The Blessings Of The New Covenant Part 1 – Hebrews 8:8-9

And now we turn your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 8, the 8th chapter of Hebrews. We're going to read in Hebrews chapter 8, and we'll read verses 8 through verse 12.

Hebrews 8, beginning at verse 8, "'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, not like the covenant which

I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead 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, "'For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days,' says the Lord, "'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. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.'"

Let's pray together. Father, it is our earnest desire to be able to understand

Your Word, and anytime we read in Your Word of the promises of salvation and redemption and of Your covenants, we are getting a glimpse into Your eternal and redemptive purposes, and into the very nature and heart of You, our

God, who desires to save sinners and does save sinners for Your own eternal glory. And we ask that as we look at Your Word today and examine the promises here of the new covenant that You would be honored and glorified through this teaching and through the meditation of our hearts, and that You would be honored and glorified in and through our understanding of this passage.

And so, we would ask for the aid and assistance and the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit today as we look at Your Word, that You may be glorified here in the hearts of Your people.

That is our prayer and our earnest desire and expectation. We ask these things in the name of Christ and for His sake and for His glory, amen.

Well, you'd be happy to know that we've done almost all of the heavy lifting in terms of understanding the new covenant and its parameters.

We've kind of laid the groundwork by looking at the differences between dispensationalists and covenant theologians.

We did some introductory work on the new covenant, and then we answered the question, to whom are the promises of the new covenant given?

And that is a huge question because that is really at the heart of the difference between dispensationalists and covenant theologians.

Who gets the promises of the new covenant? To whom is it given? And last week we looked at four different views of the new covenant, and I would like to say regarding all four of those views of the new covenant, they're within evangelicalism, no one of those views is heretical in and of itself.

There are good men, good theologians, our brothers and sisters in Christ who would hold to any or all of those four views of the covenant, the people in each one of those camps.

And so, this is not a heretical doctrine in those terms of what you believe about the new covenant.

But answering the question, to whom are the new promises of the new covenant given, that really gets down to the heart of the distinction between two primary views of the new covenant held within evangelicalism, probably the most popular, the most prominent two positions on this subject would be covenant theology and dispensationalism.

Covenant theology, again, to review would be kind of the R .C. Sproul, James Montgomery Boyce, Benjamin Breckinfield, Warfield's camp,

Hodge's camp, and that sort of group on the sort of the Reformed, the old school

Presbyterian camp, that would be covenant theology. Dispensationalism would be more along the lines of John MacArthur, and John Wolverd, and some modern names would be

Michael Vlock, and who's the other guy I'm thinking of? Anyway, not that you're writing this down. So that would be the dispensational camp.

So those would be the two main camps. And here's how each of them would answer this question, to whom are the promises of the new covenant given?

The covenant theologians would say the promises were given to Israel as a nation, but they are fulfilled by the church.

Given to Israel, but fulfilled in and by the church. Obviously not that we are a new nation, but that we fulfill spiritually some of the elements of the covenant as the people of God now under the new covenant in this new dispensation.

Dispensationalists would argue differently. They would view it differently. They would say that the promises were given to national

Israel, and they are not all fulfilled in the church. The church gets to enjoy some of those blessings today, but ultimately, eschatologically at the end of time, those blessings will be fulfilled in Israel.

So dispensationalists would recognize the distinction between Israel as a people, as a nation to whom promises were given, and the church who have been brought into the promises of the new covenant.

We've been brought in by faith as it were, and Israel's disobedience has not meant their rejection. Israel's disobedience means our salvation.

Now because they have disobeyed, the kingdom has been delayed as it were, and God has now opened the door of faith to the

Gentiles, and we get to be brought in and enjoy all of the salvific blessings of the new covenant. And though we enjoy the salvific blessings of the new covenant today, though we're not national

Israel, we're not descendants of Abraham in any physical sense, we are his spiritual offspring in that we trust in the very one who mediated the covenant that we will be fulfilled with the descendants of Abraham.

So now we get the salvation blessings now, but we will also participate in all of the end time blessings, all of the eschatological end of time blessings that will fall upon the nation of Israel in fulfillment to the new covenant.

So we've kind of been brought in on the side as it were, and now we're incorporated salvifically into that, but when

God fulfills all of those promises to Israel at the end, then we also will enjoy the kingdom and the land and all of those blessings that are promised to the nation of Israel.

But Israel will be at the center of that, and we get all of those blessings as well. Today we get the salvation blessings of it.

Now whatever your view of the new covenant is, you have to incorporate, you have to deal with five basic truths that we have been looking at in recent weeks, and I'm just going to review these quickly.

Whatever your view is, covenant theology, dispensational theology, and obviously I'm a dispensationalist, so I think that my theology deals with all five of these in the best possible way.

But whatever your view of the covenant is, it has to deal with, you have to have room for these five facts. Number one, the promises were given to national

Israel. You cannot get around that. They were given to national Israel. Jeremiah chapter 31 is not addressed to Gentile nations.

