the deep burst forth, and water filled the earth, not only from above but from below, and it killed every man, woman, child, and animal on the face of the earth except for those who were in the ark.
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When we arrive at Genesis chapter 9, Noah comes out of the ark and God reestablishes the new creation with Noah as it were like a new Adam.
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Noah is now the new head of the human race.
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As Adam was the head of the human race in the beginning, Noah comes out and he is now as it were like the new head, and he's establishing with Noah a new mandate, and he gives Noah three mandates.
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What we talked about last week first was the mandate regarding family.
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He says, go and be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
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This was an exact recitation of what he had given to Adam, and then he expanded it out to food.
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He says, you may now eat of not only vegetables, but you may now eat of the meat of the animals.
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You may now expand the diet, and he also gave them rules for law and order, particularly in regard to the death of men.
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He says, when a man sheds the blood of another man, so too shall his blood be shed, and this is the foundation for what we would say is the death penalty.
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We have in Genesis 9, 1-7 the civilizational mandates given to Noah, and then in the second part of chapter 9, we have the covenant God makes with Noah, and that is going to be our attention for today.
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In fact, it's going to be our attention for today and next week.
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Today is going to be the first half of a two-part sermon, but it will come to a conclusion today, so don't feel like if you're only visiting this week, if you're visiting from another church you won't get the whole thing.
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You'll get the whole of this week.
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Because basically what I'm going to do is this week I'm going to exegete one word, and then next week I'm going to exegete the whole passage.
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And what that means is this week I'm going to focus on one single word, and that is the word covenant.
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Because I want us to understand as a church what a covenant is, why a covenant is important, and what covenants we see in the Bible.
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That's today, and next week we're going to see what is distinct about Noah's covenant with God.
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So let's stand and we're going to read Genesis chapter 9, beginning at verse 8.
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Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.
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It is for every beast of the earth I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.
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And God said, This is my sign of the covenant that I make between me and you, every living creature that is with you for all future generations.
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I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
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When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature and all flesh, and the water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.
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When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.
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God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray even now that as I seek to preach it, that you would keep me from error, that you would also keep me from cowardice.
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Lord, that I would preach with accuracy and boldness by the power of your Spirit.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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I have been looking forward to preaching this section of Genesis since we began studying Genesis.
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And it just so happens that in the providence of God, it happened to fall on this day, this very important and relevant day, and it's very important and relevant for several reasons, not the least of which we just saw someone receive a sign which is meant to represent the new covenant, but we also, in just a little while, are going to be affirming a confession of faith for our church which was written over 400 years ago.
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And this confession of faith focuses our attention on the reality that the Bible has a coherent and an overarching theology from beginning to end.
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The Bible is not, as some secular arguers try to make it, the Bible is not just a hodgepodge of history from ancient Near Eastern culture that was shoved together by a bunch of people who didn't know each other and put together into a sort of weird stitched together narrative.
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That's not what the Bible is.
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The Bible is 66 books written over a period of 1500 years by over 40 different authors, over three different areas of the world, and the Bible tells the same story from the beginning to the ending.
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And so the Bible is itself a miracle of God because the Bible has for us the very Word of God, and it is the very Word of God from beginning to end, and there are marking posts throughout the Bible that help to establish for us where we are in the narrative.
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If you think of the Bible like one really long play, and if you've ever been to a play, you know how plays have acts in a play? The covenants of God work almost as it were like the acts of the play.
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God intervening in the lives of His people, making promises, establishing relationships, and through that creates as it were the skeletal structure of the whole Bible.
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And therefore the covenants stand as these major acts or scenes or marking posts through the Bible so that we can follow the narrative and see how it all fits together as not a hodgepodge of irrelevant and unconnected stories, but one story, His story from beginning to end that God has established for us.
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So what we're going to see today is we're going to see that we serve a covenant making God, and our relationship with Him is a covenant relationship.
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We're going to answer three questions.
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Number one, what is a covenant? Number two, why are covenants important? These are on the screen if you want to bring them up.
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What is a covenant? Why are covenants important? And what are the biblical covenants? So let's look first at the first question.
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What is a covenant? We see this word come up several times.
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As I said, I'm not exegeting the text today.
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I'm exegeting the word, but you'll notice that as we read through the text, this word came up several times.
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I want you to turn in your Bible for just a moment back to chapter 6 and look at verse 18.
