We're going to be in a number
of scriptures today. We read Genesis 17 last week. I hope
you've got some recollection of what that was about. If you
recall, God promised Abraham in a covenant. He said, I'm going
to multiply your seed. He said, I'm going to give you
this land, and I'm going to be a God to you, and I'm going to
be a God to your children. Those promises were fulfilled
in different ways, and that sheet that I passed out compares how
the promises were fulfilled in the Old Testament in those things,
and also fulfilled in the New Testament in the New Covenant.
But I really encourage you to take a look at that, Genesis
17, if you've never sort of been wrestling over Genesis 17 in
your mind before. It's a good thing that you do,
because when you read it, it seems like God is promising no
more than just that the physical nation of Israel is going to
go into a land called Canaan, and there God's going to give
them that land. But there's a lot more there than that, and that's
why we want to continue. We're going to complete this
today, hopefully. Let's ask the Lord to be with us. Dear Father, we thank you for
your word. Thank you that you wrote it through men that you
gave your spirit to so that your word would be recorded for us.
What a grace this is. But you didn't just write it
in the Old Testament. You explained it and unfolded
that Old Testament in the New by the Lord Jesus Christ himself
and by his apostles. And by those that you gave that
ministry to, to unfold your word, what a blessing that is to us.
And Lord, we pray that as we hear today the gospel, as those
in the Old Testament heard the gospel, that you would grant
us this grace of faith that it would be given to us that we
would believe and we would not be found in unbelief and perish
as it were in the wilderness of this world perish under the
wrath of God but we would flee to Christ and we would look for
that eternal heavenly inheritance which is ours in Him and we would
find it we would find it Lord we would be assured of it and
we would with the fruit of our lips, would give thanks to your
name during this sojourn, in this life, in this body of sin. Lord, we pray that you'd give
us victory over our enemies and bring us to yourself and help
us, Lord, to gather around that throne, not one here be missing,
that we might sing praises to our Savior with our whole heart,
our whole soul, and that he might be exalted because he alone is
worthy. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Now, in Genesis 17, as I summarized
quickly for you before we just now started, God gave promises
to Abraham, and those promises were contained in a covenant
And he made that covenant, he said, with Abraham and with his
children, his seed. And so I'm just going to refer
back to Genesis 17. I'm not going to read the entire
chapter there, but I'm going to just some of the phrases there. He says, I will make, in verse
2, a covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee
exceedingly. That was the first thing that
God was going to do, was to increase Abraham's seed. his seed. And Abraham fell on his face,
and God talked with him, saying, As for me, God says, Behold,
my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many
nations." That's an amazing phrase. My covenant. My covenant. You can see that it had to already
have been drawn up there. My covenant is with you. That's
the revelation of God to each one of his people. My covenant
is with you. Jesus Christ is the mediator
of the New Testament. That's the covenant God makes
with his people. Without that covenant, we're
no better off than Ishmael and Esau or those people in Israel
who did not believe on the Lord. But he says to Abraham, I'm going
to make my covenant with you. Thou shalt be a father of many
nations. Verse 5, "...neither shall thy name any more be called
Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham, for a father of many
nations have I made thee." Very important word there. He already
had made him a father of many nations in God's eternal purpose. God speaks about things that
are future as if they're already past. That's a wonderful thing,
isn't it? And then he says, he goes on
and he says in verse 7, I'll establish my covenant between
me and thee and thy seed after thee and their generations. Not
just one seed in this case, but many. For an everlasting covenant
to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. That's the
first thing. It's everlasting, the covenant is everlasting.
And he's going to be a god to those who he's talking about
here. And I will give unto thee and to thy seed after thee the
land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an
everlasting possession, and I will be their god. And so then, The Lord says, and God said to
Abraham, and this is the sign God gives him. And you shall
circumcise the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a token A token is like a sign of the
covenant between me and you. And he goes on and says that
everyone who's not circumcised is cut off from the covenant.
But he also explains later on that he does not make this covenant
with Ishmael. He doesn't make it with Ishmael.
