What Is The Value Of The Old Covenant? – Hebrews 8:13

Well, if you're not there, please turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 8, the passage that we read a little earlier, that's going to be our focus here this morning,

Hebrews chapter 8 and verse 13.

All right, let's bow before the Lord and ask for His help before we begin. Our Father, we have expressed to You the worship and the desires and the sentiments of our hearts, our affections and our joys and our delights in You and in Your Son and in all that You have done for us, and so we ask now that You would speak to us through Your Word and help us as we seek to understand a section, a passage, a principle in Scripture that is often fraught with confusion and one that is difficult to understand.

Help us to think clearly and we pray that You, Father, would send Your Spirit to be our comforter, our teacher, and our instructor here in Your Word for the glory of Christ our

Lord. In His name we pray. Amen. Well, though our study of the New Covenant so far has been thorough, it is not yet complete as we still have one main issue, one big issue that I haven't really thoroughly answered or dealt with up to this point in our study of the

New Covenant, and that is the question of if we are in the New Covenant and not the Old Covenant, what then is our relationship to the

Old Covenant? We have a half of our Bible, the first half of our

Bible, all of that marks Old Covenant or Old Testament, and we have laws back there and books and prophets and psalms and wisdom and proverbs and stories and all of the stuff that that contains.

What is our relationship to that covenant? If we're under the New Covenant, do we get rid of that portion of the book?

Do we care about that portion of the book? Should we know what's in that side of the book or should we just keep ourselves in the

New Testament side and say we're just going to be New Testament Christians and not going to concern ourselves with the Old Testament? What is the value of the

Old Testament and what is the value of the Old Covenant if we are no longer under the Old Covenant? That is a key question and I hope you're going to see before we're done today that it is a question that is fraught with a lot of confusion in a lot of circles and Christians are not necessarily unanimous in their understanding of what exactly our connection to the

Old Covenant is. Do we have to keep the feasts and the festivals? Obviously we don't keep the sacrifices.

You didn't see a priest dripping with blood on your way in here, out in the parking lot offering sacrifices, at least he wasn't there when

I came in. Granted I was the first person here, but nobody said anything so I'm assuming nobody walked past a priest doing that.

We're not burning incense in here, do you notice that? We have no incense or essential oils burning.

There's no bells and robes and all of the accoutrements of the Old Covenant. Do we keep those or should we try and keep those?

How much of the Old Covenant do we take and drag into the New Covenant, if any of it? All of it? Some of it?

Most of it? What principles determine which parts of the Old Covenant are for us today, if any parts of the

Old Covenant are for us today? See all of those are key questions and Christians oftentimes are very confused on that.

What we're going to try to do today is to try and answer that question. In our look at the New Covenant we've done a few things.

We have walked through the interpretive issues that separate dispensationalists from covenant theologians.

We've talked about those issues. We sort of talked about the different camps and how each of them approaches the subject of the

Old and the New Covenant. We've examined the original context of Jeremiah 31 where the promise of the

New Covenant was given in the days of Jeremiah. We looked at that. We looked at the context of Ezekiel, which also describes some of the promises of the

New Covenant and contrasts it with the Old Covenant. We have looked at the relationship that the New Covenant has to primarily two of the

Old Testament covenants, the covenant of Abraham, the covenant made to Abraham, and the Davidic covenant, the promises given to David.

We've looked at the relationship between those and then we have contrasted the New Covenant with the Old Covenant. And by Old Covenant we're talking about the

Mosaic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the one mentioned in verse 9 of chapter 8 when the author says on the covenant which

I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. That's the covenant that is marked here, identified as the

Old Covenant. So we've contrasted the promises of the New Covenant with the promises of the Old Covenant in order to show that the promises of the

New Covenant are better promises. We have a better covenant with a better mediator and that better covenant is established on better promises.

That's chapter 8 verse 6. So that's what we've done so far. That brings us to verse 13 and we're not going to get past verse 13 today because verse 13 does really three things.

First it answers the question of how much of the Old Covenant is binding upon us today in the New, under the

New Covenant. Second it functions as a conclusion to the author's argument thus far but it also transitions us into the subject matter of chapter 9.