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In chapter 6, you will remember, this is when God speaks to Noah and tells him that He's going to use him as a vessel of salvation.
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And in chapter 6, verse 18, it says this, but I will establish my covenant with you and you shall come into the ark, you and your sons, your wife and your son's wife with you.
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See, here He says, I will establish the covenant.
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By the way, that's the first time the word covenant is used.
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When I was preaching through Genesis 6, I had to force myself not to stop there and preach this sermon then because that's really when we see it the first time.
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But I said, nope, I'm going to hold off until we get to the covenant actually established because you'll notice here, this is in the future.
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He says, I will establish my covenant with you.
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Well, when does that happen? We go back to Genesis 9 and we look at verse 9 and it says, behold, I establish my covenant with you.
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God makes a promise back in Genesis 6 of something He's going to do and then two chapters later in chapter 9, He does it.
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Three chapters, I'm bad at math.
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It doesn't matter.
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From 6 to 9, He says He's going to do it in chapter 6, He does it in chapter 9.
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And so we see the establishment of the covenant.
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Now we ask in the question, what is that? What is a covenant? The word covenant is not something which we use a lot today.
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The language of covenant is limited almost exclusively to religious conversation, even though I'm seeing it become more common in secular use.
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I saw something the other day, an HOA covenant.
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Y'all know what an HOA is, right? That's our own little brand of socialism.
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Be careful.
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We're in covenant relationship with all of our neighbors that nobody's going to reduce our property values.
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But it's called a HOA covenant.
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I'd never seen, but I saw the word covenant used and I thought it was kind of interesting that they would choose that language because again, the word covenant is almost exclusively used in religious conversations.
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But that's not the way it's always been.
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Especially in the ancient world, covenants were made and established for all kinds of relational bonds, not necessarily all spiritual.
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In 1 Samuel chapter 18 verse 3, it says Jonathan and David entered into a covenant together.
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You remember Jonathan was David's best friend.
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He was son of Saul, the king, and Jonathan loved David with all of his heart.
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And the Bible says in Genesis 18.3, then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as his own soul.
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So that was something that Jonathan felt he needed to do.
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He needed to be in a covenant with David, a covenant of friendship and trust.
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In Genesis 31, we'll get there in a few years as we're going through Genesis pretty slowly.
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When we get to Genesis 31, we'll see that Laban and Jacob entered into a covenant regarding marriage and the daughters.
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There was a covenant relationship there in regard to family and Laban asked Jacob to enter into a covenant relationship.
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It says in verse 44 of chapter 31, come now, let us make a covenant, you and I, and let it be a witness between you and me.
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So a covenant in that sense is an establishment of an agreement or an establishment of a relationship.
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The term covenant is from Latin.
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The Latin is convener and it means a coming together.
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It presupposes two or more parties that are coming together.
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The Hebrew word is bericht and it means a treaty, a compact, or an agreement between two parties.
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And in our modern language we have used a different word and I do think we need to understand the difference.
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In our modern language we tend to use the word contract rather than covenant.
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And there are similarities between a contract and a covenant that needs to be understood.
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There are similarities between a contract and a covenant but they're not the same.
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They both involve two parties or more coming together.
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They both involve an agreement and a promise of usually a mutual benefit.
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They both tend to include penalties for breaking the agreement.
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But covenants carry more weight than a mere contract.
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I'll give you an example.
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When someone enters into a contract, there's usually a clause that they can break the contract at some type of personal expense.
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For instance, let's say a person has a rental apartment and they say, okay, you're going to sign an agreement to stay for a year.
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But let's say six months into it, the person gets a job in another city and they have to break the contract.
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Well, there's a payment that can be made that breaks the contract and there's no more moral issue.
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The moral issue is done because there's a payment that's made and the moral issue is done.
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The person is satisfied, you understand, because the contract is intended to have this sort of way of getting out.
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But with a covenant, we see a different type of relationship established.
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I'll give you the best example that I can, the covenant of marriage.
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Marriage is not a mere contract.
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When I met Jennifer, I was 17 years old.
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We got married two years later.
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We got married right here and I didn't feel like I was signing a contract.
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Sometimes we joke about being under contract with one another, a lifetime contract deal.
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But the idea of the covenant is it was more than a mere contract.
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Because to break this covenant would be more than simply paying a debt or paying off something.
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There would be a moral issue.
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There would be a moral breaking.
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There would be something that had to happen, a sin that would have to break that covenant.
