Doctrine of the Covenants of God, Part 2

Last week I started a series of sermons on the various covenants of the Bible. I said, actually, this is a couple of what we're going through are a couple of the doctoral classes that I've been giving. I thought every once in a while I'll give some of the doctoral classes as a sermon. Those who can't make it to the classes will see what we're covering, which means that we're going into a lot more detail than we might generally do in a sermon, covering a big array of verses and of Scriptures.

But this is a very important subject, because when Jesus said, this is the blood of the New Covenant, He was making a New Covenant with the individuals that were with Him. And if you are baptized and you have received God's Spirit, you are a participant in a New Covenant. All covenants in the Bible that God makes with individuals are through His grace. All these salvation covenants, not one of them were ever instituted by a human being.

Not one did a human being go to God and say, I would like to make an agreement with you. They're all instituted by the grace of God. God chooses who He's going to make the covenant with. God chooses what the stipulations are and there's no negotiation on the parts of the human beings involved. You were picked by God to be a participant in the New Covenant.

And when I'm done with this, if nothing else, I hope I leave you in absolute awe of the fact that you personally are involved in what God is doing in His salvation plan. You personally are involved in it. You have been called to be part of an agreement that was made between God and you. When I say you, I mean you as an individual.

Because the New Covenant isn't, although it involves the nation of Israel, the New Covenant is different than the Sinai Covenant because the New Covenant is made with individuals and eventually made with all humanity. We talked about covenants. We talked about how that most covenants will have a binding action involved. That binding action many times involves blood. There's a reason for that. When this action takes place, then this agreement between God and this person is now binding. Then there's a confirmation ritual in the case of the old covenant or the Sinai Covenant, or also in the case of the covenant God made with Abraham.

The sign was circumcision. We went through the covenant God made with Noah after the flood. The sign is the rainbow. There's a sign. Now the sign is not the covenant. It's a sign that the covenant has been made and something already happened to bind that covenant between God and that person. The sign is made to show, okay, the binding has happened. This is the sign that we are bound. This is very important. If we don't carry out the sign of a covenant, then we're not really participating in the covenant.

When we get into the new covenant, this is a very important principle. We went through a series of covenants. I had a number of people ask me if I would do this. I wrote these covenants down with a simple one-paragraph explanation. They made handouts. You can go back after services and you can pick up at the information table if you're interested a handout that will go through what we went through last time. That would just give you a simple explanation of the covenants we went through. Not all the details, but at least you can look at them and do your own study.

Now there was a covenant that we didn't get through last time that said, what are the Old Testament covenants? All the covenants we went through last time are Old Testament covenants, so they're contained in the Old Testament. But if you remember, they all have a central point of reference. The central point of reference is Genesis 3.15 and the one Latin word that everybody should know, even jellium. The first good news, the first gospel, I will send a seed of the woman who will conquer Satan. That is basically what it says. That is the thread that runs through all the covenants. The covenant God made with Adam, at that point the covenants God made with Noah, Abraham, the Sinai covenant, the reconformation of the covenant before the Israelites went into the Promised Land.

But there's another interesting covenant, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time with it, but just to mention it to you, is that the covenant God made with David in 2 Samuel 7, 4-17.

Now I won't go there. If you go read 2 Samuel 7, 4-17, you see that God makes a covenant with David and says, I am the one who is going to take your son and I'm going to make him king and he's going to build a temple for me.

And if you read through there, the covenant is basically, this is what I'm going to do with your son. But there's a very, very important verse in there. He says, I will establish your kingdom forever. In other words, the kingdom God was establishing through the seed of David, through his descendants, would go beyond Solomon. That's why that's such an important statement. Now it's just like the covenant God made with Adam and Eve when he kicked him out of Eden.

You read through the whole covenant, it's all bad except Genesis 3.15. This is going to happen. You're going to be cursed. Your relationship between each other as you, as husband and wife is going to be deteriorated, your health is going to deteriorate, you're going to die, the ground is going to be cursed, Satan is going to be cursed. Everything is, I'm making a bad pronouncement now. This is a bad agreement between me and you except I'm going to get you out of it. Well, if you read through the covenant God made with David, it seems to be all about Solomon except the one statement. That one statement is very profound because it becomes restated in prophecy.

Remember, these covenants also supply a framework for prophecy. If they supply the framework of salvation, they also supply the framework of which we interpret prophecy. Look at Isaiah 9. This prophecy makes sense in terms of, or in the framework of what God said to David.

Isaiah 9 verse 6. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. And the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. Upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, in order to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

Now, this would just seem to come out of nowhere, except you go back to that covenant, and you realize his kingdom will last forever. So, once again, through all the covenants, we see the prophecy of the Messiah.

God was doing this through the Messiah, who would be both the Son of God and the Son of Man, and being the Son of Man, he would come through the family of David. First of all, through the family of Abraham, and then through the family of David. We covered some of that in the doctorate class when we went through Who is Jesus Christ and Who is the Messiah. So, now when we start putting together who the Messiah is, we start putting together these covenants, we see, we see this thread.

But remember, right from the very beginning, God told them that there would be a new covenant. I say from the very beginning, from the time that he made the old covenant. Now, when we talk about the old covenant, of course, we're talking about, you know, we're looking at least eight or seven, seven to nine covenants of the Old Testament, depending on how you combine them.