So verse 13 is a transitional verse that sort of wraps up the argument of chapter 8. Remember that chapter 7 was, in chapter 7 the author showed us that we are no longer under the

Aaronic priesthood. We have a better priest. It's Jesus, not Aaron. Better priesthood, not the Aaronic priesthood but the

Melchizedekian priesthood who offered a better sacrifice, not an animal sacrifice but his own sacrifice. So all of those things are better.

In other words, the implication of chapter 7 is that Old Covenant with all of the priesthood and the sacrifice, the tabernacle, something has happened to render that either obsolete or old fashioned or no longer necessary.

That was the argument of chapter 7. Then in chapter 8, the author intends to show us that this should not come as a surprise to us that we're under the

New Covenant because all the way back in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 31, under the Old Covenant, an Old Covenant prophet promised that there was a

New Covenant to come. So if we're in the New Covenant, if a New Covenant has showed up, it shouldn't surprise us since that's exactly what was promised.

Now verse 13 kind of transitions. Verse 13 sort of concludes chapter 8 because his argument is if the

New has come, the Old is obsolete. Look at verse 13. When he said a New Covenant, he has made the first obsolete, but whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

That answers our question that we started at the beginning. It also kind of summarizes chapter 8, but it transitions us into chapter 9 because in chapter 9, the author is going to take all of the major features of the

Old Covenant beginning with the tabernacle and all of the furniture in the tabernacle, the showbread, the brazen altar, the

Ark of the Covenant, the lamp stand, the altar of incense, all of those aspects that he mentions in verses 1 through 10.

The author is going to take all of those major features of the Old Covenant and show us that what Christ has done in the

New Covenant supersedes, replaces, and abolishes all of those things. And then he's going to do the same thing with the priesthood, and then the same thing with the sacrifices, and then the same thing with the blood.

He's going to show us that all of the major features of the Old Covenant have all been superseded, done away with, and replaced by the person and the work of Jesus Christ because what we have now is muchos better.

That was for your sake, Ed. It's much better. Better promises, better mediator, better sacrifices, everything is better.

So that's the point of chapter 9. So now verse 13 really gets to the heart of the issue of what is then our relationship as those under the

New Covenant, what is our relationship to the Old Covenant? Should we be trying to fulfill it? Should we be living as if we are under it?

Are Christians supposed to keep the Ten Commandments, or is that just for the

Jews? Should we not care about the Ten Commandments in terms of striving to keep them? Are we free to be lawless?

If we're not under the Old Covenant law, does that mean we can live however we want and go on sinning, that grace may abound?

Are we free to do that? What is our relationship to the dress codes of the Old Covenant?

Can we wear mixed fabrics? All of you are. Nobody here is in the non -mixed fabric.

Can we wear mixed fabrics? What about the dietary laws? Are we free to eat cheeseburgers and bacon and bacon cheeseburgers, which violates so many

Old Testament laws you don't even want to think about it, and pork chops? Do we have to give up ham and shellfish and bacon and bacon?

Do we have to give up all of those things? What is our relationship to all of those various Old Testament laws, or are we completely free in Christ?

Do we take some of the things of the Old Covenant and drag them into the new and allow those things to inform how we view and how we live the

New Covenant reality? That's really the key question. So let me set the table with some theological principles.

These I've just gleaned from our study in Chapter 8 of Hebrews so far, and I'm just going to set the table with a couple of these. This will be something of a refresher, but it will also help us sort of frame our discussion of this this morning.

Number one, here are three of them. Number one, remember that the New Covenant was made with Israel. This has been our guiding theological principles.

We've worked our way through Chapter 8. We've looked at it in Ezekiel. We've looked at it in Jeremiah. We've looked at it in Hebrews 8. The New Covenant was made with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

Therefore God is going to fulfill those promises to Israel and to Judah. At the same time, we are in some way incorporated into the promises of the

New Covenant, but we have to keep in mind that God has made this New Covenant promise to his nation and to his people. So God's intention is that in blessing the

Israelites, in blessing that nation, both now and particularly most significantly in the future when all of those eschatological blessings come to pass,

God in his intention to bless them overflows, his grace overflows to us who are not

Israel so that we get all the salvation benefits of the New Covenant while we await the eschatological end times benefits of the

New Covenant. So we get all of that. The second principle is that the New Covenant is not unrelated to the other covenants.

We've seen that the New Covenant does not abrogate or replace the Abrahamic Covenant. God promised his people a land.

