Let's open our Bibles to the
book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 8. And this morning
I want to speak to you about the subject of the New Covenant.
The New Covenant. Now you may be, some of you may
be more used to using the term the New Testament. You've got
the Old Testament and the New Testament. we're speaking of
the Bible in a literary way, we speak of the books of the
Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi and the books of the
New Testament from Matthew to Revelation, 66 books all together. But what we need to understand
is we need to get our language correct in our minds concerning
the reality of this. We're not speaking of the Bible
in just literary terms this morning. We're talking about the revelations
of God to his people through covenants. And one of the most
basic ABC issues, one, two, three issues of the Bible to understand
it is to understanding the difference between the old covenant and
the new covenant. Now the old covenant is that
covenant that God made with Israel, the nation Israel, actually the
Hebrew children, they weren't even called Israel at that time,
on Mount Sinai. You know the story of Moses and
leading the Hebrew children out of Egypt. And they, on the other
side of the Red Sea, after that marvelous deliverance that God,
in His power and in His goodness, delivered them, they encamped
at the foot of Mount Sinai, and God called Moses up there, and
He gave them, through Moses, the Old Covenant, the Law of
Moses, included the Ten Commandments, but it was much more than the
Ten Commandments now. included the ceremonial law,
the priesthood, the sacrifice, the tabernacle, all of that,
even the civil laws, the dietary laws, that whole covenant was
given to the Hebrew children. And that's most of the Old Testament,
the literary part of the Bible called the Old Testament is taken
up with God dealing with the nation Israel under that covenant. And so that came into existence. And that old covenant lasted
for about 1,500 years up until the time of the Lord Jesus Christ
coming into this world, doing his great work of redemption
for his people on the cross. And you remember the words that
he himself used in John 19.30 as he was on that cross suffering
unto death as the surety, the substitute, the redeemer of his
people and he said it is finished and there were many things finished
there. One of the things that was finished was the time of
the old covenant and that was signified by God through a miracle
of, you remember, they had the temple and the holy of holies
inside the temple was separated from the rest of it with a great
big curtain And that curtain was torn, that veil it's called,
was torn into from top to bottom, signifying that the time of the
Old Covenant was now gone and the time of the New Covenant
had begun. You know, it's amazing how many
people claim to believe and study the Bible, but they really are
confused about these issues, the Old Covenant and the New
Covenant. Many people are confused about the Old Testament and the
New Testament. They call the Old Testament, they say, well,
that's the Old Bible. The New Testament, that's the New Bible.
Many of them think that God was different in the Old Covenant,
the Old Testament, than He is in the New Testament. I've heard
people say this, well, God was a God of wrath in the Old Testament,
but He's a God of love in the New Testament. That's not so.
God never changes. He's a God of love, but He's
also a God of wrath. And you need to understand that. These issues are so plainly spoken
of in the Bible and especially here in our text. Look at Hebrews
chapter eight and we'll begin there at verse seven. He says,
for if that first covenant had been faultless. Now he's talking
about the old covenant there as it compared or contrasted
rather with the new covenant. The old covenant was not the
first covenant that was ever made. God has always throughout
time revealed himself to man through covenant revelations.
What is a covenant? It's an agreement. It's a contract. That's what a covenant is. You
young people, if you make a contract with your parents, you've got
so many chores that you have to do, and if you do that, you
get an allowance. That's a covenant. And if you
don't do the chores, you don't get the allowance. You've broken
the covenant. If you do the chores, you've kept the covenant and
you get the reward. That's what we call a bilateral
covenant because it's between you on the one hand and your
parents on the other, too. Now, if the parent looks at you
and says, I'm gonna make an agreement with you, I'm gonna give it to
you no matter what you do in spite of yourself, that's a unilateral
covenant. That means you don't have to
do anything. You like those kind of covenants, don't you? Understand, that's how God reveals
himself to man throughout time, through covenants. The first
covenant, the ultimate revelation of each covenant was to make
God known to his people, ultimately in a way of salvation and establishing
a right relationship with himself. Now, the salvation of sinners
has always been, by God's grace, conditioned on the Lord Jesus
Christ and based upon the merits of his obedience unto death as
our surety, our substitute, our redeemer, and not by the works
or the wills of men." In other words, salvation is not a bilateral
covenant between you and God. God's done this, now you do your
part, and if you do your part, you get this. God's covenant
of salvation with his people, believers, has always been conditioned
on Christ. He did the work. He fulfilled
the conditions. He met the requirements. He did
the chores, you might say. And they get the benefits of
it. That's what we call G-R-A-C-E, grace. God's redemption, God's
righteousness at Christ's expense. That's a good covenant, isn't
it? That's salvation by grace. The Bible says, for by grace
are you saved through faith, but that's not of yourselves.