You know, it was, as I mentioned last time, the covenant God made with Noah before the flood and one after the flood was that two covenants are just two parts of the same covenant. It just depends on how you look at it. So, there was either seven or nine covenants, depending on how you figure them out, throughout the Old Testament. But very early on, in what is called the Old Covenant in the New Testament, which is the Sinai covenant. That's the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai. So, the Old Covenant is that particular covenant. Even in that covenant, they were told there was something wrong.

Now, if you remember last week, when we discussed, we read the fact that God made a reconfirm the covenant with Israel right before they went into the Promised Land. Once again, it's either a second covenant He makes with them or just simply a reconformation of the first covenant. It doesn't matter. It's still part of the covenant process. And in this covenant process, He told them, blessings and cursings. You do this, good things will happen. You do this, bad things will happen. And then at the end, the Deuteronomy 30 tells them, and when all these things happen to you and you mess up and you don't keep this covenant, your descendants aren't going to keep this covenant.

And when it gets bad enough, I will destroy you as a nation, scatter you among the nations, and then I will bring you back. And then He said something rather profound there in those first few verses of Deuteronomy 30. He says, when I bring you back, I will circumcise your heart. That's very important. What was the sign of the Sinai covenant and the Abrahamic covenant? Little circumcision. He said there's something missing. You will not do this. This will not be a kingdom forever.

The Sinai covenant will be broken and you will break it. And when it totally fails, but I promise you, this is part of the promises of the Sinai covenant, all the covenants contain promises God makes that are not contingent on human beings. And He said, I will bring you back and I will circumcise your heart. That is the first real mention that there's going to be a brand new covenant at some point. All the covenants form a central way in which God does things, but it leads to a final covenant, a final agreement between God and humanity.

And so that was the first prophecy. We will find out that prophecy is about the new covenant throughout the Old Testament. Look at Ezekiel. Ezekiel 36. Let's go to verse 21. This is actually in the middle of a whole section that's talking about when God restores Israel, brings them back, and creates a new covenant with them.

Ezekiel 36.21. He says, but I had concern for my holy name. Now, once again, this is the middle of God talking about how He was going to scatter them. Of course, during the time of Ezekiel, Israel was scattered, and He was prophesying eventually that Judah would be scattered. And He's saying, but God is doing this, but now God says, but I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations wherever they went. He says, not only did I scatter them, but now, because they are seen as my representatives, they're profaning my name even when I scattered them out among the nations.

Now, you think He would say, for that reason I shall wipe them off the face of the earth. But remember, Eve had made promises to Abraham in that covenant, and He had made promises in the Sinai covenant. And regardless of what Israel was going to do, God was going to carry out those promises. When we get to the promises He makes to us in the new covenant, we have to grasp and understand that as long as we stay in that covenant, He will fulfill those promises. But we can't leave the new covenant. We can choose to do so.

But we're not there yet. Let's talk about these prophecies first. He says, Therefore, say to the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God, this verse 22, I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went.

And I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and you have profaned in their midst. And the nations shall know that I am the Lord's as the Lord God, when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. My holiness will be exposed, but notice how He says it's going to be exposed. In the very people that have rebelled against Him and He has scattered them. He says, In those people and you, I am going to show who I am. Which by the way, is the central concept of our calling. You and I are called to show the greatness of God, not the greatness of ourselves.

If we're trying to show the greatness of ourselves, we will fail. We are called to show the greatness of God. He says, verse 24, For I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Now we're back to the promise made in Deuteronomy. We're back to the promises made to Abraham. And you shall be clean, and I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.

Verse 26, And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you. And I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments, and do them. He says, You failed, but there will come a time you will succeed. And this time when you succeed, it's because I'm going to do something you cannot do. God says, I'm going to give you something you do not have.

And that is His Spirit. That Spirit wasn't promised or wasn't given. It was promised, but it wasn't given under the Sinai covenant. The Ten Commandments were given. God's holy law was given. And the Holy Spirit was not poured out on all of Israel. There were individuals that received God's Spirit, but all of Israel did not. And He told them, there will come a time.

Remember, we've got to keep going back to Deuteronomy 30. There will come a time I'm going to do this. And there's even going to be a new sign of this covenant. Ezekiel 11, I won't go there, but Ezekiel 11, 14-20, He promises the same thing. Ezekiel 37 is interesting. Ezekiel 37 usually gets read on the last day, the eighth day, the Feast of Tabernacles, the last grade day. Because in Ezekiel 37, there was a unique promise that all the Israelites who have died, all the people that had the specific promise because they were the descendants of Abraham, they will be resurrected.

There will come a time and they are physically resurrected. This is the prophecy of the dry bones, the valley of dry bones. A physical resurrection. All those people throughout all the millennia, there were descendants of Abraham, physical descendants of Abraham, because of the promises God made to Abraham. He says, I will do this. I will resurrect you.

And why does he resurrect them? Verse 13, that you shall know that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you out from your graves. And I will put my spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land, that you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it, says the Lord.

So we see two promises that keep coming back over and over again. I'm going to resurrect all of Israel, and I'm going to bring them back to the land, and I'm going to give them my spirit. This is all part of the New Covenant. The rest of this chapter is very interesting, because he promises to take Israel and Judah and bring them back together. Of course, when Ezekiel was writing, Israel and Judah had been to two different nations, and they had actually fought wars against each other.