It's not addressed to the church. It's not a promise to the church. It's given to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.

Those promises were given to national Israel. That's the only way that text could possibly be understood in its context if it is allowed to speak for itself.

Second, these promises are connected to God's fulfillment of His other covenants. You see that in Genesis, or Jeremiah, I keep saying

Genesis, Jeremiah 31, you see that in Jeremiah 31 with the reiteration of the terms of the

Abrahamic covenant of a land and a people and a blessing. And you see that in Jeremiah chapter 31 with the reiteration of the

Davidic covenant, that there will be a king and these blessings will be fulfilled just as God gave them to David. So the promises are connected to the fulfillment of God's other covenants.

Number three, the New Testament quotation of Jeremiah 31 does not change, reinterpret, or spiritualize those promises in any way.

When the New Testament author in Hebrews 8 quotes Jeremiah 31, he doesn't change, reinterpret, or spiritualize those promises in any way to any degree whatsoever.

There's not even a hint, not even the vaguest hint that the author of Hebrews intends that passage to be understood in any way other than Jeremiah would have understood it.

Number four, there is no hint that these promises are conditional in Jeremiah 31.

There's no hint at all in Jeremiah 31, in Hebrews chapter 8, in the

Abrahamic covenant, or in the Davidic covenant that any of those covenants or any of the terms of those covenants are in any way conditioned upon Israel's obedience, their worthiness, or their keeping of the terms of the covenants.

They're not in any way conditional and that is not even hinted at in any of those passages. Number five, we undoubtedly participate in some way in the new covenant, don't we?

There's some element of the new covenant that we participate in. So I built this entire perspective of the new covenant that says it is given to the house of Israel, to the house of Judah, it is for them, it's national

Israel, it's not spiritualized, it's not taken away from them, it's not conditional, God will fulfill it to them, and yet in some way we benefit from, we participate in the blessings of the new covenant.

How do we do that? I suggested to you last week that today we participate in it salvificly, we get the salvation benefits of that now, some of them, not all of them, some of them, and eschatologically at the end of time we will participate in all of the blessings that are promised in the new covenant when

God fulfills them to Israel. So whatever your view of the new covenant is, you have to deal with those five facts, I think. And the only way to do that is to see, as I have suggested, that today we participate salvificly and later we will participate with Israel eschatologically in that.

In short, the complete fulfillment of all these promises still waits a future time. I had to lay all of that out and talk about the differences of interpreting it because now as we start to look at the promises of the new covenant, how you view the answer to this question, to whom are the new covenant promises given?

Is it to Israel as a nation or are those new covenant promises given to the church?

Your answer to that question will determine how you interpret the individual promises of the new covenant, how you will interpret the individual promises of them.

So if, for instance, you hold to covenant theology, then you have to say that I don't believe that there is a future for national

Israel, I don't believe that those promises given to national Israel will be fulfilled by national Israel. God is done with the Israelite people.

And so the only way that any Jew alive today can participate in any covenant or any promise that God is going to fulfill is if they come to Christ and then they participate on the same terms as us, but in terms of the future as a nation, there is no future for national

Israel as a covenant theologian would say that. So then you would have to take each of the individual promises and understand them in some way that eliminates any kind of fulfillment for national

Israel and sees them as being fulfilled entirely in the church today in what we experience or what we participate in.

So it's going to affect how you view the fulfillment of those promises depending on who you think the promises are given to.

I hope that makes sense. Depending on who you think it's given to, it will affect what you think the promises are actually promising.

And I'm going to show to you over the course of the next little while that the promises that are given can be understood as being fulfilled both to us in some way today and to future national

Israel. I don't think that we have to choose between those two. So if the they and the them, which you read here in Hebrews chapter 8 when you get into the covenant in verses 8, 9, 10, and 11, when it refers to the they and the them and the their fathers and I took them out of the land of Egypt, who is that referring to?

It's national Israel. Well, if you're going to take and spiritualize that and apply it to the church today, then you have to in some way explain how it is that these promises are fulfilled entirely today in what we experience.

And I will show you that I don't think that these promises can be fulfilled entirely today in what we experience, not just because we don't experience all of it, but because these promises were not given to us, they were given to national

Israel. So your answer to this question, to whom are the promises given, will affect how you interpret the individual promises of the new covenant and it will also determine how you interpret the promises made to Abraham and made to David.

Because you see, if there is no future for the nation of Israel, then you have to go back to the Abrahamic covenant and say it is either conditional, which nowhere in the text is it suggested that it is, or that those promises are fulfilled in some way other than to the sons of Abraham.

They have to be fulfilled in some way spiritually and allegorically, metaphorically, in some other mysterious way in the church today.

And then you have to do the same thing with the Davidic covenant. And this is why I'm not a covenant theologian. It's far too much work to go back and to take all of those passages and cram them into my theological system than it is to just let the passages speak for themselves.

That sounded harsh, but it was intended to be a harsh statement regarding the difference between dispensationalism and covenant theologian.