He promised them a seed. He promised them that blessing. That blessing was given to Abraham. The New Covenant does not wipe that off of the table, nor does the

New Covenant abrogate or do away with the Davidic Covenant. The promises that God made to David of a king and a kingdom in that land, those are still in play because the

New Testament, the New Covenant does not replace that. And that leads us to the third thing, well let me say one more thing.

In the New Covenant, the fulfillment of the New Covenant, both the covenant to Abraham and the covenant to David will find their ultimate fulfillment because there are promises given to both of those men concerning them and their descendants that have not yet to this day been fulfilled.

So all of those blessings will be fulfilled as God brings everything together at the end in fulfilling the promises of the

New Covenant which he made to the house of Israel and to the house of Jacob, the house of Israel and the house of Judah, sorry not to be confusing here.

The house of Israel and the house of Judah. So the New Covenant then brings in or realizes the fulfillment of all those other covenants as well.

They're all fulfilled at the same time. They all come to a conclusion together. That brings us to the third statement to kind of set the table and that is that the

New Covenant replaces the Mosaic Covenant and no other. The New Covenant replaces the

Mosaic Covenant, the covenant made with Moses or through Moses with the nation of Israel and no other.

This is the covenant that is replaced. It is identified in verse 9, the covenant that God made with his people when he brought them by the hand out of the land of Egypt, that is the

Mosaic Covenant. At Sinai, the Ten Commandments sort of encapsulates the moral law of God contained in that old covenant.

That old covenant contained the Aaronic priesthood and the temple and the tabernacle and instructions on building that and how the priesthood should function and how the sacrifices would be made and how the feasts and the festivals would be celebrated.

All the things that are attached to that old covenant, that is all part of the Mosaic Covenant. So it is the

Mosaic Covenant and no other covenant that is replaced by the New Covenant. That is important. Now that brings us to the meaning of verse 13.

All that sort of sets the table for us. Look at verse 13. When he said a new covenant, he has made the first obsolete.

Whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear. Notice how the author describes the old covenant and again, it is the

Mosaic Covenant that he has in mind. It is obsolete, growing old, and ready to disappear.

That word obsolete is translated in the King James Version, old, which can sometimes communicate something that is not intended by the word.

Kenneth Wuston, his commentary on Hebrews writes this, the distinctive Greek word for old here is not the word which describes something old in point of time, but it is the word that describes something old in point of use, worn out, antiquated, useless, or outmoded.

Now what he means by that is he's using the word old not in its sense of age, but in its sense of usefulness.

In other words, the old covenant did not need to be replaced simply because it was 1500 years old. It needed to be replaced because it was useless to do what

God intended the new covenant to do. It's a matter of its usefulness, its ability to accomplish something.

That's the sense in which it is old. And so it's better translated as obsolete because the idea is not that it's old, it's been 1500 years and therefore it needs to be replaced.

Because if covenants just simply wear out after 1500 years, where are we at? How long has it been since the new covenant started?

It's 2000 years. So we got the old covenant plus 500 years. We don't think that the new covenant needs to be replaced simply because of its age.

Do we? It's not an age issue at all. It's a usefulness issue. The old covenant was useless to do certain things.

It wasn't designed to do certain things. So the old covenant was not intended to pay the price for sin.

The old covenant wasn't intended to perfect the worshiper. The old covenant wasn't intended to save or to sanctify or to secure people.

The old covenant wasn't intended to do any of those things. Those things were accomplished by the work of the one who initiated the new covenant, the

Lord Jesus Christ. And so it is a usefulness issue is the reason why it is obsolete, why it is outmoded.

It doesn't work. And it was a designed inadequacy. Remember we go back to that. I've talked about that before. It was a designed inadequacy.

God did not intend it to pay the price for sin. He didn't intend for it to perfect the worshiper.

It could not do that and God knew that ahead of time. So after 1500 years it needed to be replaced because it had grown obsolete.

Now I think there's almost a prophetic element to what the author says here and you can see it in the language that he uses when he says, but whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

Ready to disappear. It is almost as if the author looked forward to that old covenant disappearing soon, but he was looking forward to that happening.

Do we look forward to it disappearing or do we look back at when it disappeared? We look back at when it disappeared.