He says, at this time, when this covenant is made, I will bring all these peoples back together. But notice verse 24, when he brings these two peoples back together, David, my servant, shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall also walk in my judgments and observe my statutes and do them. At the end of verse 25 it says, David shall be their prince forever.

Verse 26, Moreover, I will make a covenant of peace with them, and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them. So now we have this new covenant that's prophesied. But notice all the elements that are in here. The Abrahamic covenant, Sinai covenant, and now we find the covenant God made with David in here too. All the covenants are being brought together in the new covenant. That's why I said, and we won't have time to do that.

In fact, I won't have time to get through everything I have today, but at some point in the doctoral classes we'll have to go through law and sin, which we have to discuss, which of the elements of the Sinai covenant still apply today, which don't.

There are some Protestants that say none of them do, including the Ten Commandments. But we'll see that in the New Testament that's not what's taught at all. In fact, if God's going to write His laws on people's hearts, and it's being written in Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, what laws is He talking about? What law is He talking about? He didn't say, I will give a new law. He says, but the relationship between people, the law will change.

Because of that, our relationship between some of the components of the Sinai covenant has changed. And so has some of our relationship with the Abrahamic covenant. I remember talking to a man one time. He said, you know, your problem is you think you're still under the Sinai covenant. He says, I'm not.

I'm under the Abrahamic covenant. I said, you are? He said, yes. I said, I understand the difference between us. Because he said, you're a Sabbath keeper. You don't have to keep the Sabbath. You keep the Sabbath. People under the Abraham, the new covenant and the Abrahamic covenant are the same thing. He said, they are. He said, yeah.

He said, so I'm under the new covenant, which is the Abrahamic covenant. I said, okay.

I said, are you circumcised? He said, well, I don't have to be circumcised. What did that have to do with anything? Because if you're under the Abrahamic covenant, you have to be circumcised. It's a command. No. I agree. There are aspects of the Abrahamic covenant that still exist today. But the sign of that covenant on his family was what? Well, you want to be under the Sinai covenant and be circumcised. No. I'm under the new covenant. We'll get to the sign of the new covenant in a little bit. I said, this is the sign of the new covenant. He said, no, it's not. I said, I understand. I'm under the new covenant, and you're under no covenant at all.

I said, you have no covenant with God at all.

And there was a long silence, and the conversation ended. It is by the grace of God and the power of God that any of us have the right.

It's not even right. Have the privilege of having a covenant, an agreement, a personal agreement with God. I do not take this lightly.

Jeremiah 31. Probably the most famous passage.

In the Old Testament about the new covenant. The reason why is, this passage is quoted in the book of Hebrews. In fact, it's the longest passage from the Old Testament quoted in the New Testament. Jeremiah 31.

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, with the house of Judah. We just read in Ezekiel how he's going to bring them back together. Deuteronomy said the same thing.

Not according to the covenant I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord, I will put my law in their minds. I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

He says, once again, I will make a new covenant. I will bring the people, the Israel back together, and I will take my wall, and I will make it part of the very core and fiber of who they are. Now let's look at how this is quoted in the New Testament. Let's go to Hebrews 8.

Hebrews 8. Like I said, we're going through a lot of Scripture, but we have to build the understanding of what the new covenant is. Then we'll deal with, at some point, you know, then we deal with, okay, do the Ten Commandments still exist? Should we still keep the Sabbath? What laws in the Old Covenant do we still keep? But we have to understand how all these covenants fit together, each one building off the one before it. I mean, to say, people will come with the strangest ideas. People hate the Ten Commandments so much that there's an interesting argument among, in the Protestant world, not so much the Catholic world, that the world today is under the Noeing covenant.

Remember when Noah came out from the flood and God gave him the rainbow, and he said, okay, I give you power of civil government, remember? Don't eat blood. He gave him this list of things to do. Well, that goes clear back to a Jewish concept. The rabbis taught that there were seven laws given to Noah right after the flood, and that the world is under those seven laws. And that's all any Gentile has to do in order to become a follower of the true God.

Just follow those seven laws. Well, I don't understand how any Protestant can pick that up, because the New Testament won't allow that thinking. It won't allow that. It is a Jewish thought process that is not biblical. But when we see that these all fit together, that they all lead to and culminate in the New Covenant, a lot of these problems are able to get fixed easier. In Hebrews 8, look at verse 1 here, because Hebrews 8, 9, and 10 form an explanation of the relationship between the old and the New Covenant. If we have time a little bit later, I'm going to go through a little bit more of it. But let's look at just chapter 8 here.

Paul writes, now this is the main point of the thing we are saying. He says, let me get down to the real nuts and bolts of what I've been trying to say in this letter.

We ask such a high priest, now he's talking about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the main theme through the book of Hebrews. We ask such a high priest who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty of the heaven, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord erected and not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices, though it is necessary that this one also have something to offer. For if he were on earth, he would not be a priest, since there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law, who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For he said, see that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain. Now remember, when we went through the Sinai covenant, ten commandments are given. The first part of the Sinai covenant was just the ten commandments and the instructions given in basically Exodus 20 through 24. Now, the Sinai covenant kept having things added to it and added to it and added to it, because as they dealt with issues, as they learned new things, as they went into the promised land, as the Levitical priesthood was expanded, there were all kinds of things until basically the Sinai covenant was Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Actually, they put Genesis into it, too, because without Genesis, you wouldn't know where the Sinai covenant came from. So the Torah was the covenant, the book of the law, the book of the instructions of God. And it all became part of this covenant concept.