That's not a chore that you have to accomplish in order to get
the benefits. That's not of yourselves. It's
the gift of God. Not of works, lest anybody should
bow. See, if you do anything in order
to attain or maintain it, you've got room to brag. I did the work.
I did this. I did that. But God has left
it so that in salvation we don't have any room to boast. The only
one we boast in is Christ. He's my savior. I didn't deserve
or earn any of it. I'm a sinner saved by grace.
There's not one blessing that I have attained or rather obtained
that I can look you in the eye and say, I earned that one. I deserve that, but not one blessing.
It's all of grace, freely given. I didn't do it, in fact, I've
done everything not to deserve it, not to earn it. Now these
are, the work of salvation is all of Christ, and that's the
term of an eternal, everlasting covenant of grace made before
time, between God the Father and God the Son. wherein God
the Father chose a people and gave them to his Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he made Christ to be the
surety of that covenant by placing all of the conditions of our
salvation upon him, imputing, charging, accounting our sin
debt to Christ. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians
chapter five that God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto himself, not imputing, not charging, their trespasses unto
them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
But now God has always revealed himself through covenants. He
made a covenant with Adam. That was a bilateral covenant.
He told Adam, he said, of all the trees of the garden, you
can eat any of them except one, the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. He said, in the day that you eat thereof, you're
gonna die. That was the condition. That
was conditioned on Adam. That was a bilateral covenant.
Adam had to do his part. Well, what happened? Adam failed. Adam failed and plunged the whole
human race into sin and death. It was a failure. God made a
covenant with Noah after the flood. You remember the flood
of Noah? And he made a covenant with Noah. He said, I'll not
destroy this world again by a flood, by waters. And he said, a rainbow
in the sky. It's a shame what people today
take that rainbow as and turn it into something filthy. You
know what that rainbow is? That's a sign of the mercy and
the promise, the forbearance and the faithfulness of God to
do what he says he'll do. That's what that rainbow is.
It's no rainbow coalition or something filthy and dirty. It's
something that God said in the clouds to remind his people that
he is a God of mercy, but he's also a God of wrath. I deserve
his wrath. How can I obtain his mercy? There's
only one way, through Christ. That's why we believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ. God made a covenant with Abraham.
It was an unconditional covenant. It was a unilateral covenant.
God said, I will, I will, I will, and you will as a result. It
was a success, just like Noah's covenant. Well, he made a covenant
with Israel at Sinai. That's the old covenant. And
he called those people into it as a nation and brought them
into a promised land. And he made that covenant with
them. And it was a bilateral covenant. It was conditioned
on them, their prosperity. Their success, their keeping
the land that God gave them was conditioned on their national
obedience. And what happened? They failed.
They failed. Look at verse seven of Hebrews
eight. For if that first covenant had
been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the
second. What's he talking about here? Well, the first covenant
is the old covenant. As I said, it wasn't the first
made in time, but it was called first in contrast with the second
covenant that came afterward in time called the New Covenant.
The New Covenant, what is that New Covenant? Well, as I said,
and I know this can get a little complicated, but think with me.
