Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. I'd like to welcome you to our
program this morning. I'm glad you could join us. If
you'd like to follow along in your Bibles, I'm going to be
preaching from the book of 2 Corinthians. This is the epistle, Paul's second
epistle, or letter, to the church at Corinth. And I'll be in chapter
three. Now, this is part of a series
of messages that I've been preaching through 2 Corinthians 3, entitled
The New Testament. This is part three. the New Testament,
part three. And what I'm talking about here,
normally when we think of the term Testament, we think of the
Old Testament, part of the Bible, and the New Testament, all total. And the Old Testament from Genesis
to Malachi, the New Testament from Matthew to Revelation. Now
that is, that's referring to the term Testament as a literary
term. But that's not what I'm talking
about in these messages. What I'm talking about is the
New Covenant. The New Covenant. In the Bible,
we read about the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant was the covenant
that God made with the nation Israel. through Moses on Mount
Sinai. It began at Mount Sinai and it
continued on for about 1500 years to the coming of Christ and Christ
doing his great work of salvation, redemption on the cross of Calvary. And that's when the old covenant
agreement that God had made with Israel ended. and it was signified
by when Christ died on the cross, and you'll remember it's recorded
that in the temple at that time, the veil that separated the holy
of holies from the rest of the temple was torn in two from top
to bottom. And that was actually a physical
sign that God himself did an action which was a sign that
the Old Covenant had now been abolished by way of fulfillment
because Christ fulfilled all the terms of the Old Covenant.
Now the New Covenant or the New Testament is the fulfillment
in time. of what the Bible calls the everlasting
covenant of grace made before time. And it's important that
we understand that. The new covenant is the covenant
of grace, and essentially, the new covenant and the everlasting
covenant of grace are the same, except here's the distinction.
The new covenant is the establishment in time. of the everlasting covenant
of grace made before time. Before the world began, the covenant
was between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,
the Trinity. One God now in three persons
who subsist in three persons, and that's a concept that we
just can't explain or understand, but it's true. And God the Father
chose a people to save in Christ, in the Lord Jesus Christ, and
gave them to His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, placing all of
the conditions and the stipulations and requirements of the fulfillment
of that covenant upon Christ. And Christ became the surety
of His people. That means all of their sins
were laid upon Him. The Bible speaks of how their
names were written in the Lamb's Book of Life, before the world
began, and the lamb is described in that passage in Revelation
13 as the lamb that was slain. Now what does that mean? That
means he was killed, he was punished, he was executed for the sins
of his people that were imputed, charged to him. And so Christ
became the surety of God's chosen people. In time, he came and
assumed human nature without sin. God manifests in the flesh. That's who Jesus Christ is. The
Word made flesh dwelling among us. You see, Jesus Christ is
both God and man in one person. This is what the Bible teaches.
We read in Matthew 1 and verse 21 where the angel told Joseph
what to name the Christ child. His name shall be called Jesus,
for he shall save his people from their sins. And in verse
23, this is the fulfillment of the prophecy. It says his name
shall be called Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with
us. Great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in the flesh. Christ referred to himself as
the I am. You remember when God revealed
himself to Moses on the mountain, the burning bush, he said, I
am that I am. Christ said, I am. He said, before
Abraham was, I am. And so you understand, he said,
told the Pharisees, if you believe not that I am, you will die in
your sins. So Christ, who was set up from
beginning, from before the foundation of the world as the surety, the
representative of his people, he came in time. In the fullness
of the time, Galatians 4.4 says, God sent forth his son, made
of a woman, that's his humanity, made under the law. That was
the fact that all of the salvation of his people was conditioned
on him. And he says, to redeem them under
the law. So he became the substitute of
his people, the lamb slain for their sins. The Passover lamb,
that's what the Passover lamb typifies. Christ, the lamb of
God, shedding his blood for all of his people all over the world
out of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation, and bringing
forth an everlasting righteousness whereby God was just to justify
his people. and he redeemed them with his
own precious blood to redeem them that were under the law.