And they built a tabernacle. That tabernacle, as he says here, these were just symbols of the reality that the new covenant will show. So all they had were symbols. They didn't understand the reality of what was going to happen. Under the new covenant, those symbols now, it's like a door's open, and we see that we've been watching a play of what's really happening. He says all they did was they participated in a play. We talk about this a lot during the day of Atonement, because a lot of the book of Hebrews deals with the rituals of the day of Atonement. Verse 6 says, "...but now he," speaking of Jesus Christ, "...has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch he is also mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises." A better covenant, to be part of the new covenant, is better than to be part of the Sinai covenant. You think, wow, how could that be better? To stand at the foot of the mountain and hear God's voice thundering out? To have Moses and Aaron there? They had the Ten Commandments on two tables, a stone written by the figure of God? Now, that would be a great covenant to be under.

He said, this is a much greater covenant and has much greater promises. And you know why?

Well, we just looked at the prophecies. That covenant never promised them God's Spirit, and without God's Spirit, there is no eternal life. The Sinai covenant never promised eternal life.

It promised a better physical life. It said, someday I'm going to give you the opportunity for eternal life. Someday I'm going to give you my Spirit. Someday, as Ezekiel said, I'm going to resurrect you and give you my Spirit and give you an opportunity for eternal life. So the promises were, someday in the future, this is going to happen. But it did not happen during the time period of the Sinai covenant. From the time of the Ten Commandments given at the Sinai to the death of Jesus Christ, there was no promise of eternal life except for a few individuals.

The majority of people never had a chance. Even the Israelites didn't have a chance for eternal life. This is a much better promise. This is what was promised there that becomes the reality now. Verse 7, where if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Ah, that's the problem with that. That first covenant had a flaw in it. God made a mistake. Ah, verse 8, because finding fault with them, the people could not keep the covenant.

Because finding fault with them, He says, see if you recognize this, Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, with the house of Jacob. And verse 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, He's quoting Jeremiah.

He told them, this covenant will fail not because I'm going to fail, God said, because you're going to fail, and guess what? I'm going to make it work anyways, because I'm God and you're not.

And you will fail and I will succeed. And you will not receive eternal life under this covenant, but I will give you a new covenant and I will give you an opportunity. Even if you die now, you think about how hard that would be to grasp. To read Ezekiel and say, wait a minute, all the Israelites who have died, the great majority of them didn't receive eternal life. They're waiting a resurrection.

They're waiting the new covenant. 1, 13.

In this he says, a new covenant, he's made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. When he's talking about what's obsolete there, there were parts of the Sinai covenant that became obsolete once Christ was resurrected and once the temple was destroyed. There is no Levitical priesthood. This is the problem that Judaism has today. They can't do most of what is instructed in the Sinai covenant. Most of what's instructed in the Sinai covenant has to do with the tabernacle. And they can't do it. They can't do it because there is no temple. Without the temple, they're not allowed to do sacrifices on their own. They can't declare new moves on their own. It takes a high praise to do that. It takes a priesthood according to the law.

So that part of it was going to be obsolete. Now to say that the other elements, there's other elements of the Sinai covenant became obsolete is not true. That's not what he's talking about. And you know that when you read 8, 9, and 10 because he's talking about the entire ritualistic rabbinical priesthood.

Now up to this point, it's like, oh good, the new covenant, that's for all the Israelites. What about all of us that aren't Israelites?

Is the new covenant just for them? Well, Isaiah 42. Isaiah 42. Now remember, the thread in all the covenants is Genesis 3.15.

What's the Latin word? Come on. I don't like what you people speak, but what is it? There you go, proto-evangelium. Isaiah 42, verse 1. So the Messiah is going to come. He's going to save humanity. He's going to conquer Satan. When we get into the new covenant, we find out that that happens in stages.

It happens in stages. The Jews today still don't understand it happens in stages. They're still waiting for the Messiah to come and conquer Satan and rule the world. They don't understand that He came already to destroy sin. The pouring out of the Spirit has already begun.

They're still waiting for that to happen. But Isaiah 42, verse 1. Behold my servants, whom I uphold, my elect one, and whom I sold to light. This is God talking about Christ.

I have put my Spirit upon Him, and He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles.

Boy, Isaiah hits this in a number of places. You begin to understand the new covenant, when the Messiah comes, is expanded to include everyone.

It is sad to somehow just take the new covenant and apply it to Israelites. You know, it was written. These books were written to Israelites, the books we've been going through. So of course it talks to them. But when you look into the prophecies, it's expanded out to everyone.

The new covenant is available to all who God calls. And this is the big difference between the Sinai covenant and the new covenant. The Sinai covenant was made with a race of people, a group of people that came from one family, right? Although those 12 tribes were really different.

How different were they? What did you think about something? Okay, the Jews came from a certain family within this family. No, the Naphtali came from a certain family with this family. Ephraim and Asa came from Joseph, who his sons were a mixture of Israelites. They were half Israelite and half Egyptian. So those 12 tribes were different peoples.