It's way too much work to try and cram those passages into a theological grid than it is to simply say, what does the passage in its context teach?

Just by itself. Just read it on the surface. What does it say? It's national Israel, to the house of Israel, to the house of Judah.

So now let's look at these promises, the promises of the new covenant. There are three of them that we're going to be looking at, three of them.

And before I list the three of them and show you them in the text, I do want to clarify this is not to say that there are only three things in the new covenant.

It's to say that there are three specific promises here, but it would probably be better for us to think of these three promises in terms of them being sort of general promises or actually headings of promises or blessings.

We could think of them as three categories of blessings that are given in the new covenant because underneath each one of these promises, you'll see that there are a lot of things in each one of them.

For instance, the promise in verse 12 of the forgiveness of sins, I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.

That's a promise or a blessing of the new covenant. Complete forgiveness of sins. Well, what is involved with the complete forgiveness of sins for us, both now and in the future?

What's involved with that? There is obviously the blessing of our election, our being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.

There is the blessing of our calling and our being drawn to the son. There's the blessing of the gift of repentance, the blessing of the gift of faith, the blessing of the gift of our adoption, the blessing of God's gift of predestination, the blessing of redemption, the blessing of imputed righteousness.

That's just eight that I can only think of just off the top of my head. It wasn't really off the top of my head because it's here in my notes, but those are just eight of them that I can think and rattle off real quickly.

In other words, there are all of these other things that are under that blessing of forgiveness. What's tied in with the blessing of forgiveness?

All of those things. So it is with all of these other blessings of the new covenant. These are like categories of blessings or groupings of things that are involved with our salvation.

Think of it in those terms. Now what are the individual three blessings? I want you to notice them.

Beginning in verse 10, the first one is an internal law, that is a law that is written on our hearts and our minds.

Verse 10, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days says the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds and I will write them on their hearts.

That's the first blessing of the new covenant. An internal law, the law of God written on our hearts. Second, a universal knowledge of God.

Verse 10, 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 of these to the greatest of them. Jesus quotes from this passage actually in John chapter six.

Okay, so first is an internal law, second a universal knowledge of God, and the third blessing promise of the new covenant is the complete forgiveness of sins.

Verse 12, for I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.

So let's look at the first one, an internal law, and I want you to keep in mind as we go through all of these blessings of the new covenant that these blessings are not things that were provided under the old covenant.

These are not things that were provided under the old covenant. The old covenant did not make provision for any of these things.

And so there is an intended point of contrast here in the text between the old covenant, which again is not the oldest covenant, it's just the old covenant or the first covenant, and it was the

Mosaic covenant. There was a covenant older than the Mosaic covenant and that was the one given to Abraham. But the new covenant, and this is important, the new covenant does not abrogate or do away with the covenant that God made with Abraham.

The new covenant is intended to be the second covenant which does away and renders obsolete not every other covenant that has ever been made, the

Noahic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the priestly covenant, and the Davidic covenant. The new covenant only abrogates and does away with one other covenant, and that is the old covenant, the

Mosaic covenant. The covenant that God made with the children of Israel when he took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt.

That's the point of contrast in verse 9. On that day God made with the nation of Israel a covenant and it was the

Mosaic covenant. So the new covenant does not change, it does not alter, it doesn't reinterpret, it doesn't spiritualize, and it does not replace the

Abrahamic covenant or the Davidic covenant or the Noahic covenant or the priestly covenant.

All of those covenants are still in force. The new covenant replaces one, the terms that God gave to Moses with a nation at Mount Sinai.

When he brought them out of the land of Egypt and made them his people, the new covenant replaces and makes obsolete that covenant and that one alone.

So one of the first things that you need to know about the old covenant is how gracious that old covenant was.

And I want to spend a couple of moments talking about this because this is important. We tend to think of the old covenant that was made with Israel as sort of a condemning, judgmental, negative, horrible covenant that it would have been absolutely miserable to live under the terms of that.

And there was plenty of condemnation and there was plenty of judgment regarding the terms of the old covenant, plenty of curses that were there for disobedience.

But I want you to also see that in the old covenant there were elements of grace, a number of gracious elements in the old covenant.

It wasn't just a covenant of law and condemnation. There were gracious elements involved in the making of that covenant.

For instance, the context for the giving of that covenant was filled with gracious things. That God would condescend and make a covenant with any man or any nation is itself incredibly gracious.

Can you understand that, how that would be the case? That God would deign to condescend and to speak and to relate with sinners who deserve

His judgment in any kind of a gracious way. Just God's act of doing that and making a covenant with Israel itself was a gracious thing.

Not only that, but He took them into Egypt to preserve their lives and to make them a nation and then, as it says in verse 9,

He took them out of Egypt by His hand and delivered them from slavery. Took them by the hand and brought them out into the wilderness where He provided for their needs and gave them everything that they needed out in the wilderness.

And when He brought them out of Egypt, He plundered the Egyptians and they brought out with them all of the spoils of Egypt. How gracious are all of those things that God did in delivering the nation?

