We're going to be there this
evening. Hebrews chapter 8, not John 21, James. Back to Hebrews. Here we go. I just automatically
opened my Bible to John. Let's read Hebrews 8. Now the
point in what we are saying is this. We have such a high priest,
one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty
in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent
that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed
to offer gifts and sacrifices, thus it is necessary for this
priest also to have something to offer. Now, if he were on
earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests
who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy, a
shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect
the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, See that you make
everything according to the pattern that was shown to you on the
mountain. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that
is much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates
is better, since it enacted on better promises. For if that
first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion
to look for a second, for he finds fault with them. when he
says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will
establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with
the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their
fathers on the day that I took them by the hand to bring them
out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant,
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For
this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws into
their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their
God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach each
one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, Know the
Lord, for they all shall know me, from the least of them to
the greatest. For I will be merciful toward
their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.
And speaking of a new covenant, He makes the first one obsolete,
and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish
away. Of course, the law of God, the
law of Moses, the law of the Decalogue, and any other law
that we could find in this scripture is always in the broiler or in
the mixer or in the hot seat And there's never an occasion
when there's not someone trying to defend God's righteousness
and support God's people through the teaching of the law. We have
learned and will continue to learn that the law has a place
and that the place of that law vanished along with the temple,
along with its precepts, and all the other laws, including
the Decalogue, and everything contained therein. All of it
vanished when the truth was revealed. Now, remember, we're reading
through this letter. So we're taking this letter much
like the first century church would have taken it. Much like
the original hearers would have heard it. They would have read
through it in one hearing, then they would have talked about
it. And then they would have gotten back together and they
would have read through it again and talked about it. And one
of the most damaging aspects of our system of biblical printing
is that we have all of these numbers and digits and chapters. And we forget oftentimes that
those have no bearing on the meaning of scripture, nor are
they to ever be used as a way of examining the content of what's
been written. I've recently seen some people
try to argue, well, I see that you are in Romans 7 and I am
in Romans 11. Or I see that you're stuck in
Romans 4 when you need to go to Romans. Folks, that's just
stupid. I don't want to say that in a way to be degrading, but
if we ever find ourselves in that mode of thinking about the
scripture, we have become dumb. And we have forgotten that the
letter is written in its entirety as a whole discussion, as a complete
argument. There is no such thing as Romans
4 and Romans 9. It is the letter to the Romans
and everything in it is single minded only. Always single minded. This letter to the Hebrews is
single-minded. There is one purpose and one
purpose alone. There is one message and the
only message and that message is that Jesus Christ is the righteousness
of God apart from the law period for His elect for He has accomplished
the work of salvation. There is only one true promise,
only one true contract, only one true covenant of all covenants
and all the shadows of all the promises of God. And it is that
the Christ would die for his people, would be raised to life
and intercede for them, being their propitiation, being their
high priest forever. And that if anyone has not been
shown this as their hope, regardless of what they think about the
written code, they have not been born of God. Period. It is a blasphemous practice
to sit down with a new convert and say, I want to show you Romans
chapter 3. Or I want to show you Romans
chapter 13. Alright, now that you've just come to the knowledge
of the truth, I want to get you over to chapter 10 of Hebrews
so that you can come to church like you're supposed to. What
is that? You know when we deal with sin
in the church? When we see it. I don't walk out of my yard every
night and just bust about 500 rounds into the woods. Just in
case there's some crazy people out there trying to kill me. I don't tip over all the beds
and blowtorch the carpets every night just in case there's bedbugs. And when I see people driving
down the road and they wave at me, I don't go run them over
to see what they want just in case they have something good
or bad to say. It's crazy. What's this mean? Nothing. It's just stupid, isn't
it? The same reason that I don't want to sit inside the context
of the assembly of the saints and preach about sin after sin
after sin, and action after action after action, and work after
work after work, and thought after thought after thought,
with no regard to it may or may not even be happening, so that
your focus is no longer on the Messiah, but on the message of
the law. When do we deal with sin? When
we see it. How do we deal with sin? As we're
taught to deal with it according to the authority of the apostles
who speak as God's agents. And if there's anything else
for us to know, we're just not going to know it. I've been told In certain times
of ministry, you get out of the pulpit, especially when you're
guest preaching. When you're guest preaching,
you get out of the pulpit and you've got a receiving line.