They were different peoples.

The new covenant is made person by person by person.

When you were called by God, He elected you. He chose you to make a covenant with you. We say, wow, wouldn't it be something to be Abraham and have God say, Abraham, I'm going to make a covenant with you, and it has to do with salvation. Well, you have to understand something. God did do that with you. God called you and made a covenant with you that has to do with salvation.

Your salvation. The covenant He made with Abraham had to do with everybody's salvation. So ours isn't quite that big. But the covenant that God made with you personally, when He called you, was, I'm going to make a salvation covenant with you.

You, your name. He didn't make it with your neighbor sometimes.

Right? You look around and we didn't make it with this person. He didn't make it with, well, I don't know when God's going to make that covenant with people. All I know is He made it with you now. He made it with me now.

Understand that. The covenant has been made with you. And He goes on here, He says, He will cry out, not cry out, to raise His voice. There caused His voice to be heard in the street. He talks about His gentleness here.

In fact, at the end of verse 4, He says, And the coastland shall wait for His law. All through this chapter, He talks about how the Messiah is going to come for the world. Verse 6, I the Lord have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand, and I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people.

That is an incredible statement. Remember we talked about cutting a covenant? Now, that's an incredible statement. When they cut a covenant, it showed how Abraham, in his vision, had to cut those animals in two and lay them out.

It was customary that the two people would walk between them. Remember I talked about some of the theories last week about what that means? I read one this week from a very well-respected Old Testament commentary. It's ten volumes just for the Old Testament that I thought was rather profound.

They had traced back, what is the ancient custom? Here's the best they could find out.

The reason they cut these animals in half, and the two parties walked between them, was because, symbolically, they became one blood.

They were walking between blood on these animals. You and I are now one blood. Sort of like the Indians. In the old movies, I don't think any American Indians ever did this, but they cut their finger, and the guy would cut his finger, and the ranch or whatever, and they would... We are now blood brothers, right? It was sort of the same concept. We're walking between these animals, and what makes that profound is, if that is true...

Remember, Abraham didn't walk between the two animals. God walked between these two animals, because Abraham did not have the power to make God his blood relative.

God had the power to make Abraham his blood relative. That's profound.

If they've been able to trace that back, if that... These are all theories, based on trying to piece together the ancient customs, but that one, that's rather profound. It would also explain why only God walked between them, and not Abraham.

But he says, I will give you as a covenant. The Messiah is the covenant.

Somebody has to... Remember, there has to be a binding, a blood binding of this covenant. Someone's got to cut the covenant. And here God says, I will give you, the Messiah, as a light to the Gentiles.

This covenant is for all humanity, and it's made individual, person by person by person.

So Jesus comes along and he institutes this new covenant.

In Matthew 26, he sits down with his disciples on that night, and he says, Take this cup, it is what? The blood of the covenant.

I am the covenant. I am the binding action that makes this covenant real.

God says, you know, God walked between the two halves of the covenant with Abraham, and it was bound. What binds this covenant? The life of the Son of God. This covenant is bound by the life and death and resurrection of the Son of God.

Now, all the other covenants we went through have nothing that profound in it, do they?

Nothing has God becoming flesh, and his blood is the binding force of this covenant.

That is the binding force of the covenant God made with you. Once again, you and I didn't call Jesus Christ out from heaven. You and I didn't cut the covenant. You and I simply said, Yes, Lord.

And Abraham believed that it was accounted to him for righteousness.

We read that last time at Genesis 15.

We said, Yes, Lord. I will do this covenant, and all that is required in it.

And God bound that covenant with you. He bound that covenant with you personally in the blood of Jesus Christ. But more than that, it was through his resurrection and the life he lives now.

You say, Well, how do you know that? Let's go back to Hebrews for a minute. Let's go back to Hebrews 9.

Hebrews 9.

Verse 1. Hebrews 9, verse 1.

Then indeed, even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service and the earthly sanctuary.

He goes on and talks more about the tabernacle and how there was the outer chamber and then the Holy of Holies, which represented the throne of God. And nobody could go into the Holy of Holies under the Sinai covenant except the high priest once a year for the Day of Atonement. No one had access to the very throne of God. You brought rituals. You brought ways to bring you into a relationship with God. But you were not in intimate relationship with God. Look at verse... skip down to verse 8.

The Holy Spirit was not made available yet. Remember the presence of God that's stilled, the Shekinah, the tabernacle, every time God was there, the presence of God.

But the average person was not in the presence of God.

You say, boy, I wish I was in the presence of God. You are. If you have received God's Spirit, the same presence that filled the tabernacle fills you and me. Boy, if we ever got that down, would we be different. If we ever got that one down, the same presence that filled the tabernacle fills you and me.

Verse 9, It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices were offered, which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience.

In other words, it could not change the inner person of the man.

You just did more and more rituals in order to try to force yourself to do right, but the inner person was not changed, concerning only with foods and drinks, various washings and fleshly ordinances opposed until the time of Reformation.

But Christ came as the high priest of the good things to come, which the greater, more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is not in this creation.

Not with the blood of animals, as he says in verse 12 and 13. But how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, do what? Cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

It's not just a matter of accepting. There's something that happens in the New Covenant that could not happen in the Sinai Covenant.