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Could not simply be a payoff.
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We are in a relationship that is intended to be from death to us part.
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Are there sins that can break covenants? We do believe there are.
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But the intention of the covenant is that it is lifelong and not easily broken.
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And so we see the moral difference between contract and covenant.
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Just in that one simple example, I want you to think about that in joining the church.
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You realize when you join the church, this is a covenant relationship.
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Now it's not the same as marriage, but we do treat it as such as joining a family.
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Because a covenant is a family matter.
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It's a relational matter.
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We're coming together.
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It should not be that we take marriage lightly and it should not be that we take church membership lightly.
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That's not to say that there's never a reason to leave, but at the same time we should not church hop and we should not church shop.
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It is a covenant relationship that we're entering into under God to be a part of a family.
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That's why it's Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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Because we are a family and we have entered into a relationship together.
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We're not just fulfilling duties.
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See, a covenant is all about duties.
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You do this, I'll do this, and we're going to fulfill our duties.
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I'm sorry, contracts.
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Thank you.
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See, family.
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I'm corrected all the time.
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I appreciate it.
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Love it.
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A contract brings two parties together to fulfill certain duties, but a covenant establishes a relationship and a relationship that's intended not to be easily broken.
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So I would say if somebody says, what's the difference between a covenant and a contract? It really is the weight of it.
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It really is the morality of it.
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It's the relationship of it.
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This is why in the Old Testament, when the covenants were made, oftentimes there was a very gruesome scene that accompanied the establishment of the covenant.
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When we get to Genesis 15, we'll look at this more closely.
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But what we see in Genesis 15 is what was known as cutting the covenant.
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And cutting the covenant was when they would take an animal and they would cut the animal in half.
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And then both parties of the covenant would walk between the animal.
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And the reason for doing that was both parties of the covenant walked between the cut animal so as to say, let it be done unto me as has been done unto this animal if I break this covenant.
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So it was referred to not as making a covenant, but as cutting a covenant.
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Because you cut the animal, you separated the animal, you walk through.
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Now what we're going to see in Genesis 15 is when God makes His covenant with Abraham, only God walks through.
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Because God is the one making the promise independent of Abraham.
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It's to Abraham, not with Abraham.
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We'll talk about that later, but that's a big part of understanding how the covenants go.
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And so the idea of a covenant is the establishment of a relationship.
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And God establishes His relationship with us through His covenant.
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Now, number two, if that is what a covenant is, why are they important? Well, it should come rather naturally if that's what it is, that's why it's important.
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The reason why covenants are important is because they are the method by which God has established His relationship with His people.
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We've already stated that covenant is relationship and I want to ask you this question.
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Do you have a relationship with God? People ask you that all the time, don't they? Maybe a better way to ask that question would be are you in covenant with God? People always say, oh, I want to talk about my personal relationship with Jesus.
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I don't.
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I want to talk about the covenant that God made through Jesus Christ and He brings me into it by His mercy and grace.
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Because that's the relationship that matters.
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It's not about how I feel, it's not about what I think, it's about what God has done and the promises He made in that covenant.
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That's why earlier when I said, when we talked about Trinity being baptized, I said we're not celebrating Trinity's decision, we are celebrating the promise of God to her in this picture because this picture is what was done in Jesus Christ that made that promise possible.
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It was Jesus who died, it was Jesus who was buried, it was Jesus who was risen again and now by receiving the sign she is in union with Him in what He has done.
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Now that union took place when she believed.
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I don't want to confuse anyone.
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That union takes place the moment you believe because the Spirit baptizes you at that moment but this picture is a picture of that inner reality.
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So my question with you, we're not to the end of the sermon yet, but I'm driving towards this question, don't get too excited.
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Driving to the end, this is the question, are you in covenant with God today? Are you in covenant with God today? You know it's possible to be in covenant with the church and not in covenant with God because you can be a false confessor, you can come in here and profess to believe and really not.
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So you might say, well I'm in covenant with Sovereign Grace Family Church, yes, but are you in covenant with God? That's a more important question and I would say this, if you're not in covenant with God you shouldn't be in covenant with the church.
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Some people put on a pretty good show.
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The people who knew God in the Bible knew God through a covenant relationship.
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I want you to listen to Andrew Murray.
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Andrew Murray, Scottish preacher, he said this.
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He said, one of the words of scripture which is almost going out of fashion is the word covenant.