Y'all have probably seen it at conferences or been part of those.
Go talk to the preacher. And you just stand there. That's
why most preachers go to the door so y'all can get on out
when you go to receiving. And I've always heard several
things. I've heard, good sermon, pastor.
That was good preacher. And I always want to know why,
what was good about it. What did you learn of Christ?
If you learn of Christ, it was a good message. If you didn't
learn of Christ, it was a horrible waste of your time. If it didn't
encourage you in the faith, it was a poor sermon, poorly done. If it abused you or made you
feel damaged or hurt your feelings, it was poorly executed. But I've
heard those things. That just stepped on my toes,
preacher. What do you mean by that? Do you know it's rude to
step upon someone's toes? When you step upon someone's
toes in public, you're to turn around and say, I am so sorry.
I did not mean to hurt your body like that. Because that's a hurtful
thing. It's very painful for someone
to step on your toes. Or like I did with my grandmother
one time, not looking where I was going with the shopping cart,
and ran over her Achilles heels. Both of them. I've never seen
her dance until that day, and it wasn't a fun dance of joy.
Let me put it that way. We don't want preaching to step
on toes, yet that is one of the biggest accolades that most people
give me concerning certain sermons. Hey, pastor, why don't you listen
to this sermon? Oh, yeah? What is it about? Well,
this brother just stepped on my toes, and I want you to get
in there and see what he's all about. Yeah, how do you step
on your toes? He showed me what a sinner I
was, how I need to get my life right, how I need to get my heart
right. That's Antichrist. And if that
makes me antinomian for the unbelievers out there that call themselves
Christians, then take the t-shirt, wear it proudly. I'm a law keeper. Wear it then, folks. And if you
want my gospel to be labeled antinomian, I'll wear that shirt.
Antinomian equals eternal life. That's what Paul's arguing. And he's doing it over and over
again. I'm like, Paul, couldn't you just written this out on
a postcard? Couldn't you just written it out very quickly? It doesn't
take that long to read Hebrews. It really doesn't. 20 minutes
or less, maybe 15. It's not long. It's not like John's gospel.
You don't have 70 and 80 verses in certain things. It's not like
certain sections of Romans where you got 40 verses or Matthew.
You know, I'm thinking, well, whoever did do these numbering,
did you just get tired? Christ is the high priest who
is not like any high priest. Christ is God's righteousness
that the law is not. I've even had recently someone
suggest, it wasn't even a discussion, it was just something they said
in response to something that I said. that Paul preaches the
gospel in Romans by spending two chapters on the sin and the
law of God. Sin and the law of God. And that's
a mistake. That's not true. Paul did not
write Romans to teach people about the gospel. Paul did not
write Romans to evangelize a lost collective group. wrote Romans,
as he did Hebrews, to the elect saints of God in their respective
locations around the world so that they would be encouraged
in the grace and the power of the cross of Christ. So that
they would realize that no matter how pious these Jews were in
their eyes, there was nothing that their piety or their obedience
could do for them. So don't feel like a lower class
Christian because you have spent a life of idolatry when the Jews
themselves were equally idolatrous. And people like to argue, well,
that was because Judaism had lost its way, its compass. No. Its compass was always that
it would decay, that it would be destroyed, that it would point
to the one who was the truth. When Jesus says, I am the truth,
sanctify them in your truth. He's speaking of himself. Jesus
is not the truth giver, though that is true. He is the truth. So if we think we understand
what it means to be in God, to be in the presence of God and
to worship God and thus have the hopes of the promises of
God, there are two pictures. There are the pictures of antiquity,
the pictures of history, the pictures of Judaism in the Garden
of Eden, the pictures that we see throughout the Old Testament
of generation after generation who were taught that if you do
this, you will receive this. If you do this and you accomplish
this, then I will give you that. We saw these promises. We saw
these conditional covenants over and over again. Then we saw God
teaching his people through Moses how to worship him, how to come
into his presence. And the one requirement in order
to come into the presence of God is holiness. That means of
as God is, we must also be. The human mind, apart from the
work of the Holy Spirit, will always figure a way where the
human being can become more like God. It is the very nature of
what happened in the heart of Lucifer. where he thought in his heart,
I should stand next to God and share in his glory because look
at how I look. Look at who I am. I reflect the
very nature of God. Thus, I must be not him, but
at least deserve a place next to him. God threw him out of
heaven. That's a picture of reprobation.