And later in scripture, he doesn't make it with Esau, but he made
it with the children of Abraham through Isaac. Because Isaac
was the seed, the promised seed. So, what does it all mean? Well,
if you look at just this section of scripture, you would draw
the conclusion that God had made a perpetual, never-ending covenant
with Abraham and all of Abraham's physical descendants through
Isaac, that they would receive the land of Canaan, which is
now called the land of Israel. And it would be everlasting.
There would be no taking away of that. Furthermore, he said
they had to be circumcised here. So you would expect then circumcision,
because it's a sign of this covenant, has to be carried through. Only those who are circumcised
could be in this covenant. Receive the blessings, therefore,
of it. But as we saw last time, God uses the words everlasting
in the context of either this covenant or later in the Old
Testament, the Old Covenant, the law God gave to Moses. He
uses those terms everlasting to refer, they're bounded by
the covenant itself. As soon as the covenant, as long
as the covenant lasts, they last. But if the covenant ends, they
also end. And so what you find is in the
New Testament that an argument is put forward in several places
to show that it was always God's intention to give what He promised
here to specific individuals who were not physically descended
from Abraham. Those individuals would be called
the spiritual seed of Abraham. Actually, they're called the
children of promise, or the heirs of promise, or the heirs of salvation. The children of God, the sons
of God. All those things are synonyms for those people spoken
of in the covenant. And the New Testament demonstrates
how that was already promised by God beforehand, even though
here, when we first read it, it doesn't appear apparent to
us. It's not apparent. And so the New Testament reveals
it, because God was pleased to keep it as a mystery until the
New Testament came. Until Christ actually fulfilled
the Old Covenant and ushered in the New. He inaugurated the
New. He brought it in as a new thing,
because it wasn't new in that it was newly created, but new
in that it was revealed. And new because it was newly
ratified in His blood. And so the New Covenant is discussed
in great detail in the New Testament. That's why we call it the New
Testament. It's interesting, I was thinking about this the
other day, how the men who ordered the books of the Bible in the
order they did, and put chapters and verses on them, and collected
them in the Old and the New Testaments, they had enough insight to recognize
this is essentially the best summary you can give. This is
the Old Testament and that's the New Testament. Because in
those, each of those, we have the Old Covenant and the New
Covenant revealed. And so, as I said, in the New
Testament, the apostles and the writers of the New Testament
reveal to us how these things are actually fulfilled. In other
words, God has to interpret what He actually meant. So last week
we looked at Romans chapter 9. And in Romans 9, the argument
there is that, well the question is sort of raised, if these Israelites,
the children, the physical descendants of Abraham, had all these blessings,
covenants and promises, the service of God, the tabernacle, the priesthood,
and even Christ came through them, then how is it, if it was
an everlasting covenant, how is it that it seems to have failed?
What happened? Is there something wrong with
the Word of God? No. Paul says no. No, not at all.
Because if you look back, and Paul makes this argument. Basically
it's a two step argument. First, look at the men in that
time. Ishmael was not included. But
Isaac was. Jacob was included, but not Esau. So he shows that even then God
was showing that it wasn't intended for all of Abraham's seed. And therefore he applies it to
the whole nation. He says, for they are not all
Israel, the nation, who which are of Israel. They're not all,
I'm sorry, they're not all spiritual Israel. He doesn't use the word
spiritual, but he says Israel, which are of Israel. Not everyone
born to Abraham physically is called Abraham's seed, the true
seed of Israel. That's what Romans 9 proves.