So the new covenant, and Paul, what he's doing, he's showing
in this 2 Corinthians 3 a contrast between the old covenant, which
was temporal and temporary, and the new covenant, which is eternal,
because it is the fulfillment in time of the everlasting covenant
of grace made before time. And that's what Christ did. He
came in time and he established all the requirements of the new
covenant for the salvation of his people. Now, Paul writes
in 2 Corinthians chapter three and verse six, he says, We are,
God has made us able ministers of the New Testament, New Covenant. And what Paul was saying there
is we're not ministers of the Old Covenant. That Old Covenant
is over, it's abolished. That which is abolished by way
of fulfillment. We're ministers of the New Covenant. Now, understand this now. When Paul says we're ministers
of the new covenant, he's talking about how we preach the gospel.
We're not involved in the temporal, physical aspects of that old
covenant. We don't sacrifice animals. We
don't go to a physical temple or tabernacle. Christ is our
sacrifice. Christ is our temple, our tabernacle. And the church is his temple.
That's right. The Bible says we are the temple
of God, the dwelling place of God, because Christ dwells within
us by His Spirit and His Word. We don't have an earthly priesthood
that represents everybody else like they did back in the Old
Covenant, the tribe of Levi, Leviticus. who the high priest
was a physical descendant of Aaron, Moses' brother. We don't
have that now. Christ is our great high priest,
who entered into the veil for us, the scripture says, presenting
the merits of his blood. He died, he was buried, he arose
again, he ascended to the Father, and he's now seated at the right
hand of the Father, ever living to make intercession for his
people, for us, all who believe. And he is the great high priest. We have a great high priest,
the scripture says. And he intercedes for his people,
pleading the merits of his own righteousness, his blood, his
righteousness on behalf of his people. Jesus Christ the righteous.
He is the propitiation for our sins, the sin bearing sacrifice
who brought satisfaction. And so we don't need another
high priest. We have one high priest. There's one God and one
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, the God
man. And so we don't have, and every
believer, every true believer, every sinner saved by grace.
All sinners who are washed in the blood of Christ, washed clean
from all their sins, forgiven based on His blood, and who are
righteous in God's sight, declared so by God based upon Christ,
righteousness imputed, charged, accounted to them. and regenerated
by the Holy Spirit, brought to faith in Christ, and repentance
of dead works, every one of those are priests unto God. We have
a full right and title to enter into the presence of God by the
blood of Jesus. And that's our only right. It's
not based upon our goodness or our sincerity. Should we try
to be good people? Yes. Should we be sincere? Yes,
there's no question about that. But that's not the basis. the
ground, the meritorious work that gives us right to enter
into the presence of a holy God. Only the blood of Christ, only
His righteousness imputed gives us that right. And so that's
the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
So look at verse six again of 2 Corinthians 3. We're made able
ministers of the New Testament, the New Covenant, not of the
letter, Now the letter there refers to the Old Covenant because
it was written in stone, the Ten Commandments, but it was
also written down on paper, the paper that they had back then.
So it's not of the letter, but of the Spirit. Now I believe
there the Spirit should be capitalized. And I'm gonna show you something
about the spirits of the people of God in just a minute. We do
have now a spiritual, we have spiritual life. Some call it
a spiritual nature, and that's okay, that's fine. But here,
it's the Holy Spirit. This is the work of the Holy
Spirit to apply what Christ has accomplished in his death, burial,
and resurrection to the people of God. Now, under the old covenant,
based upon its terms, nobody was saved based upon the terms
of the old covenant. Even those who were truly saved,
which the Bible calls the remnant, they were saved not based upon
the terms of the old covenant, but they were based upon the
terms of the everlasting covenant of grace, which was for them
to be fulfilled in the future by Christ. And so they believed
the same gospel that we who are under the new covenant believe.
Salvation, based upon the blood and the righteousness of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And the old covenant terms, they
saw the pictures and the types, the reality of them fulfilled
in Christ. Others didn't, but it says, We're ministers of the
new covenant, not of that letter, but of the Spirit. In other words,
it wasn't just laws written on a piece of paper or on tablets
of stone to the true people of God, but it was of the Holy Spirit. And it was of the heart. And
he says here, now listen to this, here's a contrast, for the letter
killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. Now the spirit quickeneth,
that's what that word is. Now, the reason I say that this
should be capitalized is talking about the Holy Spirit is spiritual,
those who are saved by grace, who are called spiritual in the
scripture, we don't give ourselves life. Life comes from Christ
through the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. We have life within,
spiritual life. evidenced by our knowledge of
things that we didn't know before. We're convinced of them. Faith
in Christ, repentance. But we didn't give that to ourselves.