You see, within the lifespan of this author, assuming he didn't die right after he wrote the book of Hebrews, but within the natural lifespan of this author, he would have seen the

Old Testament, the old covenant actually disappear. From his perspective, he was looking forward to it simply vanishing and going away.

But the functions and the forms and the practices of that old covenant had not yet gone away because when he wrote the book of Hebrews, you could go at that day into the city of Jerusalem, walk up to the temple mount.

The temple was still standing. The priesthood was still there. The sacrifices were still being offered. And you could go on the day of Yom Kippur, on the day of atonement, and you could see the priest enter into the

Holy of Holies and sprinkle the blood and provide the blood of the atonement for the nation of Israel. All of those forms and functions and festivities and everything, they were still going on.

They were still happening even in Israel at the time. So the author almost prophetically, I don't think he knew how this would happen, but almost prophetically, almost prophetically, he knew that it had to happen.

It had to eventually disappear. Why was it? Because all of the forms and the features and the functions of the old covenant, all of those things were nothing but the worn out husk, the shell of a once operating covenant.

But once Christ died and the temple veil was torn in two from top to bottom and access to God was granted and Christ rose from the dead and the spirit of God came, once that new covenant had been initiated and purchased by the blood of Christ, the old covenant was gone.

Now, all of the forms of it were still there, the priesthood, the sacrifices, all still going on. And it did for another four decades after the death of Christ until in 70

AD, Titus, the Roman general, came into Jerusalem, destroyed Jerusalem, sacked it, destroyed the temple, took all the articles and put an end to the priesthood and the sacrifices and all of the stuff that went on as part of the old covenant.

But at the time of the writing of the book of Hebrews, the author of Hebrews knew it's ready to disappear because the old covenant was like a vehicle operating with an engine that was running at high speed and then you cut off the engine, you take the engine out of it.

What is going to happen to the vehicle? The vehicle is going to eventually, it might still continue rolling for a little while, but eventually it's going to close to a stop and it's going to come to a stop.

The old covenant was like that. When Christ came and did what he did, God was no longer working through or in the old covenant, so like a vehicle whose engine has just stalled and it continues to coast for a little while, it did for about 40 years, and then everything about that eventually vanished.

And the author knew this old covenant is ready to disappear. It has to disappear because God is no longer in it and that covenant is no longer functioning.

It has been abrogated and replaced by a new covenant, therefore it can't go on forever. Eventually it's going to peter out and die.

He knew that. It has become obsolete and the author knew this and he knew it had to happen and it eventually did.

Now given all that, again we go back to what is our relationship then to the old covenant? Should we be acting and living and worshiping as if the old covenant's directions and instructions and laws are somehow intended to guide our expression and living under the new covenant?

Should we be keeping the feasts and the festivals and observing Passover, but doing it kind of in a Christ -o -centric way?

Can we celebrate the Passover and eat the meal and drink the wine of the Passover meal and enjoy that in a way that kind of looks forward to Christ and really keeps him at the center of it?

Is that what we should? Should we really take the old covenant and just put Christ in it so that now we can celebrate and practice everything of the old covenant, but now it's about Jesus since we know?

And you know that there are Christians that that is exactly how they treat the old covenant and the new covenant relationship.

And so again, what about the dress codes and the dietary laws and the planting regulations and the clothing regulations?

What about the Ten Commandments? Do we still have to keep the Ten Commandments? Should we try and keep the

Ten Commandments? Is it a measure or a roadmap to our own sanctification and security in Christ?

Now that I've asked all those questions, I ask you, what do you think the author of Hebrews would answer to that? What would the author of Hebrews answer to that?

Do you think that he intends to suggest that we should take as much of the old covenant and practice it in a

Christ -centric way as we possibly can? Do you think that's how he would answer it? Do you think that in the mind of the author of Hebrews, he wants us to simply go back and take circumcision out and put baptism in and then regulate and practice baptism according to all of the parameters of the old covenant?

Do you think that he would have us take Passover out and put communion in and then celebrate communion as if we are

Jews living under the old covenant? Do you think he would just simply have us take animal sacrifices out and put the sacrifice of Christ in and keep everything else about that old covenant?