And then he calls Moses too, he says, because Moses said,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. It's all determined,
Paul is arguing in Romans 9, not just arguing, but unfolding
to us, that the true seed of Abraham are those God actually
chose. in the covenant. He chose them
in election. He chose them in Christ, who
is called the covenant. In Isaiah 42.6 and 49.8 and other
places. So the Lord Jesus Christ then
is revealed to be that covenant in Him. And those who are chosen
in Him are part of this new covenant. And Romans 9 unfolds that to
us. That it's not the physical descendants, but those God chose
into this covenant. It has no relationship to their
physical relationship to Abraham, but their relationship to Christ,
which was one established by God from eternity. That's what
God is saying in the New Testament, in Romans 9. And so we think,
well that's quite amazing. that God would give these things
only to those men. But not only to those. He goes
on and he says, but this was prophesied beforehand. In Romans
9 he says, look, Hosea said this. He said it this way. God promised
then, which proves God anticipated and intended this. He said, I
will call them my people which were not my people. In other
words, God would call them his true people who were not his
outwardly identified people. They were Gentiles. They were
not his people. But he says, I'm going to call
them, at least some of them, my people. And I'm going to call
her beloved, which was not beloved. And this is what the book of
Hosea was about. The children of Hosea and his adulterous wife,
Gomer. They had these children. And
one was called, no mercy. Another one was called, not my
people. But then he says, I'm going to call those who were
not my people, my people. And those who had not obtained
mercy, they have obtained mercy. So he changes their names. Because
he's showing in Hosea, God had purpose to bring a people out
of every kindred, tongue, people, and nation. And Revelation 5-9
says that those people are gathered around the throne saying, They're singing praises to Christ
because they were the redeemed out of every nation. So that's
the revelation of the New Testament. And then Paul also brings forth
the arguments from Isaiah. He says, look, Isaiah said this,
even though the number of the children of Israel is as sand
as the sea, because it was, a remnant shall be saved. That's what he
says. Isaiah said this. So he uses
these things to prove that God had not just revealed it, but
he had anticipated it in prophecy, which means that God had always
meant for it to be this way. So when he spoke to Abraham,
he had one thing in mind, even though we only understand it
to mean a physical thing, until God reveals his purpose. So that's
what the New Testament does. It unfolds God's intention. What God always planned and purposed. It wasn't a lately come thing. It was an eternal thing. But now I want to go to a few
other scriptures here real quickly to show you that this was God's
eternal purpose and it's fulfilled in Abraham. But before I do,
I want you to keep in mind, what is it that these things all mean? Let's assume that at this point
in time you've already been convinced from scripture that it's true.
God meant to save a people. It didn't matter that they were
born physically to Abraham. And God meant to save them in
Christ. It didn't matter that they were
circumcised in their body or whatever. It didn't matter that
they were not in the land of Canaan. All those things didn't
matter. What is it that God is saying to us? Well, I think that
He's showing us that salvation is what it's all about. And that
salvation is only in the Lord Jesus Christ. And He's also showing
us that those who were not part of that were evidenced by the
fact that they did not believe Christ. And those who were part
of it were evidence and demonstrated to be God's people because they
were given faith to believe Him. And so He drives this home in
the New Testament over and over. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the people of Israel
wandered to the wilderness for 40 years because when they came
to the land of promise that God said He was going to give them,
they did not believe Him. Most of them perished in the
wilderness and they did not enter that land of Canaan. And God
uses that to teach us how important it is that we do not neglect
this so great salvation. That we not let any promise fall
through unbelief, but we go on to Christ. We don't cling to
those Old Testament things and the covenant, old covenant, and
those things that were just a shadow of the true. But we go on to
Christ and find perfection in Him alone. And it's a complete
salvation. It's not a partial salvation.
It's what God always intended. It's eternal and it's in the
heavens. And it has to do with people who were sinners, ungodly
in themselves, and God translated them from the kingdom of Satan
and darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son. This is what
it's all about. The enemies in Canaan were the
enemies of our soul, sin, and death. Satan, this world, and
all that will oppose us and stand between us and glory. And God
is teaching us through these things, all these things, when
you read this big, fat part of the Bible called the Old Testament,
it's all full of wars. It's full of people who were,
you know, descendants from these guys and those guys and judges
and all sorts of things. It's all pointing forward to
that spiritual reality that we have now. with the Spirit of
God in us. Remember what was it the Israelites
looked for as they left Egypt? They looked for Canaan, didn't
they? God's going to bring us into this land. It's a land flowing
with milk and honey. Can you imagine what the kids
thought? Flowing. It's like a river of milk and
honey. I can't imagine what this is
like. And then when they got there, they send in the spies
and they bring back these clusters of grapes so huge two men had
to carry one of them. They're thinking, whoa, we want
this land. And in the New Testament it tells
us, Christ in you, the hope of glory. This is what he's trying
to underscore. And so when we look at this,
don't miss the big message here. That salvation is in Christ.