The Bible says, for by grace are you saved, through faith,
but that's not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. We're the new creation, the scripture
says. God created his people. So salvation's of the Lord. It's
not of the sinner. It's not based upon your goodness
because by nature you have none. I'm talking about myself too.
It's not based upon your decision because by nature you would not
decide for Christ. You would not choose God. I was
talking to a young man last week and he said, well, I just believe
we have a choice. Well, yes, we do have a choice. But if the
Spirit of God does not come in and sovereignly and invincibly
give us life from the dead in the new birth, we will always
make the wrong choice. and we will always choose an
idol instead of the true and living God. Now that doesn't
mean we'll all go out and carve out wooden idols or make concrete
idols or marble statues. It means in our minds we will
concoct a God of our own imagination rather than the God of the Bible.
and we will come our own way rather than His way. Christ said,
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father but by me. But man by nature wants his own
way, a way in which he can share in the glory of salvation. And so he makes salvation conditioned
on himself in some way, at some stage, and to some degree. Even
just a little bit, even if it's, even if he says, well, it's Christ
99%, but I have the 1%. Oh no, my friend, you cannot,
God will never share His glory. It's all Christ or nothing. But man insists. You see, that's
why the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 14, the natural man,
As we are born naturally, fallen in Adam, ruined by the fall,
born dead in trespasses and sins, totally depraved, the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither
can he know them. These things are spiritually
discerned. Christ said you must be born again or you cannot see
the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, or enter it. So he
says the letter killeth, but the Spirit, the Holy Spirit,
quickeneth, giveth life. Now, in verse seven, listen to
this. He says, but if the ministration
of death, now what is the ministration? The ministry of death. Now think
about that. This is what God the Holy Spirit
inspired the apostle Paul to write. about the Old Covenant. You say, well, preacher, how
do you know he's talking about the Old Covenant? All right, read on.
But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones. Now, what's he talking about?
He's talking about the Ten Commandments. And there he's using the Ten
Commandments to indicate the whole Old Covenant with all of
its laws. You see, the Old Covenant, the
central part of the Old Covenant, was the moral law, the Ten Commandments,
that God engraved on stones and gave to Moses. And of course,
you know what happened when Moses came down out of the mountain,
he saw them worshiping the golden calf, and he threw them and he
broke them. But God gave him two more stones later. But that
was the basis. But then there were laws given
in the old covenant for the nation Israel. There were the laws of
the priesthood, the laws of sacrifice. You can read about these in the
book of Leviticus. There were laws of the tabernacle.
There were civil laws for their government. There were dietary
laws. There were all kinds of laws.
I think somebody counted them one time and there was well over
600 laws. that Israel was bound under that indicated the Old
Covenant. But he indicates that covenant
by talking about written in stone and glorious. And he says it
was a ministry of death. What do you mean by that? The
letter killeth. And he says it was glorious.
Now you think about the Old Covenant. Think about what the children
of Israel experienced in their deliverance from Egypt. all of
the great and glorious miracles they saw. We always think of
the parting of the Red Sea. That was a glorious thing. Could
you imagine that? And I've heard people say, well,
you know, if we could see something like that, we would believe.
No you wouldn't, the children of Israel didn't. They saw it
and they crossed over dry shod, scripture says. Think about that,
that sea opening up and they crossed over and they didn't
get wet. They saw that, they experienced
that, and then when they got on the other side, they began
to complain and murmur in unbelief. And then think about Moses going
up on Mount Sinai, receiving the law from God. And when he
came down, there was a physical glow that God had put upon Moses
that it was so brilliant, so bright, that the children of
Israel could not steadfastly, it says, look upon Moses to the
face. And so they had to put a veil
over his face. And we'll see that down later on in 2 Corinthians
3. It was glorious. Think about
all the glorious things that they experienced in that old
covenant. And we could go through, you
know, you go through the book of Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers,
even Deuteronomy and everything. It was glorious. It was a glorious
time. But listen to what Paul writes
here by inspiration of the Spirit. He says, but if the ministration
of death written and engraved in stones was glorious, so that
the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face
of Moses for the glory of his countenance, the brightness,
which glory was to be done away? It didn't last. It didn't last. And then he says in verse eight,
how shall not the ministration of the Spirit, again, the Holy
Spirit, be rather glorious? Now here's what he's saying.