Did they deserve that? No, they were stiff -necked and hard -hearted people, disobedient, deserving of His wrath.

There was nothing about Israel, the book of Deuteronomy says, there was nothing about Israel that made them greater or mightier or more deserving than any other nation on the face of the planet.

But God made a covenant with that nation. How gracious was that? Just the terms, the environment of the making of the covenant was filled with gracious elements.

And all of this in spite of their grumblings. They came out of Egypt and they complained about being brought to the edge of the water and that Pharaoh was pursuing them.

Then they went out across the Red Sea and they complained about not having water. And then they complained about not having food. And then they complained about not having meat.

And then they complained about not having leeks. And then they complained about Moses and his leadership. Children of Israel complained about everything all the way along.

The book of Numbers is the book of complaints. It is them waging and lodging one complaint against God's grace after another.

And He could have destroyed them entirely and it would have not been an unjust thing for God to do at all.

It would have been completely just. But God treated them with grace, not because of them, but because of a promise

He made to whom? To Abraham. I'll give you the land, I'll give you the people, I'll make of you a nation,

I'll bring kings from you. Those were the promises He gave to Abraham. So for the sake of His promise to Abraham, He treated the nation with grace.

Just the context of the environment in which that covenant was made was a gracious thing. That God would take them by the hand and lead them out and make them

His people and reveal Himself to them in the law and in the prophets. In fact, the law itself had gracious elements as well.

We tend to look at the Old Testament law and we think, how ungracious is it to regulate slavery and women and children and obedience to parents and to stone people for certain crimes and all of that blasphemy, etc.

And we tend to think that that kind of law would have been onerous and horrible to live under and what an oppression that would have been.

But put yourself back into the ancient world, 2 ,000 years before Christ or 1 ,500 years before Christ, think of the culture at that time, what slavery would have been like, how women were treated in that context, and then you can understand that the giving of the law to the nation of Israel, which regulated indentured servitude and regulated how people were to treat their slaves and the women amongst them and their children and how justice should be done, it would have been a breath of fresh air to live under the

Mosaic law in that ancient world. In fact, the law itself was so filled with grace and mercy, there was judgment there, but it had so many elements of grace and mercy in it, that it would have been a delight, it should have been a delight for a

Jew to understand and to enjoy the justice that would have been done in a cultural society, how poor people would have been taken care of, how kids would have been raised, how the religious life of the nation would have been at the center of the nation, all of those are gracious elements.

God poured out his grace upon those people, bringing them out of Egypt and giving them the law, making them his people and pledging to be their

God and then promising them, if you obey me, you will live in the land and I will lavish you with prosperity,

I will pour out blessings upon you, you'll be able to have every male in your entire nation go up to Jerusalem three times a year and I will protect you from the surrounding nations around you,

I will pour out on you such blessing that all of the nations, the wealthy nations around you will look at it and say, wow, what a

God must be their God and they will want to know me, for you will make me known in your midst as you obey me, you obey me and I will pour out blessing upon you, did they obey him?

All of that grace and the response of the nation of Israel should have been to look at the Mosaic Covenant and say, we will obey him because he has been so gracious to us.

You understand the sentiment of the heart that does that, that looks at the gracious outpouring of God's goodness and says,

I will obey, not because I am demanded to, not because I am commanded to, I will obey because God has been so good,

God has been so gracious, God has poured out on me far more than I deserve and so I will render my obedience to him just because he has been so gracious, out of my affection and my gratitude

I will obey, but that is not the story of the nation of Israel, they didn't obey, in fact verse 8 of our text says that God found fault with them because they disobeyed, the people did not keep the covenant and the people were to blame for not keeping the covenant, the fault of obedience was not with the covenant itself, it's not that the restrictions or the commandments were too onerous for the people, it's that the people lacked an ability to obey the commandments and so they looked at the law and rather than saying we will obey out of affection and love for a gracious God who has been good to us, they looked at the law and said, we are not going to obey that, we don't want to hear the law of God, we are not even interested in the law of God and so verse 9 says, they did not continue in my covenant, the nation of Israel, they did not continue in the covenant of God and so God did not care for them, in other words

God promised them, you obey and I will pour out on you blessings, they didn't obey so God did not pour out those blessings, they didn't continue in the covenant and so God did not care for them and tend for them and pour out his blessings upon them just as the covenant stipulated and for that reason they were exiled.

The northern kingdom fell in 722 BC, the southern kingdom fell in 586

BC and together those two captivities, the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom and the

Babylonian captivity of the southern kingdom, those two destructions left their land looted and plundered and being indwelt by foreigners and it left the

Israelites themselves exiled to foreign nations and so they were ejected from the land and that was the mark of their disobedience but God promised he would bring them back to that land again.

Now listen, the promise to be brought back to the land might sound gracious at first until you realize, you think through it,

I want you to think like a Jew for a second, imagine that you are in the Babylonian captivity, you know you have disobeyed the covenant, you have been kicked out of the land as a result of it, you are in Babylon or you are even inside the land and you are just suffering under the oppression of your enemies and then there is this promise that God is going to bring you back to the land of Israel and you know that according to the terms of the old covenant, your dwelling in the land depended on your obedience.