And salvation in Christ and all blessings in Christ, which are
only ours in Him. Is what God has always been talking
about. And it's all of our salvation. And it needs to be all of our
desire. Because that's what David said
at the end of the day, at the end of his life. Look with me
at this. I'm giving you the conclusion now before we go through some
of these details so we don't lose sight of it. Because I think
we, 2 Samuel chapter 23, he draws this out through thousands
of years of history. And here we are today. In 2018,
wondering, what does it all mean? Like Nicodemus, I don't know
what you mean. Can you explain it to me? So that I can understand
it. Look at 2 Samuel chapter 23.
Now these be the last words of David. So we know that it's the
last words. It's got to be important words. He's looking back on his
life. He's very old now. And he's going
to sum it all up for us. He says, David the son of Jesse
said, And the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the
God of Jacob and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said this, The Spirit
of the Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue. The
God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spake to me. He that
ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. He's
speaking about this ruler he's talking about here who's just
and rules in the fear of God. He said, "...and he shall be
as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning
without clouds." He's talking about the passing away of the
dark shadow of the condemnation that comes on us because of our
sin and the rising light of seeing Christ and our place in Him. He says, "...without clouds,
as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining
after rain." In verse 5, as he reflects on that in a metaphorical
way, the gospel and the fulfillment of it in verse 4, then he goes
on to verse 5 and he thinks, Oh, although my house be not
so with God. And what house is he talking
about? David was king over all of Israel. Judah and Jerusalem
and all 12 tribes. And he's speaking about that
house, my house, and his own children, his house, all of them. He's speaking like Paul did in
Romans 9. I could wish that myself were
accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the
flesh. That's the house. Although my house be not so with
God, yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered
in all things, and sure And this, this covenant God has made with
me in Christ is all my salvation and all my desire, although he
make it not to grow. He's saying here that his entire
life, if you could sum it up, he learned this. What God has
made for me in Christ is all my salvation, all my desire. He wasn't looking for a day when
his children after the flesh would inherit a land. All those
things spoken of then, these shadows were pointing to the
substance. He wasn't looking for the shadows.
He was looking for that eternal glory in Christ. So now let me
take you to a few scriptures just very quickly. I'm not going
to dive into them at all. But look at these with me. Luke
chapter 1. Because the Bible itself unfolds
these things, and it's wonderful to find that God has made it
known to us so that we would see. Yeah, what we've been learning
about as we look in the epistles about Christ and our salvation
as Gentiles. But when we look back at the
Old Testament, what does it all mean? Here God tells us. This
is what He always meant. In Luke chapter 1, verse 30,
He says, And the angel said to Mary, Fear not, Mary. But thou
hast found favor with God, and, behold, thou shalt conceive in
thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son, and shalt call his name
Jesus." Now think about it. All of the promises God made
to Abraham Your seed, through your seed, all the nations of
the earth will be blessed. And the promise God made to Adam
and Eve, the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the
serpent. All the promises, and to David, of your own, of the
fruit of your body will I set on your throne. And all those
things the Israelites look forward to, now is that time. A son,
and his name shall be called Jehovah is salvation, Jesus. He shall be great, and shall
be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God shall give unto
him the throne of his father David. This is the one. He's
fulfilling all the covenant and promises God made to David. Do
you see it? He's going to sit on the throne
of his father David. And he shall reign over the house
of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there shall
be no end. This is the Lord Jesus. This
is the one who was born, who lived a life, and suffered and
died at the hands of his own people because they did not believe
him. And he was put to death. And he rose again, and then ascended,
and guess what? He sat down on the right hand
of the throne of the majesty on high, because he purged our
sins. He did the will of God. He fulfilled
the eternal covenant, and he fulfilled the old also in that. And this is what he's saying,
because he was going to accomplish these things, he's going to sit
on that throne forever. And he's going to rule over my