As glorious as all those things under the old covenant were,
especially when it was delivered to Moses and Moses came down
out of the mount and the glory of his face, as glorious as that
was, it's not even to be compared to the glory of the ministry
of the Holy Spirit in the new covenant. The ministry of the
Holy Spirit in the New Covenant is much more glorious. And I'll
tell you why. Because it's the glory of Christ. It's the glory of God's grace. It's a glory that will never
be done away. Over across the page in 2 Corinthians
chapter 4, listen to this in verse 6. Second Corinthians,
for God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness. Now
that's creation. God said, let there be light.
And there was light. What a glorious thing that was.
Could you imagine being there to see something like that? He
says, for the same God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness
has shined in our hearts, our minds, our affections, our will,
our conscience, the inner man. has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face,
the person, and the work of Jesus Christ. Do you know that in the
person of Jesus Christ, who is Jesus Christ? We talked about
God manifest in the flesh. and in the beauty and the success
of his work of redemption to save all for whom he lived, died,
was buried, and arose again. In that great redemptive work,
we see every attribute of God working consistently together
to save sinners, all based upon God's grace, which reigns through
righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. That's
the greater glory of the new covenant. You see, all that glory
that Israel experienced under the old covenant, it's gone now. It was done away. but the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ in the salvation of a sinner
based upon his righteousness imputed and received by God-given
faith. That's eternal life. That'll
never end. That'll never go away. And he
says, verse eight of 2 Corinthians, how shall not the ministration
of the Spirit be rather glorious? You see, the old covenant was
a system of government and laws. that was imposed upon the children
of Israel, who on the whole were unwilling participants. It was
a burden. And I'm gonna talk next time
about how it was a ministration of death, and I wanna show you
something out of the Old Covenant times itself that states that. But here's the thing about it.
There was no eternal life. given under the Old Covenant
based on its terms. Now, I'm not saying that nobody
was saved who lived under the Old Covenant. Well, a remnant
was saved in each generation. We can talk about Moses himself. Moses wrote of Christ, Christ
says. And we could go on down, we could
talk about the believers under the old covenant. David, for
example, even old Solomon. I know that boggles a lot of
people's mind. The prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, they knew the gospel, they knew Christ. But their gospel
was not salvation based upon keeping the law. Their salvation,
the salvation they preached was salvation based upon the Christ
who would come in the future and who did keep the whole law
of God. The Bible says in Romans 10 for
that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believe it. And so salvation has always been
and will always be by God's grace through Christ. But God placed
Israel, the nation, under that old covenant for several reasons. First of all, to keep them together
as a nation and to bring the Messiah through that nation according
to the flesh. In his humanity, Christ was a
Jew. He was a physical descendant
of Abraham, a physical descendant of David, born of the seed of
David according to the flesh. And it was through that nation
that God chose that nation to bring the Christ through according,
the Messiah, according to the flesh. So his humanity, Christ
had a humanity without sin. That's why he was born not of
man but of the Holy Spirit through the Virgin Mary who was a descendant
of Judah and David, that tribe. So God chose them and put them
under this covenant. That covenant was a means that
God used to hold them together as a nation. If it were left
up to them, they would have been obliterated. They would have
been destroyed. Later on, you see in the old covenant times,
When the kingdom divided into the northern kingdom and the
southern kingdom, the northern kingdom was destroyed, eventually
the southern kingdom too. But Christ had already been born
when that southern kingdom was destroyed. That was the tribe
of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin. But see, that's the case. Salvation
was and always is by God's grace through the righteousness of
God's Son, who is the Savior of His people. He died, He was
buried, He arose again, He kept the law perfectly, and they all
shall be saved. I hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1-1-0-2-1. Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia
31707. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
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today and may the Lord be with you.