We have the binding action, the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the binding action.

We now agree to become participants. We can receive God's Spirit.

If we receive God's Spirit, the inner man can be changed. The miracle can take place.

Verse 15, And for this reason he is the mediator of the New Covenant by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who were called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. Boy, that's a big sentence. That's a whole sermon right there.

He is the mediator of the New Covenant because through his death, through that binding action, the cutting of that covenant, for the redemption of the transgressions of the first covenant, because the first covenant did define sin. That's why part of it still exists.

Everything in the Sinai Covenant was erased. There is no sin. If there is no sin, there's no need for Christ's sacrifice. The whole thing is a joke. We still have to have a definition of sin. That those who busted into the Sinai Covenant that those who were called, individuals called to be part of this covenant, it didn't say those who were Israelites. You notice that?

Those who were called may receive the promise of a good land and good crops and reign in due season. That's not what it says, which were many of the promises under the Sinai Covenant.

They may receive eternal inheritance.

That was the Holy Spirit, the missing ingredient. God kept telling them during the Sinai Covenant, during the Old Covenant, I have to make a new one so you can live forever.

This will give you a good life now, but I have to give you a new one because I got to bind this with more than killing sheep. This has to be bound by something greater than that, than killing sheep. This is going to take an action on my part that you won't even have. You won't even be able to understand. My son will become flesh, and God will die, and God will be resurrected. He says, verse 19 is very interesting because he talks about Moses sprinkling the people. And then it says in verse 20, saying, This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you. If you remember, we read that last week, Exodus 24. As he sprinkled blood on them, he had the book of the covenant, the first part of it. It wasn't finished yet, obviously.

He sprinkles blood on them. This is the blood of covenant. The binding action is the blood.

Well, he says that was bound by blood. Verse 21, then likewise he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and the vessels of the ministry. According to the law, almost all things are purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. There is no remission of sin. Therefore, it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heaven should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

Those that could not bind for eternity, for Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. It's not just his death and sacrifice. It's his resurrection, and that he is high priest, and every second of every day he appears before God Almighty, his Father, for you and for me, and for those with whom he has made that covenant.

He's standing there for you all the time. He says, Thus, all those who have become participants in the covenant, not that he should offer himself often, as the high priest enters the most holy place every year with the blood of another. Verse 28 says, but he only had to be offered once, just once.

But what's the purpose, then? Eternal salvation, eternal inheritance, the missing ingredient, God's Spirit.

Paul had to deal with this. Paul's writings have been used, misused so much to do away with the law of God, and that's not what Paul was doing. What Paul was doing, much of the time, was saying, you can't earn this. You can't. But you can be transformed by this.

If you try to use the law to earn salvation, you're doomed. If you come into this new covenant, receive God's Spirit, the law of God will be written in your very character. You will become the child of God. You will become a person living by that law because it's part of your character.

Two totally different processes. But you know, in the Church, to us, they can appear the same, but they're not. We can keep the law thinking we're earning our salvation, or we can keep the law because it's becoming part of who we are as the children of God. Paul explains this in 2 Corinthians.

We know this is a lot of information, so I'm not going to go too much farther here. We'll read 2 Corinthians and maybe one more passage.

2 Corinthians 3. But if I can give you the overview of the covenant and then the overview of this one, you understand what you're part of.

The details we cover every week. The details are covered every time you open your Bible.

But we must understand what we've been called and what we're part of.

The agreement God's made with you. And if he hasn't made with you and you're being called by God, he is headed towards that point where he is going to make it with you.

You know, I'm going to go back to something. Before I go here, I want to go back to something that I been jumping through my notes because I have so much information. But this is important. Let's go to Colossians. We'll come back to 2 Corinthians here in a minute. Let's go to Colossians 2. Colossians 2. Paul seems to bring something out of thin air here that just boom.

And, you know, the first time you read it, it's like, I have no idea what he's talking about.

But when you understand how the covenants fit together, what he's saying here is just remarkable. I wish Paul would have taken more time to explain himself. Because the problem is, you have to have an incredible amount of information to understand what he's talking about.

No wonder Peter says people are using Paul's writings to destroy themselves.

They're still doing it today. But Colossians 2.

We know what the binding action is. The binding action is death, blood of Jesus Christ, resurrection of Jesus Christ. He now acts as high priest. That's the binding action that makes this covenant possible. What's the sign of the covenant? Colossians 2 verse 9.

For in him, the King of Jesus Christ, dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power.

In him, were you also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Now, what in the world does that mean?

He says, okay, we know who the people of the signing covenant are. They were physically circumcised. He says, your sinful nature is being cut out of you by Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is coming in through the Spirit. How do you become like Jesus Christ with God's Spirit? Without God's Spirit, we can act like Jesus Christ, but we can't be like Jesus Christ. You see what I mean? We can do certain actions, but we can't truly be like Jesus Christ without the Spirit of Christ in us. So he said, the old man is being cut out. You want to know what circumcision is? Boy, that circumcision was easy compared to this circumcision. It's like God's taking a giant knife, and he's taking your entire corrupt nature, and he's just cutting it out of you. This is the circumcision of Jesus Christ.