people, the house of Jacob. And he's not talking here about
the physical seed of Israel. But he's talking about that promised
seed. And now look at Luke chapter
2. Here Simeon, an old man, he knows
he's near death. But God has showed him you're
not going to die until you see the Lord's Christ. And so it
says in Luke chapter 2 verse 29. He says, Lord, Simeon cries to
the Lord, Lord, now let your servant depart in peace according
to thy word, because he saw the Lord Jesus. He took him up, in
verse 28, he took him up in his arms and blessed God. Can you
imagine holding the Son of God, the one mediator between God
and men, the King, the Eternal King? The one to whom all dominion,
everything was subjected to him in the beginning. The one who
would conquer death and put away sin and bring his people into
an eternal inheritance and sit on heaven's throne and receive
the praise and service of angels and men throughout all eternity
and all devils and all that opposes God would be subjected to him
and he holds him in his arms and he says, Now let your servant
depart in peace. Verse 30. For mine eyes have
seen thy salvation. Here we have the fulfillment,
isn't it? Is this not it? Are we looking for something
more? Do we need anything else? Thy salvation, which thou hast
prepared before the face of all people. And here we fit in the
light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel. Amazing. And Joseph and his mother
marveled at those things which were spoken of him. And Simeon
blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, Behold, this child
shall be set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel,
and for a sign which shall be spoken against. Yea, a sword
shall pierce through thine own soul also, and the thoughts of
many hearts shall be revealed. And there, there was one Anna,
a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel. The tribe of Assur,
she was of a great age and had lived with a husband seven years
from her virginity. So perhaps she got married when
she was 15 and seven years later she had lived with her husband
and then she was a widow. So maybe at 22 she was widowed.
And it says she was a widow for about four scored, four years.
She's over 100 years old. And she departed not from the
temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And
she, coming in that instant, gave thanks likewise to the Lord. And she spake of Him. To who? To all them that looked for the
land of Canaan so they could finally inherit it. No! To look
for them who would finally subject the Romans under their feet.
No! He says He looked for all those who looked for redemption
in Jerusalem. Redemption from sins. And so
we see, there it is. Now look over at Luke chapter
1, verse 68. Luke chapter 1, going back a
page. This is Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. And
if you remember, Gabriel, the angel, appeared to Zacharias
and said, you're going to have a son. And he gave him the prophecy.
And Zacharias said, well, how do I know? How do I know it's
going to happen? He said, well, because you didn't believe me,
you're going to be unable to speak until he's born. And so
then, after John was born, he took a pen and he wrote his name,
shall we? John, verse 63. And then in verse
68, his father, Zacharias, is filled with the Holy Ghost. In
verse 68 he says this. Listen carefully. Blessed be
the Lord God of Israel. The first things he has to say.
This is what he's going to say. Zacharias, the priest, the high
priest as far as I know. Maybe not the high priest, but
anyway. Whatever he is, he's a priest. Significant man in
Israel. And God spoke through him. God's
Spirit spoke through him. And he uttered these words. He
said, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited
and redeemed his people in the Lord Jesus. That's who he's talking
about. And he has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house
of his servant David." The horn. That's the strong part of the
ox. He goes, a horn of salvation. Nothing can oppose this. Sin
and death and the devil and everything else are going to be crushed
by him. All of his enemies subdued and put under him a horn of salvation
from where? The house of David. As he spake
by the mouth of his holy prophets who have been Since the world
began, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the
hand of all that hate us. Notice, to perform the mercy
promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the
oath which he swore to our father Abraham. What oath? That he would
grant us that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness
before him all the days of our life." And then if you look back at
Micah, Micah is an Old Testament scripture that almost says these
same words, because Zacharias was quoting from there. He says
this in Micah chapter 7. It explains what he's talking
about when he says these enemies. He's going to save us from our
enemies. This is the oath. This is the covenant that God
gave to Abraham. And this is what's being fulfilled
right now when Jesus was coming. He says in verse 18 of Micah
7, Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and
passes by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage?