That's a picture of self-righteousness. It's a picture of false religion.
It's a picture of Judaism as a shadow. It's a picture of the
law as a shadow. It's a picture of the holy of
holies as a shadow. When man is left to himself,
he will take the promise of God's covenant in a temporary way and
he will always establish a righteousness for himself. And keep in mind, beloved, we're
talking about the gospel of grace. We're not dealing with sins right
now. We're not dealing with church discipline. We're not dealing
with people who are causing division because of their lifestyle choices
or their words or their practices. or their attitudes or their arrogance.
We will deal with those every week. We deal with something.
Don't we deal with something in our own hearts? Don't we deal
with something in our own relationships with each other? Don't we deal
with something as parents with children and children with parents?
There's always something to deal with. There are always going
to be the fleshliness of our existence in the midst of the
righteousness of Christ, which is ours as we live life together. And when we have to deal with
those things, we deal with them. But very few times in my tenure
in the pastorate, pushing 22 years now, have I ever felt the
need to deal with the pulpit, deal with a specific sin in the
pulpit, except when I saw the sin of division some few years
ago. And I set aside two weeks to
preach out of Romans 14 and 15. And God saw it fit to remove
those from us who were not walking with us through discipline. So two weeks out of almost nine years, eight years,
how long was it? Eight, yeah, nine. This October
will be nine years that Grace Truth has been gathering. Nine years. Two Sundays I've
had to preach on sin, specifically. Does it mean I haven't dealt
with it? It comes up in the text, I deal with it. If there's something
specifically that we can approach it in the context of a Sunday
morning in just a few seconds, not a sermon. Why would I ever
preach a sermon on modest dress? Why would I ever preach a sermon
on proper worship? Why would I ever preach a sermon
on festivals and holidays? Why would I ever preach a sermon
on what you should touch and what you should not touch? What
you should eat and what you should not eat. If I'm going to teach
on what you should and shouldn't eat, we're going to cut some
stuff out of our lives. We're all going to drink a little
bit of wine every night. And we're all going to stop eating
fast food. And we will exponentially increase our health overnight. It would not be, though, that
sermon that others would want to hear. I'm not going to preach
a sermon on how a Christian should speak. I'm not going to preach
a sermon on Anything that's not related to what Scripture reveals
concerning Christ and then what Scripture then instructs the
church to be doing. We went through Ephesians. We
went through Philippians. We went through Colossians. We've
gone through Romans. We've heard Paul say, put away
your sin. We've seen it. We know what it's
like. We don't have to have a red,
white board up there. I know that sounds silly. A red,
you know, dry erase board. This is the red board of sin.
And I want everybody to come Sunday morning. Now come, stand
up here and be convicted by God. Put your sin on the board and
we're going to wipe it away with the blood of Jesus and then we'll
do the Lord's table. And I've seen that stuff. We're going
to have a little cross and you're going to write your sin on a sticky note. You're
going to stick it at the cross. I'm going to take them all. You know,
these visual representations of what we can do with sin. Do
you know what we cannot do with sin? We cannot put our sin on
the body of Christ. We cannot put our sin in the
wash bin. We cannot put our sinfulness in the holy of holies. We cannot
put our sin on a scapegoat and cut its neck and bleed its blood
out and burn it and eat its ashes. We cannot do anything with our
sin except be judged and found dead in them. God has done everything
for our sin through the death of Jesus Christ, who is our righteousness. If this is not our gospel, it
is damnable. And it is not good. Jesus Christ, once for all, offered
Himself. offered himself for his people. Verse one, chapter eight. Now,
the point and what we're saying is this. We have such a high
priest. What kind of high priest? The
one who is the son who has been appointed forever. Whose promise,
whose oath, whose covenant, whose perfection is finished. His work
is finished and perpetual. That's what chapter 7 is about.