Now with that understanding, is it a blessing to be brought back into the land? Yes and no.

You see, we failed the first time, didn't we? You would have to think that, we failed the first time.

We were in the land and we had everything and we lost it because we couldn't keep the terms of the covenant and then

God says, but I will bring you back into the land, now that's good news but hold a second, my possession of the land is still dependent on my ability to obey the terms of that covenant and if I failed one time, what am

I going to do the second time around? If God were to give me a second chance, see that's not good news because I as a wicked sinful person have no ability to obey the terms of that covenant.

Disobedience is my default setting, therefore it might sound like good news at first to be brought back into the land until you realize, but I still can't keep those commandments.

I still can't obey the terms of the covenant. Something must happen to me to make me want, desire and be able to obey those commandments and what is that?

That's the first blessing of the new covenant. Verse 10, I will put my laws into their minds and I will write them on their hearts.

You see, the old covenant did not change the sinner, it could not perfect the sinner. The old covenant could not do any of that because all of it was external, it was all rituals and external things, dressings and vestments and priests and sacrifices and everything was external to the worshiper.

And so the worshiper could approach God and honor God with his lips, but his heart would be far from him. And he could fulfill all of the external terms of that covenant, but internally his heart was wicked and proud.

And so he could go through the rituals, but everything about the old testament was only rituals. The old covenant made no provision at all for the worshiper to obey the terms of the covenant and this was the fault of the covenant.

The covenant demanded obedience, but no provision for obedience was made. In other words, there was no enablement in the covenant itself that enabled the people to obey the terms of the covenant.

So the covenant stood there and the people disobeyed, but the fault with the covenant was that the covenant did not create obedience in the people.

There was no provision in the covenant to create obedience within the people. So everything was external.

You're familiar with Deuteronomy chapter 6, where Moses said, these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign.

Now listen to all of these external descriptions. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be frontals on your forehead and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Where were they to write the commandments? Their hands and their forehead, the doorposts, the gates, you put them around the house.

Where were the commandments to be? Everywhere external. The one place that a Jew could not inscribe the commandments of God was the heart because the heart was made of stone.

They had to have something happen to the heart that enabled them to obey the commandments because you and I are the exact same way.

Without the grace of God, without the redemption that is in Jesus Christ and the enabling grace of God, we cannot obey the terms of the old or the new commandment.

We can no more keep the law of God than an Old Testament Jew could. We would have stood just as condemned under the

Old Testament law because we had a heart of stone and lacked the ability even to obey that. So the

Old Covenant did not transform the worshiper. It's not to say that nobody in the Old Covenant was saved. It's not to say that nobody in the

Old Covenant had a soft heart like David who longed for God. It's not to say that nobody in the

Old Covenant enjoyed those blessings and benefits. But it is to say that the Old Covenant itself did not provide them, did not guarantee them.

There were no terms in the Old Covenant that enabled obedience to its terms. The New Covenant is entirely different.

The New Covenant writes the law of God internally in the hearts and in the minds, and this is why in verse 10, the first provision is,

I will put my laws into their minds and I will write them on their hearts. So under the

New Covenant, one of the results of salvation, one of the effects of salvation, the benefits of it, is that now the

Word of God, the law of God, the righteous requirements of the law are inscribed upon the heart of a believer.

That's the internal reality. Now inside a believer, there is not only a recognition of the righteous requirements of the law, but listen, if you're in Jesus Christ, you have a desire to obey the righteous requirements.

If only I could be totally righteous. If only I could have no desire for sin.

If only there were in me no internal compulsion toward any kind of wickedness or impurity or immorality.

If only I got to enjoy the place and the position in my life where there was no inward inclination whatsoever toward any unrighteousness or sin, no evil thought ever came into my mind, no impurity, no wicked motive, no self -seeking desires, nothing.

If only I could have that. Have you ever longed for that? Have you ever been so sick of your sin that you said, I wish I could be done with this and done with this entirely?

In fact, I wish that there were a time and a place, I wish that I could enjoy it now when all my righteous desires would be fulfilled, when all

I longed for was righteousness. Or do you battle like Paul does and say, the law is there and I know what

I don't want to do, but those are the things that I do. And the things that I know I should do,

I can't do those. I don't do those. So, there's not a complete and total obedience on our behalf, even as those who have been redeemed to the law, there's not total and complete obedience even yet, but there is inside of us the righteous requirements of the law written on our hearts and the

Spirit of God dwells within us and now we have holy affections. That is the lot and the promise to every believer in Jesus Christ, that the heart is changed and His law and His truth is written on our hearts and we know

Him and we desire to obey. And because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we have the capacity to obey.

That is something that the Old Testament, the Old Covenant could never provide. The Old Covenant could never provide the desire to obey, nor could the

Old Covenant ever provide the capacity, the ability to obey. They lacked both the desire and the ability.