the remnant of his heritage, he retaineth not his anger forever,
because he delighteth in mercy, he will turn again, he will have
compassion upon us, he will subdue our iniquities, and thou wilt
cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. That sounds
like Egypt. That sounds like Pharaoh. That
sounds like his armies. God's going to take our sins
and He's going to subdue them under Himself. And then He's
going to cast them into the sea of His judgment. that judgment
that was in the Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 20 he says this, "...thou
wilt perform the truth to Jacob and the mercy to Abraham which
thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old." Do you
see what God is saying here in these texts of scripture? The
promise is to Abraham and to his children the elect of God. It's fulfilled in Christ and
it has to do with eternal salvation. Look at Romans chapter 11. Romans chapter 11. It says this
in verse 25. Romans chapter 11 verse 25. I
realize I'm jumping into a thorny passage, but I'm going to just
tell it to you anyway. Verse, chapter 11, verse 25. "...until the fullness of the
Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved." When
God brings in the fullness of the Gentiles, He's bringing in
all those out of those nations that He had chosen, the remnant
from Gentile nations. And then He's going to also bring
in at that time the rest of all the remnant of Israel out of
that nation. And then he says this, "...and
so all Israel shall be saved." All the Israel God intended to
save shall be saved. The seed of Abraham after Christ's
seed. The Spirit of God in them, given
to them. Because He redeemed them by His
blood, because God gave them to Him in that covenant, in God's
eternal election. He put them in that covenant.
And then he says this, listen to these words very carefully.
I'm sorry, he says, "...and so all Israel shall be saved, as
it is written, there shall come out of Zion the Deliverer," or
the Savior, "...and he shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is my covenant," in
case you hadn't understood it before, "...this is my covenant
unto them, when I shall take away their sins." You see what
God is dealing with here? Turn to the book of Hebrews while
we're thinking about that. God's covenant with Abraham had
to do with sins. It had to do with justification
before God in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. It
had to do with a salvation that is eternal in the heavens. And in Christ, our mediator,
Romans, I mean Hebrews chapter 1. What does it say in verse 1? God who at sundry times and in
divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers. What did
God say to the fathers in time past? I'm about to tell you. And when He tells you, He tells
you the whole book of Hebrews. And when He unfolds it, what
does He say? Look to Christ. Looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith, it's all in Him. He's entered heaven
with His own blood and has obtained eternal redemption for us. He
has forever perfected those that were sanctified by His one offering.
This is what He did. He made reconciliation for iniquity. He established everlasting righteousness. That's what He's about to tell
you. In fact, in the next verse, look what He says. He has in
these last days spoken unto us by His Son. And what does He
say about Him first? Whom He hath appointed to be
what? The heir of all things. The seed of Abraham. To whom
God gave all of the promises of all of the blessings. So that
when God says He's chosen us in Him, before the foundation
of the world that we should have all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Him. And so he goes on and look at
the same chapter in verse 13. He says that angels serve Christ.
He's the creator, they're the servants. They're His created
servants. And these servants are commanded
to worship him, these angels that men revere as the greatest
of all beings. The Jews had a problem with that.
But he says in verse 13, Hebrews 1 verse 13, But to which of the
angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make
thine enemies thy footstool. He only said that to the Christ,
the Son, the Mediator. But in verse 14 look at, Are
they not all ministering spirits? sent forth to minister for them
who shall be heirs of salvation." That's our inheritance. God,
who owns everything in heaven and earth, has made people. Heirs, inheritors of His wealth. And in that wealth He distills
it all down to this salvation in Christ. That's what it's all
about. This is the covenant God made
with Him. And we could go through the book of Hebrews and just...