Or do you think when the author says it is obsolete, it is growing old, it is ready to disappear, what we have is better in Christ by far, every element of it is better in Christ by far, do you think that the author wants us to simply take the old covenant and just insert

Christ into it and then live as if we're Old Testament Jews? Or do you think that the author of Hebrews would take the old covenant, take it completely off the table and say, now we have something new and it is entirely better?

From start to finish, every aspect of it is better, every element is better, you are free in Christ because that old covenant has been abrogated, taken away, removed, it's gone, it's dead.

You're not under it at all. Which do you think the author would do?

Just one of the two, if you had to choose between the two. I know I've kind of weighted the scales a little bit, right, in my description of it.

Like, oh, I don't want to think that we should just replace circumcision with baptism. No, of course we don't do that.

And yet, I didn't plan on pointing this out, but I will point this out. Covenant theology does that very thing.

You cannot make a case for infant baptism without appealing to the structure, the forms, the functions and the regulations of the old covenant.

It's obsolete. It's gone. So, we don't take baptism and practice baptism as if we're

Jews living under the old covenant. The old covenant does not inform our understanding of New Testament signs and symbols at all.

The old covenant was not intended to do that. It's a dead covenant that is useless to accomplish anything concerning your salvation, your sanctification or your security in Jesus Christ.

So that, I think, is how the author of Hebrews would answer that. We are not under the old covenant.

So here's what we do not do. We do not take the old covenant and simply remodel it in terms of the new covenant.

So the new covenant is not a remodel of the old covenant. The new covenant does not come in and say, you know, the problem with the old covenant is that you have, let's liken it to an automobile.

The problem with the old covenant is that you have an engine that doesn't work, a tranny that's going out and you need new rims. So if we just take the engine out, replace that with the sacrifices of Christ, the sacrifices of animals, and we take the transmission, which is baptism, and we just put that in instead of take out circumcision, and we just give it a new paint job, new rims and wheels, new wheels and tires on it, and brush that up, that's communion, and now we got something that can work.

The new covenant is not a remodel of the old covenant, nor is the new covenant just a new paint job on the old covenant.

The new covenant is not an addition of a room onto the house of the old covenant. It's not as if the old covenant was great, it just needed something just a little bit more.

And so if we just take the old covenant and we add Christ to that, then it will work. Then it will be useful.

No, it's still useful. It's a dead covenant. You can't add to that. It stands as it was. So we don't take the old covenant and renew it, give it a paint job, add onto it.

We're not just adding in the new covenant and an appendix onto it. Oh yeah, and then there's Christ, like we just add a chapter onto a book or something like that.

That's not how it works. We take the old covenant, this is my perspective, and we scrap it entirely because it is obsolete.

And then we have established in the New Testament, in the new covenant, all of the parameters, all of the terms, and all of the provisions that Jesus Christ in his death has given us.

The old covenant is obsolete. We're not trading out parts. It's not a software update. We don't have the

Mosaic Covenant 2 .0, where we just fix a few glitches, a few bugs in the system, and now it works.

It's a whole new operating system. We scrap windows and we go to something entirely different.

I don't know what it is. I'm not a software guy. But we're not just fixing an operating system, we're replacing it entirely.

In fact, I think that the best way to understand our relationship to the old covenant is to summarize it this way.

Our relationship to the old covenant is defined and determined by the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

It is defined and determined by the person and the work of Jesus Christ. Now here's what

I mean by that. To put it another way, we might ask it as a question, what demands does the

Old Testament law make upon me, one who is in Christ by faith, who has been imputed all the righteousness of Christ, whose sins have been forgiven, and who has been secured everlastingly by the death of the mediator of the new covenant?

What demands does the old covenant place upon me? In answering that question, we have to look at the person and the work of Christ and ask them, what did

Christ do on our behalf? Because that would tell us what our relationship to the old covenant is. Well, the old covenant would demand two things of us.

Number one, perfect righteousness. Thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife or thy neighbor's goods or anything else, honor your parents, keep the

Sabbath, worship the Lord your God and him only, don't murder, don't steal, did I mention that one, don't blaspheme.

All of those commandments, those commandments demand perfect righteousness of me. Well, are those commandments applicable to me?

Do they demand perfect righteousness of me now? Do I need to try and keep those commandments to acquire or accumulate or merit righteousness before God?

Or have all of those commands been kept on my behalf by somebody else? The law demands of me perfect righteousness.