Buried with him, you died with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

Through baptism, you were buried with him. Through baptism, you became circumcised in Jesus Christ. The sign of the covenant is baptism. Baptism is laying on of hands.

This is the great danger, the idea that, well, I just accept Jesus, pray for him to forgive me, God to forgive me for my sins, and I'm okay. This isn't just about being okay.

This is about God, the great Almighty God, saying, Bob, I want to cut a covenant with you. And this covenant is forever. This covenant is greater, even greater than what I did when I stood on Mount Sinai at the Southern Alpha 10 Commandments. This is even greater than that, because we just read it in, and that's great.

He said, because this, Bob, I want to take you, and I'm going to give you eternal life with me forever.

And I've already made the binding part of the covenant. The binding part of the covenant is Christ has been sacrificed, resurrected, and now is your high priest. Do you accept the terms of the covenant? When I do baptism counseling, I always tell people, I'm about to tell you the terms of the covenant. You don't get to negotiate, don't find print, yours is either yea or nay. That's it. And I've had people say nay and walk away. If God's calling you, then being here isn't enough. If God's calling you and you want that personal covenant, you need to be baptized, because coming here will not give you eternal life. Keep thinking the Sabbath will not give you eternal life.

See, this is where Paul gets attacked and says, well, he didn't believe in the law.

Do I believe the Sabbath is the commandment from God? Yes. Do I believe that breaking the Sabbath is a sin? Yes. Do I believe if you give up the Sabbath, you'll destroy your relationship with God?

Well, you'll damage your... Yes. Do I believe if you hate God's law long enough, you can lose God's spirit and end up derelict and out of the new covenant? Yes. Do I believe the Sabbath gives you eternal life? No. Okay, so I want to make myself clear.

No law can give you eternal life. Only a covenant made with God through Jesus Christ can give you eternal life.

The law is part of the training and learning and obedience and submission and love towards God that is required to stay in the covenant.

And baptism is required if you want to be part of the covenant.

Now let's go to 2 Corinthians, and I'm just about out of time.

I'm trying to keep my sermons down.

And I had extra time today, but I'm going to try not to take it. But you know how hard that is for me?

2 Corinthians 3.

Paul says to the people of Corinth that he had sent them a letter, an epistle.

But it's interesting, in verse 3, he says clearly, you are an epistle of Christ. You are Christ's letter to the world.

Any time a church starts, any time any of us stops seeing ourselves as Christ's letter to the world, that we have a responsibility to reflect God's way to everybody around us, we begin to misunderstand who we are.

He says, you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God on tables of stone, not on tables of stone, but on tables of flesh that are in the heart.

He says, you are participants of the New Covenant. He's telling these Christians.

You know the Ten Commandments? Now, he's making a point here that the Ten Commandments are still in effect, by the way, which is a different subject here. What I'm going to show is what Paul thought about the New Covenant. And he's telling these Christians, you are the ones with whom he has made this covenant. And because of that, what was contained on those two tablets of stone are being written in your heart.

Oh, good! And I've actually known people who have said this. They're written in my heart. It doesn't matter if I commit adultery. God doesn't care.

As long as it's written in my heart, He doesn't care what I do.

That's so bizarre I can't even answer that.

Yes, dear, I love you, but I'm going out drinking with my buddies. We're going to go visit some prostitutes tonight, but that's okay because in my heart I love you. How bizarre is that?

Is there a man or woman that would live with that? Of course not.

Yet we expect God to live with that kind of reasoning. You think about spitting in the face of God. He says, and we have such trust through Christ toward God. He says, we believe in this covenant. In the end, you obey God's law because you believe in the covenant.

If you don't, you won't.

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. He says, this covenant we have, our power doesn't come from us. The tables of stone teach us that. It's this material in our hearts and our minds, written by God's Spirit, motivating and driving and helping us and guiding us. That is what gives us our power.

Who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Was the letter bad? No. But the problem is, all the law can do is tell you where you're wrong and eventually say, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, death, death, death. That's all the law can do of itself. The new covenant supplies what the law could not supply. It doesn't say the law is bad. Romans, Paul goes through lengths to say, I'm not saying the law is evil. I'm saying that the law of itself could not give you eternal life. But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, said that the children of Israel could not look steadily on the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit be not more glorious? For the ministry of condemnation and glory, the ministry of righteousness, exceeds much more in glory. For even what was made righteous had no glory in disrespect because of the glory that excels. For what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious.

He goes on and talks about Moses even had to put a veil over his face when he came down from receiving the Ten Commandments from God. Because his face was shining. He said, that was pales in the insignificance when God is doing with you. And he said, Bob, I want to make a personal covenant with you. I'm outside. He was making a personal covenant with millions of people that could never come into the Holy of Holies. With you, he's making a personal covenant. He's saying, welcome into the real Holy of Holies. I wouldn't even let them go into the play part.

And that play that they carried out, those people couldn't go into that or I would kill them.

You come into the real Holy of Holies. And the mediator of your covenant is right there at the right hand of God. All the time. But why? He says, nevertheless, verse 16, when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

The veil was ripped. The veil that was on Moses' face symbolically is gone. The veil that was there in the tabernacle is ripped, which happened at Christ's death.

The blood of the covenant, as he said, he told his disciples the night before it was ripped.

But now open up the way of the Holy of Holies, and God's Spirit would come out.