The perpetuality, the perpetuity, the eternality of Christ as High
Priest to do the work of forgiveness, effectually, forever. That is why it is sinful to sell
someone they must accept Jesus into their heart in order to
be forgiven. Not only is that a cultural creation
from the late 19th century, it is an unbiblical and demonic
expression, and it is not salvific. Now, some people may use that
phraseology because it's so common when they come to faith. They
may say, well, I've accepted Christ. That means I believe
what the Bible says concerning him. I have been given faith.
I've been given faith. And so we have to weed through
the minutia of this crazy language. We just don't condemn people
because they use the wrong words, just like we don't accept people
because they use the right words. We must see what people are saying
and we must evangelize them or embrace them as siblings accordingly.
This high priest. has finished His work. We have
this high priest who has perfected salvation forever. One, and I
did this last week in the midst of chapter 7, but one, as Paul
will do here in Hebrews, goes all the way back to the beginning.
Chapter 1, the first 4 or 5 verses. Who is seated at the right hand
of the throne of majesty in heaven. This high priest will not die. He is the one who comes through
an indestructible life. Salvation is a permanent fixture
of an eternal God that did the work himself and satisfied all
the requirements thereof. So this Jesus, who is the true
high priest, is the point of all the high priests that have
ever lived. There was no true worship in
the practice of the priesthood. God has established that if you
were to worship in His presence you must be as He is. So the
essence of your righteousness must be impeccably divine. What are you going to do about
it? You're not going to do a thing
about it because either God has established your righteousness
as Christ, in Christ, from Christ, or you are dead in your sins. Sound familiar? Gospel of John.
Several years we heard it over and over and over again. Paul
now is doing his Gospel of John so what's and therefore's in
this letter. He is seated. He is finished. He is back in His throne. He is God and He has established
His rules for worship. He has established His rules
for eternal life. He's established His rules for
forgiveness. You realize there's no way to
worship God without blood. Not possible. You can't worship
God without something dying. Because he will not accept it.
He will not sit and listen to us cry. He will not look at our
sincerity. Because in the depths of our
sincerity is just to save our own behinds. He will not come to the place
of seeing how harmonious our songs are and how true to the
nature of himself that the lyrics might be. He will not say, well,
that pleases me. The only thing that pleases God
is that justice reigns in righteousness. That's it. And to worship God
in spirit and to worship God in truth must mean that we come
through the only way that God is ever satisfied in true worship
at all, and that is through His Son alone. And so the day in and the day
out necessary conditions that were met by the priests in the
tabernacles, in the temple, in the wilderness, in Jerusalem,
day in, day out, every year, all the different festivals,
traveling from here, walking with your family and your livestock
and all these things, going from city to city, doing the Passover,
doing the Feast of Booths, doing the Feast of Lives, Everywhere
you went, it was always about bringing what you could bring
to give to the high priest so he could take what you gave and
he could kill it and he could show it before God. And only
then, if it pointed to Christ, was it true worship. David says it in Psalm 51, doesn't
he? The blood of bulls, goats, you do not love. Paul's already commented on that. You despise these things, O God.
They are worthless. They have no efficacy, they don't
do anything. True worship comes only when
God's wrath is satisfied. And to worship God the way he
called his people to worship was to point to Jesus Christ,
who would be the Lamb, who is the priest, who is the Savior,
who is the foundation of life, who is the giver of life, who
is the keeper of life. And this is not a punt. at the
fourth down. This is not a do-over. This is
not a, oops, I don't know what else to do. This isn't a second
or third or fourth plan. This is the primary purposes
of God that have never changed. And Jesus Christ is a minister
in the holy places. You might think, well, you get
all this stuff here. You know, I talk ahead of where I am in
the text. It just works better for my brain. I minister in holy places in
the true tent. Verse 2. The true tent. In the true tent. Jesus is the
tabernacle of God. Jesus is the temple. Jesus is
the booth. Jesus is the tent. He is the
water. He is the fire. He is the showbread. He is the ark. He is the law.