And this is the difference, this is the contrast, the first one, between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

The Old Covenant demanded obedience but could not enable it. The New Covenant demands obedience and it provides that enablement.

It enables us to obey it. This is why Paul in 2 Corinthians 3 when he's talking about the terms of the New Covenant and describing the

New Covenant, he says, we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as from the

Lord the Spirit. There is a transforming work that is done in the believer as a result of us being in the

New Covenant. We enjoy this blessing now but I don't think even in the fullest because even right now we are not completely obedient to the

Lord, are we? Do you obey every righteous principle? Do you live a completely sinless life?

If you don't and I want to talk, if you think that you live a completely sinless life, I want to talk to your spouse after the service today and we'll find out just how sinless you truly are.

There's no complete obedience in our life now. There is a desire to obey. There is the law written on our hearts giving us an inner inclination to obey and we as Christians do have the capacity to obey.

And now the struggle with us is that we yield our members as instruments of righteousness rather than to sin and we become slaves to the one whom we obey.

So now the constant struggle for us is that we become slaves of righteousness by obeying only righteousness and turning from sin and mortifying it and putting to death that old master.

But there is not in any of us complete and perfect obedience to the terms of God's moral law, is there?

So therefore, even that blessing of the new covenant, though we enjoy it in some sense now and we participate it in some way now, we don't enjoy the fullness of that.

But if my eschatology is correct, then there will come a point when all my inclination to sin will be gone, when

I get my resurrection body and there is no longer any sin and nor do I have any inner inclination to sin.

When I see Christ, when you see Christ, you will be made just like Him. Perfectly righteous, perfectly holy, the law of God and all of its righteous requirements will be written on your heart, all the desire that you have and affections that you have for Him and the desire to obey those will be perfectly enabled and there will be no more struggle with sin.

But until that time, we just get to enjoy sort of this benefit, this blessing partially and that is that now we have the inclination, we have the desire and the affections, now we have the ability but we don't do this perfectly, as the new covenant promises that at some point we will.

So how will this be fulfilled? I want to give you two ways. At the beginning I mentioned that we don't have to choose between whether this is fulfilled in us or whether it's fulfilled in Israel because as I said, the blessing of the new covenant, the salvation blessings of it, we enjoy now and the eschatological or end time blessings of it, we will enjoy then.

So we get a little bit of a taste now of what this means, having been regenerated, having been born again by the

Spirit of God and been given new life and new hope, new affections and His Spirit dwells within us, we get a taste of the

Word of God and the principles of God, the law of God written in our hearts and our minds and an inner inclination and desire to obey it as well as the enabling to do it.

We get a taste of that but it will be fulfilled ultimately in a fuller sense in the future. So here's how we get a taste of that.

Without Christ, I'll show you how this is fulfilled in two ways. Number one, individually in us as we are saved and then number two, nationally to Israel.

Individually first of all to us as we are individually saved. Without Christ we are dead in our trespasses and sins, we are at war against God where our hearts are at enmity against Him, we are hostile to the law of God, we cannot subject ourselves to the law of God, nor are we even inclined to subject ourselves to the law of God.

We love darkness and we hate the light, we are enemies of God in our minds through wicked works, dead in our trespasses and sins, unable to save ourselves, totally hopeless, without God and under His wrath.

That is the condition of all lost men, Jew and Gentile, in this age and in every age, every man, woman and child who has ever lived and is subject to all of those descriptions save only one, the

Lord Jesus Christ. Everyone else has dealt with that sinful condition. All of that to say our hearts are made of stone and we have no inclination nor any desire nor any ability to obey any of the righteous requirements of God's law.

In and of ourselves without God's grace we hate the righteous requirements of God's law.

Look at the unbelieving world around you and just ask yourself how do they feel about anything that is righteous or even appears to be righteous?

They hate it, they hate it with every atom of their being. That's us, that's us without Christ.

Then we are saved and regenerated. God chooses us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

In time He draws us to His Son. He grants us the gift of faith, grants us the gift of repentance, turns us from our sin, causes us to be born again through a living hope and the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

He enlightens our minds and our eyes, opens our eyes, opens our minds, opens our hearts, removes the heart of stone, gives us a heart of flesh with the indwelling spirit and we are sealed by the

Holy Spirit. That is the package of redemption and adopts us into His family and promises us security and then

He predestines us to be conformed to the image of His Son. God has written and promised and predestined all of that for our sake, for our good and for His glory.

From before time ever began, this was the work of God, it was His intention and He is doing it.

That's our salvation. And as a result of that individually, we get a new heart and a new mind. So now, as Romans 8 and Galatians chapter 5 says, as those who are the children of God, we are led by the

Spirit of God out of darkness and into light, out of an unholy living, into a life of holiness and righteousness and we grow in sanctification now as we enjoy that new heart and the new affections that God has given to us as a result of His promises in the new covenant.

That's us individually. We get that now. But it's not perfect obedience, is it? No, and so I would suggest to you there is still yet a future eschatological reality to that very same promise.