He says, verse 17, now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

Now this is why God is doing this. But we all with unveiled face, beholding as a mirror, the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. The purpose isn't so that we can learn to act like good people, which all the Sinai cabinet could do. It could teach people to act like good people.

The purpose of the new covenant is to produce children who look just like the other members of the family. There are two members of the family. God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

The purpose of this covenant is that the Spirit of God is given to us so that every one of us, and it doesn't matter who you are, what your background is, it doesn't matter whether you're male or female, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what your education is, it doesn't matter what your age is. When you've entered into this covenant and you have received the binding of the blood of Jesus Christ into the covenant, and you have received the sign of the covenant by being baptized, having hands laid on you, and you now receive God's Holy Spirit, that begins a process by which you are transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. That's the covenant that God made with you. Personally, one at a time. We didn't come into this congregation because all of us are what? We're such a diverse group of people here. I mean, yes, we even have people here from England. I looked at Mrs. Fox, you know. Now don't say boo.

We literally have people in this audience from about, well, from every race you can imagine, out of 160 people. Right? We were called because we all were one blood.

You know, some kind of we all went from the same tribe or something.

We were called because God picked every one of you personally and said, I want to make a covenant with you.

So let's conclude in Galatians. I know this is one extra scripture, but I didn't plan to go to Colossians. I went there anyways.

Galatians 3. Now, if we talk about which laws of the Sinai covenant apply, we have to go to Galatians.

The biggest thing in Galatians is one of the things Paul is trying to say, you can't be saved by law. You can't be saved by law. See, you're doing away with the law. No, I'm saying you can't be saved by law. That's what he's driving. All the justification isn't through law because you're already guilty. So how can you be made better? He makes these arguments that people misunderstand. But this is very powerful what he says here.

Verse 26, he's talking about the new covenant. He says, and I won't go back through the show you, but this is the he's comparing the old covenant, the new covenant. He uses Hagar and Sarah as analogies of the two covenants. So he's talking about the covenants here. And he says, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. You became part of this covenant because you said, yes, Lord, I believe in this covenant. I believe in this agreement, and I will fulfill these requirements through your spirit. For as many of you were baptized into Christ and put on Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There's neither male nor female. For you're all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. He jumps back and says, look, when God made the covenant with Abraham, how many Jews were on the earth?

Zero. When God made the covenant with Abraham, how many Ephraimites were on the earth?

Zero. How many Israelites were on the earth? Zero.

How many Hebrews? A couple.

And he said, so let's jump back there and say, remember, if we go back to that covenant, he's not doing away with the Sinai covenant, he's not going to go back there. Remember, the promises made to Abraham were for all people. Remember Genesis 12, we went through that last week. Through your seed, I will bless, what? All nations.

All people. He said, so if you become part of this covenant, everybody, everybody's now part of the family that God started way back through Abraham.

And all the promises, spiritual promises, which is a whole lot more than the land of Israel. Physical Israel gets the land of Israel. The spiritual descendants of Abraham get what? Well, let's see. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Well, heirs of what? Let's see, did we get a little piece of land on the gods of strip? Is that what God's promising you? Verse 1 of chapter 4, now I say that the heir is long as a child and is not different from a slave, although he is a master of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the Father. Even so, we, when we were children, were embodied under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of the time had come, God said forth His son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of His sons. Now, by the way here, when He's talking about under the law, He's talking about the burden and curse of the law. He's not just talking about Israelites. He's saying all were under the law. He's talking even the Gentiles. He's talking to everybody. The law He condemned everybody. And because you were sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, Abba, Father. Therefore, you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. And what is it that God gives Christ? If you are a co-heir with Christ, what is it that He gives Christ? Not a little strip of land around Jerusalem.

He gives Him all things.

Everything. What is it that God wants to keep back from you?

Nothing. This is what's hard to get young people to understand.

But if I do God's way, I miss out on so much. God's trying to keep me from fill in the blank. God's trying to keep me from having a good time. We do this as adults, too.

God's trying to keep me from having more money. God's trying to keep me from being successful. God's trying to keep me from getting married. What is it that He has promised you? All things. So I want you to come up with one good thing that God doesn't want you to have.

Now, so good. God will give me a 10 million dollars. No.

Unless you're prepared for 10 million dollars, He's not going to give it to you.

It would be good for you. Here's the problem. If you were prepared for 10 million dollars, you probably wouldn't care, so we wouldn't give it to you either. Anyways.

You see, if you were prepared for 10 million dollars, you wouldn't want it.

Because your priorities would be straight.

The promise of the New Covenant is to be part of the family of God. The promise of the New Covenant is to be heirs with Jesus Christ of all things. The promise of the New Covenant is greater than anything that was ever given in the Sinai Covenant. Was the Sinai Covenant bad? It was glorious, Paul says. But it was only a stage. The covenants we've gone through are just stages of what God is doing.

Yes, we are still to keep the moral laws of the Sinai Covenant because Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the Apostle Paul and Jesus Himself tells us to. But you and I are under the Sinai Covenant.

I've had people argue this with me. Oh yes, we are. We're still under the Sinai Covenant. I'm not.

Because the promises are so much greater.

We have looked at now through the covenants that reveal the purpose and plan of God, the purpose and plan of salvation. And that plan culminates in God is creating a family.