He is the Holy of Holies. He is the curtain. He is all
the inner court and the outer court. He is the priest. He is the prayer. He is all and
all and all. He is the truth of all of it.
And worshiping God is only done in Jesus Christ. Life with God
is only found in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the truth of it all. And anyone, at any time, in any
point in history, yesterday, today, or forevermore, who puts
themselves in a place where they feel a little bit more good about
themselves, or a little bit more righteous in and of themselves,
even if they give God credit because of how they walk and
touch and live and act and work, they are in judgment. God has established the true
tent. He set it up, not man. You see that? Verse two. We got
13 verses tonight. We might not get through it all. I've got 90 minutes tonight,
too. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and
sacrifices. Thus, it is necessary for this priest also to have
something to What is it that the priest can
offer? As a matter of fact, he has to
go and obey what the Lord has set up in the shadow of the tent
to kill something for himself, and wash his body, and pray,
and wrap his body, and clothe his body, and put things on his
head, and pray, and wash, and pray, and clothe, and wash, and
pray, and clothe, and kill, and bleed, and wash, and pray, and
kill, and bleed, and burn, and pray. And then he walks in and
runs out fast will not stand in the presence of God with any
of it. Isn't that crazy? The Catholic Mass is going to
kneel down, he's going to stand up, he's going to kneel down, he's going to stand up,
he's going to kneel down, he's going to stand up. You're going to pray, you're going to
do this, you're going to do that, you're going to count, you're going to pray, you're
going to do it all. It's foolishness. I'm going to come to church,
I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do that, I'm going to give
this, I'm going to be that. We're nothing outside of Christ. He
is our everything. Christ has something to offer. He gave Himself. Chapter 7, verse
27. He gave Himself. And that was enough. High priest
after high priest after high priest, worshipper after worshipper,
family after family for generations, for millennia from the very beginning
of the dawn of time before the law was ever given. Abram even
followed these practices as a way of offering homage to God. looking
to the promises of God Himself that through God's promised Son
shall the world be blessed, be approved by Him, be in His presence
without justice, without judgment, without condemnation. Jesus, if He were on earth, verse
4, He would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer
gifts according to the law. Jesus never obeyed the law of
the priesthood in his body. He was the fulfillment of it. Jesus never obeyed the law of
prayers. He is the fulfillment of it.
Those priests, just like so many religious people today, Whether
they be evangelical, Protestant, Baptist, whoever, they serve a copy. and shadow of heavenly things.
The high priest of all of history serve a copy. They serve a shadow
of the heavenly things. And Moses, as it says there,
was about to erect the tent. He was instructed by God and
God spoke and said, see that you make everything according
to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. All of that
was a shadow. The tablets of stone were a shadow. Manna was a shadow. The presence of God and a pillar
of fire and a pillar of smoke were shadows. Sinai was a shadow. And it's the only thing God let
Moses see was his shadow. Because you can't look. Folks,
get it. I'm not a genius. Chapter 12
is coming, y'all, and I'm going to kick this podium over if the
Lord doesn't refrain me. I can't get through that without
getting extremely excited. We have a better covenant. We're
not at Sinai. It never meant anything but Jesus,
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. The question is, do you know
the one true Jesus? But as it is, verse six, and
we'll just, we'll just quit here. Christ has obtained a ministry. The priest have, their ministry's
over. Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent
than the old ministry that did nothing. He's just being very
repetitive. As the promise, the covenant
he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises. So you see the difference. This
isn't looking at Jewish literature and looking at Jewish tradition
and looking at Jewish scripture and going, okay, now how do we
fit in here? No! How do they fit in with Christ?
Christ isn't fitting in with them. They point to Him. Go back
and read John chapter 5. It's a terrible, terrible, terrible
indictment. It's not as tough as when you
read Luke or you read Matthew, when Jesus speaks to the Pharisees. But in John chapter 5, when Jesus
says, I can do nothing on my own, as I hear, I judge and my
judgment is just because I seek not my will, but the will of
Him who sent me. Jesus is telling the Pharisees, I came to do the
work of redemption that my father sent me to do, to save my people
from their sins. And the only thing these people
could think of is, you know how long we've been working for God?