Not just for us, but also for national Israel. And for that, I need you to turn back to Ezekiel chapter 36 and you say,

Jim, that was a long time to get to Ezekiel 36 and I was paying attention during the Scripture reading and I happen to know there's a big chunk of passage of Scripture there.

You're right, Ezekiel 36. I want you to see this is in terms of the new covenant again given to Ezekiel and I gave for you the context of Jeremiah and his lifetime.

Jeremiah was a pre - and post -exile prophet. In other words, Jeremiah lived through the time of the destruction of Jerusalem into the

Babylonian captivity. Daniel, whom we're studying in adult Sunday school class, he was taken out at the time of Jeremiah and went into the

Babylonian captivity. So Daniel was in Babylon and so Daniel and Jeremiah would have been contemporaneous.

They would have been living together. Not living together, like living together, but I mean alive at the same time,

I guess. Where does Ezekiel fit into all of that? Ezekiel was born or started prophesying actually after the destruction of Jerusalem about 15 years later in 570.

So he is what we call an exile prophet. He started prophesying and serving as a prophet during the

Babylonian exile. So the context for Ezekiel's understanding of God's promises and Jeremiah's understanding of God's promises are identical because Jeremiah and Ezekiel would have been alive for at least 20 years of their lives together.

Their lives overlapped by a period of about 20 years and so they probably would have known each other, probably would have been familiar with each other, so their historical context is the same.

So now we come to Ezekiel chapter 36 and I'm going to read the passage with commentary and I want you to see how

God has promised to fulfill the new covenant promises to the nation of Israel. And here we go again with the glasses.

Ezekiel 36, beginning at verse 13. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, because they say to you, you are a devourer of men and have bereaved your nation of children, therefore you will no longer devour men and no longer bereave your nation of children, declares the

Lord. That was a promise to the nation of Israel because this is what the nations were saying about them. The nations were saying about them, you devour men, you've been destroyed, the men are no longer with you, the men are no longer in you, you've been emasculated, you've been destroyed, you've been wiped out and you have no children.

The nation was just completely decimated and destroyed at that time. So verse 15, I will not let you hear insults from the nations anymore, nor will you bear disgrace from the peoples any longer, nor will you cause your nation to stumble any longer, declares the

Lord. Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man, when the house of Israel was living in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds.

Their way before me was like the uncleanness of a woman in her impurity, therefore I poured out my wrath on them for the blood which they had shed on the land because they had defiled it with their idols.

Also, I scattered them among the nations and they were dispersed throughout the lands according to their ways and their deeds, I judged them.

When they came to the nations where they went, they profaned my holy name because it was said of them, these are the people of the

Lord, yet they have come out of his land. But I had concern for my holy name which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations where they went."

Notice what was a profaning of God's name among the nations.

When the Jews went into Babylon, everybody said of them, these people belong to Yahweh. These are

Yahweh's people and they're not in his land. In other words, they associated Israel with Yahweh and the

Jews should have been in there but the Jews are not in there. How was God's name profaned? Because he had been gracious in giving them a covenant and they had disobeyed that and violated it and now they were out of that land.

It made it look for all intents and purposes to everybody observing, it made it look as if they were no longer his people, as if God had not been faithful to his covenant and God had not kept his word and God had not been good to those people because his people had been judged.

God's name was profaned among the nations. So, verse 22. Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the

Lord God, it's not for your sake, O Israel, that I am about to act, but for my holy name which you have profaned among the nations where you went.

I'll vindicate the holiness of my great name which has been profaned among the nations which you have profaned in their midst.

Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when I prove myself holy among you in their sight.

For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you back into your own land.

Hold on a second. That's not good news. Why were they out of their land to begin with? They had been disobedient. They had disobeyed the terms of the covenant and then

God says, I'll bring you back to the land. Well, that's not good news because we still can't obey the terms of the covenant.

So we're still not going to be able to stay in our land because we have neither the desire nor the ability to obey that covenant.

And so what could they have expected? To be brought back into the land and then kicked out again. How many times are we going to go through this cycle?

That's not good news. What I really need is not just to live in the land, a Jew would think.

What I really need is to live in the land with the ability to obey so that I can receive all of those blessings.

That's what I really need. I need a heart of flesh. I need a desire for holiness.

Without that, I have no ability, I have no desire to obey anything.

Verse 25, then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean.

I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

That is good news. That's good news. Nothing else about any of this has been good news.

You know what's good news? Change my heart. That's the good news. That's what's provided under the New Covenant.

The Old Covenant could never do that. The Old Covenant could demand the worshiper do X, Y, and Z, but the

Old Covenant could not make the worshiper want to do X, Y, and Z. The New Covenant makes me want to obey.

That's far better. Why would you want to go back to the Old Covenant? When you have this blessing.

This is the good news. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Look at the rest of that promise.

Verse 27. I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will be careful to observe my commandments.