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There was a time when it was the key note of the theology in the Christian life of strong and holy men.
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We know how deep in Scotland it entered into the national life and thought it made men mighty to whom God and His promise and power were wonderfully real.
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It will be found still to bring strength and purpose to those who will take the trouble to bring all their life under control of the inspiring assurance that they are living in covenant with a God who has sworn faithfully to fulfill in them every promise He has given.
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You see, covenant is about God's promise and if you live in the assurance of God's promise you will live in victory in Christ because you will remember every day that you are living not by what you do but by what He has done for you.
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No man knows God today truly who is not in covenant with Him.
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And as Andrew Murray said, that was what gave men of old strength to move forward, to remember that they were under the covenant promise of God.
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Thirdly, what are the biblical covenants? Well, we will spend the majority of our time on this, the rest of our time on this.
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What are the biblical covenants? Well, when you pick up your Bible, you will notice that your Bible is divided into two parts.
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As soon as you open it up, you will notice that there is a part called the Old Testament and a part called the New Testament.
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You may know this or you may not, but the word testament is simply the Latin word for covenant.
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So right away, when you open your Bible, it is divided into two parts for you.
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It is divided into the Old Covenant and it is divided into the New Covenant.
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And what's important about that is that's the language the Bible uses.
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That's not language we impose from the outside.
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That's language that the Bible uses in itself.
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I'll give you a few verses to just point this out.
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In the book of Jeremiah, that's the Old Testament, Jeremiah promises that there's a New Covenant coming.
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Listen to this.
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Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
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And somebody says, well, that doesn't include us.
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We're not Jews.
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The Bible says in Christ there is no more Jew and Gentile, but we are one in Christ Jesus and we have been grafted in to this covenant by grace.
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So are we part of the New Covenant? You better believe it.
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This New Covenant, the Bible says, is for us who are in Christ.
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Christ is the true Israel and by uniting with Him, we are part of that promise in Him.
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So Jeremiah 31, 31 tells us there's a New Covenant coming.
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2 Corinthians 3, 14 talks about the Old Covenant.
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Listen to this.
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It says, their minds were hardened for to this day.
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When they read the Old Covenant, the same veil remains.
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It's talking about the Jews.
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And it says, when the Jews read the Old Covenant, meaning the Old Testament Scriptures, their minds are still confused because they have not received Christ.
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But notice what it calls the Old Testament.
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It calls the Old Testament Scriptures the Old Covenant.
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So the Bible uses the term Old Covenant.
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The Bible uses the term New Covenant.
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And as Brother Mike read to us earlier from Hebrews chapter 8, what does it say? It says, in speaking of a New Covenant, He makes the First Covenant obsolete.
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And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
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We have the New Covenant.
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We are in the New Covenant.
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But the Bible is not made up of only the Old Covenant and the New Covenant because if you go back to the Old Covenant, you'll notice that there are other covenants in the Old Covenant that we need to understand.
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And I don't have time to go through every intricate part of each one today, but I at least want to give you the outline because this is important.
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The first covenant that we have in the Bible is the covenant with Noah.
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This is the first time the word covenant is used.
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This is the first time that the Bible ever speaks of God making a covenant.
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Some people would say God made a covenant with Adam.
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That is a conversation that would take longer than I have in this sermon.
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Let me just say this.
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The Bible doesn't use the language of covenant with Adam.
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The Bible says that God gave Adam a command and Adam broke that command as our representative head.
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There is some covenantal language there that we could get into and when we go through the 1646 Confession, when Brother Andy and I are going through the 1646 Confession because we're going to start doing that this Wednesday night, I'm sure that we will address some things about Adam and his relationship to us.
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But the first recorded covenant, that's why I called this the sermon, the first recorded covenant, is the covenant with Noah.
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The next recorded covenant that God makes is the covenant with Abraham.
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Then after that, the next covenant God makes is the covenant that God makes with the nation of Israel through Moses, sometimes called the Mosaic Covenant, sometimes called the Sinaitic Covenant because it was made on the Mount Sinai.
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Depending on how you call it, it's the covenant God makes where He gave the law.
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That is generally, and I think our elders would agree with me, that's generally what's being referred to when we talk about the Old Covenant because it refers to the law.
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Paul makes a distinction between law and grace and Old Covenant and New Covenant.
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He makes a big point about not living under that law anymore.