Christ provides for me perfect righteousness. Because all the righteous demands of the law,

Christ has fulfilled on my behalf. Without sin, without spot, without blemish, without guile or guilt, he was the holy one, the perfect one.

He lived a perfect life and never violated any of God's commandments. And he merited all of his righteousness that he has merits perfection and it merits eternal life and the blessing of God.

At the moment of faith, all of that righteousness is imputed to your behalf, on your account if you're in Jesus Christ.

So then if you are seen perfectly in the eyes of God as righteous, having accomplished all of the

Old Testament law and fulfilled all of its demands, then I tell you, what demand does the Old Testament make upon you in terms of your dress code and the food that you eat and the 10 commandments?

Does it hold any sway over you at all? Does it command anything from you at all? All of it has been fulfilled on your behalf.

That is what it means to be righteous in Jesus Christ. Every requirement of the law is fulfilled on behalf of those who are in his son.

So that in the eyes of God, though I am not a perfect man, not even close to a perfect man, in the eyes of God before his judgment bar of justice, it is as if I, Jim Osmond, have kept every commandment of God in the

Old Testament perfectly without fail and never failed and was never guilty of anything.

That's what the righteousness of Christ gives us. So the Old Testament law demanded perfect righteousness. We didn't have that.

We needed somebody to provide that. Christ has provided that. Check. Second thing, the law demanded a sacrifice, a blood sacrifice, to cover the sins of those who could not and did not measure up to that standard of perfection.

Of course, this is exactly what Jesus has done. The innocent substitute who stepped in and shed his blood and gave his life as a sacrifice for many, a ransom for us, purchasing us from the slave market of sin, providing atonement and payment for all of the debt, sin debt, that we as his people had, he has provided that sacrifice and cleansed us in our conscience.

He has cleansed us from our sin. He has made us holy. He has made us perfect. He has made us righteous in his sight by his death on the cross.

So that all of the righteous demands of the law have been met on our behalf, and the requirement for a sacrifice has been provided, and he did this not by becoming a

Mosaic sacrifice and becoming an animal and offering an animal sacrifice. He did this by offering a sacrifice as a priest from a different priesthood, not

Aaron's, but Melchizedek, as a priest greater than Aaron. As a Melchizedekian priest, he was both offering and offerer.

So the gift that he offered to the Father on our behalf was the sacrifice of himself. So the law demanded me to be righteous.

Christ has provided that righteousness. The law demanded me to be a sacrifice for my sin, and Christ has provided that sacrifice for sin.

So what demand, then, does the Old Testament, the Old Covenant make upon me? Any? It has no claim upon me.

If you're in Christ, it has no claim upon you. If you're not in Christ, I'm telling you right now, the Ten Commandments are ten guns of God aimed at you, because you're still guilty.

But in terms of one who is in Christ, all the righteous requirements have been met. The sacrifice has been offered.

The Old Covenant makes no claim upon me. So that means, and I'm going to tell you something that is shocking at first, don't get up and walk out yet, because by the time we get to the end of this, you'll understand what

I mean. I do not try and keep the Ten Commandments. I do not try and keep the

Ten Commandments. I'll tell you why here in just a second. So, that is the righteousness of Christ.

So as Paul says in Romans 6, 14 and 15, sin shall not be master over you. You say, hold on a second, if you're not trying to keep the

Ten Commandments, how can sin not be master over you? I think it's possible. Romans 6, 14, sin shall not be master over you because you're not under law.

Paul says sin shall not be master over you. Paul does not say sin shall not be master over you because you do your best to keep the law.

He says sin shall not be your master because you're not under the law. But you're under grace.

Romans 7, 6, but now we've been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in the newness of the

Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. Because I'm in Christ, I'm dead to the Old Testament. The Old Covenant can demand nothing more of me than it can demand of a dead man.

Because in terms of my relationship to that Old Covenant, I have died in Christ. I'm dead. The Old Covenant can demand what it will of me, but it's nothing.

It's like me demanding things of a corpse. Get up and wash my clothes and cook my meals and paint my house.

I can make those demands of a corpse, but the corpse cannot and will not respond. The same thing with me.

I am dead in terms of the law. The law can make no demands upon me because I'm a dead man in Christ.