I encourage you to. Just read through it. Get your
highlighter out. If you don't want to put it in
your Bible, take a copy of it or print it out somehow and highlight
it. Just go through and underline everything that says promises,
salvation, eternal, inheritance. And you'll see it. God has made
it clear there. It's all there. Look at 1 Peter
2. I'm only taking you to highlights.
I can't take you to the whole New Testament. But this is different
people saying it. So I'm taking you to each one
of them. He says this in 1 Peter 2. When you get to 1 Peter 2, put
your finger there. Go back to Exodus 19. Hold your
place there. But look at Exodus 19. I want
you to see this. Exodus chapter 19, he says in
verse 5. And verse 4, he says in Exodus
19, 4, You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bare
you on eagles' wings and brought you unto myself. And verse 5,
Now therefore, if you will obey my voice, if... You might want
to look at that word a little bit and squint your eyes. Ooh,
that's a hard word, isn't it? If. you will obey my voice indeed
and keep my covenant then you shall be a peculiar treasure
unto me above all people for all the earth is mine and you
shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation what
what was the what what happened what had to happen for that to
take place who's he talking to all the nation of Israel what
did they have to do in order to be called a holy nation a
peculiar treasure to him If they obeyed His voice indeed and kept
His covenant. Now look at 1 Peter chapter 2.
But you, verse 9, you are a chosen generation. How did that happen? I thought we had to keep the
old covenant and we know it's huge. It's got all these laws,
it's all contained in these laws and we have to keep every one
or it all falls together. We're either obligated to do
it all, or we fail to do it all. And what do we do? How do we
get this way? You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a peculiar people. This is exactly what God said
to Israel, but He said it in the Old Covenant, dependent upon
their own personal obedience. Now He says it to all those who
are in Christ. Those who were given to him,
those for whom he shed his blood, redeem them from the curse of
the law, from sin, from this world, from Satan, from everything
that will oppose them, from coming to God, to keep them from God. to reconcile them to God. He
says, you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood. Christ is
our high priest, and we're all priests in that priesthood, and
a holy nation. This is speaking about the saints,
the people of God, those who believe Christ out of every kindred,
tongue, people, and nation. Thou hast redeemed us to thyself
out of every kindred, tongue, people, and nation, however it's
worded there. And we could go on and on, but we will exhaust
the time. So let me just take you to one
more verse in Revelation chapter 1. The saints are gathered around
the throne. The wicked have been sent away.
And now they all stand before the Lord Jesus. And he says this. It says this in verse five, and
from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness and first begotten
of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. You see
all these things? The faithful witness, that's
the prophet. And the first begotten of the dead, that's the first
born from the dead. And the prince of the kings of
the earth, he rules over all. Listen to what the saints say.
Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood,
and has made us kings and priests unto God and His Father. To Him
be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Let's pray. Father,
we thank You that in the Lord Jesus Christ there is an eternal
salvation, an inheritance we could never fathom, unspeakably
great, And it's abundant not only in its greatness, but in
the grace that brings it to us, because it was purchased at the
cost of the blood of the Son of God in our nature. And he
offered himself to God for us, but bearing our sins in himself,
bearing the guilt of our sins and the shame of them before
God and men. And he took our place. Lord,
help us not to stand in unbelief before him, but give us this
faith, Lord, cause our souls to run out to him and flee to
him for refuge and find our all in him. And whenever we're tempted,
whenever the hope of eternal life seems dim, and the troubles
of our heart and life and any kind of trouble, especially persecutions,
come, Help us to look to Jesus, who for the joy that was set
before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set
down in the right hand of God. and know that He is our forerunner
so that we cannot not be there, we will be there in Him if we
see Him and believe on Him and hold fast this confession of
our faith that you've given to us, founded in our hearts to
say that Christ Jesus, the Lord of glory in my nature, took my
sins and bore them all and took them away before God and this
is all my hope, all my salvation and all my desire. In Jesus'
name we pray, amen.