The indwelling of the Spirit of God is the cause of obedience. You see, our obedience to the commands of God and to the righteous requirements that He gives us, that comes from inside of us.

It's not external compulsion. It's an internal desire that we have to be obedient to that, to honor our

God, to love our God, and to live in obedience to our God, and that requires a heart of flesh, and it requires the indwelling

Spirit who causes us to walk in those ways. That's what it means in Galatians chapter 5 and Romans chapter 8 to be led by the

Spirit of God. He causes us to walk in obedience to Him. He is the one who does that.

Obedience is not us mustering up enough strength to do this in our own. Obedience is a yielding to the

Spirit of God and walking in obedience to the affections and desires of our hearts. The more and the better that we know

God and His Word and His truth and reflect upon what He has done for us in Jesus Christ, the more willing and desirous we are to obey

Him and all of His righteous requirements, but the Spirit of God does that work in us. I'll take out your heart of stone,

I'll give you a heart of flesh, I'll put my spirit in you, and I will cause you to walk in my ways. Look at verse 27, sorry, verse 28.

You will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers so that you will be my people and I will be your God. Now, I want you to notice,

I'm going to stop right there because we're out of time, I want you to notice that that promise is the same promise given in Jeremiah chapter 31, it's the same promise given in Hebrews chapter 8.

What was the promise to national Israel? I'll bring you back into the land, I'll remove your heart of stone,

I'll give you a heart of flesh, I'll cause my spirit to dwell within you, but it sounds a lot like salvation, doesn't it? It sounds a lot like salvation.

For a nation, for a whole nation to be saved, this is the promise to national Israel. So what is the new covenant promise to national

Israel? It promises national repentance and national salvation, and I'll give you two other real quick passages.

First, Zechariah chapter 12 describes the children of Israel coming into the, sorry, when Jesus Christ returns,

Zechariah chapter 12, 10 says, I'll pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication so that they will look on me, this is the

Lord speaking, they will look on me whom they have pierced and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only son and they will weep bitterly over him like the bitter weeping over the firstborn.

When he comes back to establish his kingdom, Israel will look upon their Messiah whom they have rejected and they have pierced and they will feel remorse.

And there will be national repentance, that's 12, 10 of Zechariah. Zechariah 13, 1 says there will be a fountain for the cleansing of national

Israel opened in Jerusalem and all their iniquities will be cleansed and taken away. Notice the promise to Ezekiel, I'll remove your iniquities,

I'll remove your idols, I will take away all of your filthiness and your impurities. This is salvation that's being described.

The salvation that we enjoy is a preview of the national salvation that Israel will enjoy when

Christ returns back and he gathers them into his land, into that land to establish the kingdom.

That nation will be saved. Every Jew alive at that time will be saved. That's why Paul says in Romans chapter 11,

I don't want you to be ignorant brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery so that you be wise in your own estimation, a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the

Gentiles has come in and so all Israel will be saved. This is the future promise.

Israel as a nation will turn and embrace her Messiah, all of them will be saved, he will remove all of their guilt, as a nation and as individuals he will remove their heart of stone, give them a heart of flesh, put his spirit within them and they will be obedient to every last element of the old covenant and they will dwell in the land with safety and security just as was promised to Abraham and to David and under the new covenant.

The promise of the land is connected to the promise of the new covenant. So what does the new covenant promise to us?

We get a foretaste of salvation, regeneration now, though we don't fully obey him, but in the future we will obey him just as Israel is saved and will obey him as well.

All of the people of God get all of the same blessing on the same basis, Jesus Christ. There is coming a time for us and for national

Israel, we get a taste of it now, but there is coming a time for us when we will see him and we will be made just like him, we will be conformed to his image in total perfection and there will be within us no desire for sin, no inclination to sin and no love for sin.

We will love and desire only holiness and only righteousness for we will be just like Jesus Christ and we will enjoy all of the blessings of the new covenant, the salvation that we have now as well as the kingdom that is promised to national

Israel because we get it as well. There is prior to the establishment of that kingdom a resurrection of the righteous, that's the first resurrection and then

Revelation chapter 20 says his saints will reign with him for a thousand years, that's your future. All because of the blessing of the new covenant that he writes his laws on our hearts and in our minds.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your

Word which gives us the confidence to believe and trust that you will do all that you say that you will do.

We pray that you would help us to understand and believe and to know that every last thing that you have promised to, every last person you have promised to will be fulfilled just as you have written it and there is no need for us to think that these promises to national

Israel have been set aside or abrogated in any way. You will keep your Word to them and because you will keep your

Word to them, you keep your Word to us. And so we thank you that you have brought us into that salvation blessing that we enjoy today a new heart, a heart of flesh and we enjoy the sealing of the

Spirit and the indwelling of the Spirit of God and a desire and an inclination to obey you in righteousness. Help us then by your grace to be obedient to that, to continue to mortify sin and to continue to walk in the

Spirit and the power of the Spirit that we may be led by the Spirit demonstrating that we are the children of God and in no way profaning your name before the nations or before our neighbors.