Do you know how long, generation after generation, we've been
serving in the temple? Do you know who it is you're
talking to, boy? What you talking about, Willis? I mean, you know, this is the
context of Jesus' discussion with these people. And if I alone
bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true, but there
is another who bears witness about me and I know, and he's
talking about the law there, I know you're not going to take
my testimony. I am the Son of God. I am. I've come down from
heaven due to the will of the one who sent me. calling himself
God over and over and over again. They want to stone him every
time. But there's another that testimony that he bears about
me is true. You sent to John, he is born a witness, John the
Baptist. Not that testimony. That testimony that I receive
is from man. John didn't speak of me. He got the word of me
from my father. But I say these things that you
may be saved. What does he mean by that? Jesus is not necessarily
evangelizing these people. He's condemning them. As you'll
see. But he's telling them there is
no salvation outside of hearing and believing and seeing the
witness of me in all that you've ever done with your entire life.
John 3, don't forget it. He was a burning lamp and a shining
lamp and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.
Like, yay, some spiritual stuff going on. Nope, it's not the
spiritual stuff we're looking for. We're done with this guy.
But the testimony that I give is greater than that of John
the Baptist. for the works that the Father has given me to accomplish,
the very works that I am doing right this moment bear witness
about me that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent
me has Himself borne witness about me." That infuriated these
people. And he tells them, and they're
thinking, I don't even know what he's talking about. And Jesus
explains why. His voice you have never heard. His form you have never seen. And you do not have his word
abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the scriptures, you
exegetes, because you think that in them you will find eternal
life. But it is they that bear witness
about me. Yet you refuse to come to me
that you may have life. But I know that you do not have
the love of God within you. And I have come in my father's
name and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name,
you receive him. How can you believe when you
receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory
that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse
you to the father. There is one who accuses you. His name is Moses on whom you
have set your hope. For if you believe Moses, you
would believe me because he wrote of me. But if you don't believe
Moses, how will you ever believe me? A copy and a shadow of things in the heavenlies.
What is in the heavenlies? Jesus Christ. You hear these
ridiculous things. We'll see the temple. It's just
a perfect copy. When we get to heaven, we're going to see the
beautiful thing. We're going to go in there and see the showbread. And we're
going to see the good stuff. And the gold's going to be a
little purer. And we're going to see Jesus. That's what we're going
to see. That's the copy. That's the copy. Jesus is the
truth. He's the truth. If we're not looking to Jesus,
we're dead in our sins. If we're looking at what we've
done to get to Jesus, we are dead in our sins. Beloved, if
we love the nations, if we want to see God's elect come to faith,
we've got to preach the true gospel and got to preach it correctly.
And we've got to stop playing historical theological games
with words and phrases and definitions. And we need to proclaim the scripture
as it's written. God will set his people free. Beautiful. He freed them out
of Egypt. It's a shadow of the Spirit of
God giving me and you eyes to see and ears to hear this very
message. And just like we saw in John
chapter 5, Moses wrote, about Christ and
Christ's ministry is greater than the covenant, greater than
the ministry, because what he's doing is actually working to
fulfill greater promises, truth and full promises. For if the
first covenant, verse 7, had been faultless, there would have
been no occasion to look for a second. He's already said that
again. If Joshua and what he was doing for them and how he
led them out was supposed to be the promise, then why were
they continuing to look for another one after then? Then God, in verse 8, finds fault
with them. With who? With those earthly
priests. That's why I read John 5. It
just popped into my head. I'm like, that's it. He finds fault
with them. And he says, Behold, the days
are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant
with the house of Israel, the house of Judah. Not like the
one I made with their fathers on the day that I took them out
of the hand to Egypt, I had to bring them out of Egypt, for
they did not continue in my covenant. And so I showed no care for them,
no concern for them, declares the Lord. That temporary shadow
was to point to the promise of life, and they couldn't even
get past the sea until they were complaining to go back to sit
at Pharaoh's table to eat gourmet food as a slave rather than sit
and be at the table of God. And then in verse 10, 11 and
12 of chapter 8, We see Jeremiah 31 in full right
here. And next week I'll go to Jeremiah
31 and we'll look at it, but let's just read it. For this
is the covenant, this is a direct quote, well pretty much a direct
quote, that I will make with the house of Israel after those
days. declares the Lord. I will put
my laws into their minds. I will write my laws on their
hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people.