Romans 10, 4. For Christ is the end of the law of righteousness for everyone who believes. Galatians 5, 18. You are to be led by the

Spirit, for you are not under the law. So Christ has fulfilled the righteous requirements of the law on our behalf. Christ has provided the sacrifice that atones for our inability and unwillingness to keep the law, as we were required to do.

And so the law has no command, no demand, no sway over us at all. That Old Covenant is obsolete.

It is growing old. It was ready to disappear. It has already disappeared. It is no more. Now there is a dangerous error that lives on among many

Christians and in many Christian circles, and it is this. It is the error of Christians trying to live out their

Christian life as if they were Jews under the Old Covenant. Do you know some of these people?

They want to observe the feasts and the festivals. They want to observe all of the requirements of the

Old Testament, the dietary laws to the best of their ability, even the Sabbath regulations. They will try and implement those, and they'll take as much of the

Old Covenant, and their justification usually goes something like this. I'm trying to do this because those were God's expressions of righteousness to His people back then, so they must in some way have something that I can learn from today.

And so I'll take all that I can from God's expression of His righteousness to His people back then, and I will implement them into my own life in hopes that it will draw me nearer to God.

It will sanctify me. It will help me to live a holier life. If I try and live according to those standards of holiness, then certainly

I will be at least striving at a holy life. Before the sacrifice of Christ, could trying to do that with the

Old Covenant ever save you or sanctify you or make you holy? Was it able to do that?

It wasn't able to do that. If there was a law that could make one righteous, then righteousness would be by the law.

If there was a law, a covenant, that could make you holy and sanctify you, if that could come by the law, then that would have happened by the law, and the death of Christ would have been unnecessary.

So if the Old Covenant could not sanctify you and make you holy 2 ,001 years ago, then how can the

Old Covenant make you holy and righteous today? It cannot. If the Old Covenant could not perfect the worshiper and sanctify the worshiper back then, what do you think that now it's 2 ,000 years older than it was, and even more useless because of the death of Christ, how is it going to perfect the worshiper today?

All the efforts to strive after holiness and righteousness by keeping the Old Testament law are misguided, soul -destroying, soul -sucking errors by every measure.

It could not make you holy back then. It cannot make you holy now. So then you say,

Jim, then what is the purpose of the law? Does it have no value? Should the graduates who got their

Bibles today immediately leave here, take your Old Testament and cut it out there and throw it out and just have the New Testament?

Is that what I'm advocating? Am I saying that the Old Testament has no value? You know me better than this. Look, I'm the one who drug you all face -first through Ecclesiastes for a year.

Most of you unwilling to go through that. I'm the one who did that. So you know that I know that there's value in the

Old Testament, right? What happens every time we come to an Old Testament passage in our study of a

New Testament book? What do we do? We go back to the Old Testament passage. We look at it in its context. We appreciate it for what it is.

We make application of it. We see the connection to the New Testament. Do you really think that I would suggest that some people slanderously report dispensationalists as saying that there is no value in the

Old Testament? I don't believe that. It is still God's Word. Even though the covenant that it describes is no longer operative, it is still the

Word of God. It is still profitable for teaching, proof for instruction and righteousness that the man and woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

There is still tremendous value in the Old Testament. I'm going to give you quickly some of those as we wrap this up mercifully.

The value of the Old Covenant. Number one, it is the revelation of an unchanging God. The God and Father of our

Lord Jesus Christ, our triune God Yahweh, is revealed in the Old Testament. And His nature is revealed there.

His character is revealed there. His redeeming love, His sovereignty, His grace, His kindness, His goodness to all of His creatures.

His sovereignty and providence. His working out of all things. His redeeming love. All of those things are revealed in the

Old Testament. You can read through the Old Testament and you see all of those unchanging attributes of our God. He is revealed first and foremost in the

Old Testament. His righteousness, His justice, His goodness, His grace. All of that is on display in the

Old Testament. So we read through the Old Testament in order that we may know that God who made that covenant through Moses with the nation of Israel.

So there's value there because our God is revealed in the pages of the Old Testament. He's revealed also in the pages of the

New Testament obviously. But in the Old Testament we get a picture of all of those attributes of God and we have much to learn from those.

Number two, the Old Covenant does show what holy living looks like. It does. There is a command for God's people to be separate.