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So, when we talk about the Old Covenant, generally it's referring to the Sinaitic Covenant.
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But there is a fourth covenant in the Old Testament, there's a fourth covenant made that people often forget.
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It's the covenant with David that God made regarding His throne.
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Your throne will last forever and one of your sons is going to sit on that throne forever.
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You see, all of the covenants point forward to the fulfillment in Christ.
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We're going to see next week how the covenant with Noah even has fulfillment in Christ.
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It points forward to Christ.
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Certainly the covenant with Abraham points forward to Christ because Paul says that.
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He tells us specifically that what God promised to Abraham is fulfilled in Jesus.
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The Mosaic Covenant, the Bible says, was meant to be temporary to keep people under guard until the Old Covenant was over and the New Covenant would come.
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And the Davidic Covenant, the covenant with that throne, was pointing forward to Jesus who would sit on that throne forever.
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So, all of these covenants point forward to where we are today.
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You realize you're in the New Covenant.
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If you're a believer, you are at the end of the show.
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There's no more acts.
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There's no more scenes except for the consummation of all things when Jesus Christ returns.
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That's when the curtain closes.
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But these covenants take us through the Bible and they create the framework for all of it.
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Now, with that being said, I want to close by simply pointing to one thing regarding the New Covenant that we are in.
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Because if all these covenants point forward to where we are now, we have to say, wait a minute, that's two-thirds of our Bible.
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Even more than two-thirds of our Bible is Old Covenant.
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Does that mean that that doesn't matter? No.
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But what it does tell us is that's been fulfilled.
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That what that was pointing to has been fulfilled.
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Let me give you a thought on that.
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Why is it that when we came together today, we didn't bring in a goat and sacrifice a goat on this table right here? Because, one, that's not an altar.
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Because we don't need altars anymore.
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And we don't need sacrificial animals anymore.
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Why is it that we no longer sacrifice our babies on the eighth day according to the law? Because we're not under that covenant anymore.
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Why is it that we no longer have to wear particular vestments? Now, I know the Southern Baptist vestment is a tie, but I mean, I no longer have to wear the gown and the hood and all of those things, the big hat and all of the urim and the thummim.
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Why? Because all of that is fulfilled in Christ.
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I don't have to do that anymore.
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Praise God.
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All of that pointed forward to something.
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That does not mean it's not important.
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That does not mean it's not valuable.
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And in fact it gives us infinite more value for it.
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Because it wasn't meant to be forever.
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It was meant to point to Him who is forever.
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Matthew 5, 17, when Jesus is talking about the law, He says, Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
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I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
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They're fulfilled in Me.
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When He spoke to the men on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, what did He say to those men? He said, I want to tell you about all that is written in the law of Moses and the prophets was about Me.
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And in 2 Corinthians 1.20 it says this, All the promises of God find their yes in Him.
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He is the fulfillment of all those promises.
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All the promises made to Israel are in Christ.
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All the promises made to Abraham are in Christ.
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Even the promises made to Noah, as we'll see next week, find their fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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We live under the blessing of the new covenant.
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What is the blessing of the new covenant? Turn your Bible.
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I'm going to let you see it.
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The blessing of the new covenant.
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Go to John 3.36.
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Now this is before the establishment of the new covenant.
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Jesus establishes the covenant in His blood.
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This is before the cross, but Jesus gives us something very important in John 3.36.
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And this is where I want to leave you today.
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He says in John 3, Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.
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Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
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That's it folks.
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You either repent of your sins and believe in the Son and have life or you reject Him and you reject the only hope of life there is.
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That's it.
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You are either in Christ or you are not.
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There is no halfway point.
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There is no purgatory.
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There is no midway.
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You can't hold on to the outside of the ark.
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You are either in the ark, which is Christ, or you're outside.
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Jesus said whoever believes in the Son has life.
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So my question again for you today, have you entered into a covenant relationship with God through repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ? Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for your truth.
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I thank you for the opportunity to get to preach it today.
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And Lord I do pray for everybody under the sound of my voice.
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Lord first and foremost for the believers that they would be confident in your promises and encouraged in all that you have done for them.
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But Lord for those who do not know you, Lord the Bible says the wrath of God abides upon them.
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I pray that they would flee the wrath of God.
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That they would turn from their sins and run to Christ.
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Knowing Lord that your word tells us that Christ will never turn away one who comes to him.
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We thank you.
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We praise you.
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We glorify you.
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In Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.