Now let's stop there. In Jeremiah 31 you can see it there. This
is where people who have not been born again, or who have
been taught by those who haven't, come to the place of, what am
I supposed to do? Oh, I know, God's gonna write obedience upon
my heart, and I'm gonna know right from wrong, and I'm gonna
walk in a manner worthy, and I'm gonna prove that I'm God's
child. Look at me, I'm God's child.
Sorry, the mechanics. I must have moved that in the
wrong spot recently. I'm God's child. And if we didn't
have any explanations, if we didn't have the counsel of God's
Word, if we would just stop looking at chapter, verse, and read the
letters, we would see the teaching. And the teaching, even in Jeremiah
31, when he says that I will write my law on their hearts
and minds, that means that I will show them my righteousness and
the promise of it, and they will know me. And I will be their
God and they will be my people. And here is the reality of that. And they shall not teach each
one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, You need
to know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest.
Stop there, don't go to verse 12 yet. How is that? How do we know the
Lord? We have seen God's glory. Glory as the only Son of the
Father, full of grace and truth. From His fullness, we all receive
grace upon grace. What does John the Evangelist
say there? From Moses, we receive the law. From Jesus, we receive grace
upon grace and truth and grace and truth. No one has ever seen
God. Verse 18 of John 1. The one and only God who sits
at his side makes him known. That's how we understand Jeremiah
31. That's how we understand Hebrews,
the letter. That's what Paul is saying here. And if you don't like what I
say, take Paul's word for it. Take God's word for it. Verse
12. The explanation of what he means.
For I will be gracious toward their sins and I will remember
their sins no more. What shall they know about God? What does it mean to see the
glory of God? That means everything that God is and all that He ever
will be is revealed and given to us and all of that is shown
to us through Jesus Christ who came to glorify God by dying
in the place of His people so that God would be the justifier
and the just and the justifier of all those who have faith in
Jesus Christ. So that knowing God and having
the law written on our hearts and minds is to know that God's
righteousness is ours in Jesus Christ alone and only there do
we find forgiveness. That's the gospel. Beloved, it'd
be better for you to cut off your ears and cinch them closed
with a hot iron. than to listen to someone argue
with you about what the law can do for you. Brother Trey and I have had some
incredible conversations and texts back and to over the last
few weeks. There is a way in which we can understand how Christ
is the fulfillment of the law and every law that we could ever
parse out is fulfilled in Christ. And if the Lord wills, I hope
to be able to write all that out in detail just for our encouragement. Not for our salvation. Christ
fulfilled them all. And when we are in Christ, we
are God's righteousness. Not because Christ kept it all,
thus we kept it all, because Christ is the point of it all,
and we're in Him. Don't confuse it. Let's pray.
Father, what a beautiful promise you've made us. What a beautiful
picture of redemption. And Lord, as you see, and as
you've shown in your word, even the last verse that I've failed
to even read this evening, Father, that as you've made the new covenant
come alive and be revealed, you have made obsolete the old. It
is over, it is done, and it is ready to vanish away. So Father,
John teaches us in his first epistle, chapter 2, verse 15,
he says, Do not love the world, for the world and everything
in it is passing away. Father, if we love the precepts
and the shadows of your covenant of grace, if we hold to them,
our hope is in a dying, non-effectual covenant. that is a shadow of
the truth. So, Lord, encourage us with this
truth this evening. Encourage us all that we might
give you praise to the praise of your glorious grace. For we
know you, the one true God, and we know in all truth the one
whom you have sent. And you have told us through
his mouth, through his word, that this is eternal life. May
you bring your people to faith. In Christ we pray. Amen.