There are the Ten Commandments. There are commands of morality and purity and holiness and righteousness in the

Old Testament and the Old Covenant. And the Old Covenant can show us what holy living looks like. It does reveal to us the moral qualities of God, the moral character of our

God. What morality looks like, what holiness looks like. We see that on display in the Old Testament. Third, through the

Old Covenant we see the inability, depravity, and sinfulness of man on display. This is one of the best parts of the

Old Covenant. The Old Covenant in the Old Testament shows us that though God is righteous and He demands righteousness, that you and I are unable to acquire or to merit or to earn that righteousness.

We need somebody else to do that for us. In that way, the Old Covenant is a schoolmaster that leads us to Christ.

See, the Old Testament is intended to do this. It's intended to be a whip and a club and to drive you to the point of knowing that you need a

Savior. So that when you get to the Old Testament, you say, God is righteous and I am not and I need somebody to take care of this problem because I can never possibly keep all of His demands.

And so the Old Testament is intended to demonstrate your need for salvation and to drive you to the

Savior. It shows you your depravity. It shows you your wickedness. It shows you your lack of righteousness before God.

And it sets you up under the judgment of God to show you that you need a Savior to provide that righteousness and to pay the price for sin.

That's the glory of the Old Covenant. Paul says in 1 Timothy chapter 1, The law is good if one uses it lawfully.

There is a lawful use of the law and there is an unlawful use of the law. The unlawful use of the law is to use the law for sanctification and security and salvation.

The lawful use of the law is to use the law to show us our need for a Savior. And in that way, it is a schoolmaster that brings us to Christ.

And then fourth, the Old Covenant foreshadows the work of Christ. It looks forward to and anticipates the work of Christ. So that we see in Jesus Christ, our

God, that He is the Great Shepherd of the Old Testament. And you read through the Old Testament, you read of the rock of Israel. That is our

Christ. And you read of the kinsman redeemer. That is our Jesus. You read of the coming King. That is

Christ. He is a prophet that is greater than Moses. He is a sacrifice greater than all of the animals.

He is a king that is greater than David. He is a priest that is greater than Aaron. He is the showbread.

He is the Passover lamb. He is the day of atonement. He is Yom Kippur. He is all the feasts. He is all the festivals.

He is all that is anticipated in the Old Testament. If you want to know your Christ, you have to know your Old Testament. Because those entire books were dedicated to revealing and demonstrating

Him. It was Jesus who said in John chapter 5, You study the Old Testament Scriptures because in them you think you have life.

And they are those that testify of me. Moses wrote about Christ. On the road to Damascus, it was

Jesus who took the disciples and walking alongside of them, opened up the law and the prophets and everything in the

Old Testament to show to them the things concerning Himself in all the Old Testament Scriptures. You want to know

Jesus, you have to know the Old Testament. Not because you're trying to be saved by the Old Testament. Not because the

Old Testament tells you how to live your Christian life. That's what the New Testament is for. But because in the Old Testament, we see

Jesus. That's the value of it. That's the value of the Old Covenant. I told you that I was going to rescue you from the horrific idea that I don't try and keep the

Ten Commandments and here's why. If I take all of the

Ten Commandments and I wipe them off of the table, and if I were, hypothetically speaking, to take the

Old Covenant, which is the Old Testament, because other than the book of Job and a few of the

Psalms possibly, all of the Old Testament was written by men who lived under the Old Covenant. So if I take all of the Old Testament and I just, for a moment, pretend as if it does not exist, and then

I say, what are the demands of the New Covenant in Christ, morally speaking? What does holy living look like just from the

New Testament? You know what I will find? That though I am not under the Old Testament law, I am under the law of Christ.

And nine out of the ten commandments are repeated in the New Testament. There's one that is not.

Do you know which one is not? It's the Sabbath, which just coincidentally, actually not really coincidentally, is the sign and seal of the

Old Covenant. We thank you that it has been provided for us on the basis of faith.

We thank you that you have written, under the terms of the New Covenant, you have written your law upon our hearts, and you have empowered us to obey your commands, and you have given your spirit to seal them inside of our hearts, that we may live in obedience to you.

We thank you for your love and for your righteousness, and for all that is displayed in Scripture, and we pray that you would help us to live the law of Christ, to walk in holiness and obedience to you, that we may obey you and please you in all things.

May you do that work in our hearts and encourage us together today through your word we pray in Christ's name. Please stand.