Before this world was ever created, God, made a covenant with His Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, God the Father, God the
Son, God the Holy Spirit, a covenant of salvation, of redemption,
wherein He chose a people and gave them to Christ. That's what
the Bible teaches. Read Ephesians chapter one, for
example. Paul in 2 Timothy chapter one,
he speaks of salvation which was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began. The gospel, the good news of
salvation, of how God saves sinners has always been the terms of
that covenant. What does it say? It says we're
sinners and we cannot save ourselves. Not even our best will save us. The best you can do will always
fall short. You know what? You've heard that
verse, Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and come short of the
glory of God. Have you heard that? Well, what that really
means is this. It's not that we've all just
made some mistakes, which we all have. What that is, is showing
us that no matter what we do, how hard we try, no matter how
sincere we are, we will never measure up to the standard of
perfection. We'll always fall short of the
glory of God. And where do we find the glory
of God? In Christ, the perfect God-man. That's who he is, God
in human flesh. And he's the perfect one. He
kept the law perfectly. He didn't sin. I have and I do. You have and you do. He never
sinned. And so as long as we're in this
body, in this earth, we'll always fall short. And that's why salvation
is by grace through Christ. I stand before God washed in
the blood of Christ. He paid for my sins. I stand
before God in his righteousness accounted, charged, imputed to
me. I have no righteousness of my
own. You have no righteousness of your own. That's what that
covenant of grace is all about. It's an everlasting covenant.
It's an eternal covenant. Well, what is this new covenant
then? Well, now the best way that I can describe it to you,
is from an old commentator named John Owen. I don't know if you've
ever heard of John Owen. He was way back when. And he
wrote seven books or seven volumes of commentary on this one book
of Hebrews. Can you imagine that? But in
that book, he made this statement. He said, the new covenant is
the accomplishment in time. of the everlasting covenant of
grace made before time. Before time, God, God appointed
his son to come into this world and to walk this earth in complete
obedience to his law as God in human flesh, God manifest in
the flesh. And that's why, you know, people
talk about the Christmas story. Well, what did he say about Christ
in Matthew chapter one concerning his birth? His name shall be
called Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins. His
name shall be called Emmanuel, which being interpreted is what?
God with us. God determined that that would
happen before the world ever began. And then it happened.
That's the new covenant. Christ coming into the world.
God appointed a time. The Bible says in Galatians 4.4,
in the fullness of the time, God sent forth his son. What's
the fullness of the time mean in the Bible? It means the appointed
time. God sent forth his son, made of a woman, that's his humanity,
born of the Virgin Mary, conceived in her womb by the power of the
Holy Spirit, born of a woman, made under the law. That is,
all the conditions of the law were put upon him, made under
the law, to do what? To redeem them that were under
the law. And when all that was accomplished, that's the time
of the new covenant. Now the old covenant couldn't
do that. You remember the old covenant, what'd they do during
the old covenant? When they worshiped God, what did they do? They brought
animals and blood, sacrificed animals, and brought blood to
worship. Now that didn't begin with the
old covenant, that began back with the very beginning after
the fall of Adam when Abel, he brought the blood of a lamb.
But it was established in Israel that that's how they were to
worship God. And not because that could save them. Animal
blood couldn't save them. Animal blood couldn't wash away
their sins. And that's what he means here in Hebrews 8, 7. If
that first covenant had been faultless. Now the first covenant,
the old covenant, was not faultless. It had faults. What was its faults? Well, animal blood could not
pay the sin debt, could not wash away our sins. Animal blood couldn't
do that. earthly human priest could not
eternally, in a perfectly righteous way, stand before God in our
stead. It was a temporal, temporary,
physical, ceremonial covenant, and it was only, the only value
it had concerning salvation is as those things typified, foreshadowed,
symbolized, and pointed sinners to the future. when Christ would
come and die on the cross. I've told you all this story
a lot of times, but a friend of ours that you all know, before
he became a believer, he decided that in his religious bent, that
he was just gonna start reading through the Bible. And he began
at Genesis. And he got up to Exodus, Leviticus,
and after he got through with Leviticus, he told his wife,
he said, you know, he said, according to this book, we ought to be
out here sacrificing animals. And I think it was either the
next Sunday, he turned on the TV and he heard Brother Mayhem
preaching up in Ashland, Kentucky. And the title of the message
was Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
and he preached Christ. You see, all those animals, the
lambs, the rams, the bullocks, they were types, they were pictures,
they were symbols of Christ who was to come. By whose blood sinners
are cleansed from their sins. By whose blood we're made righteous
in God's sight. Not animal blood. That was the
fault of the old covenant. It could not bring eternal salvation.
To keep that law, it was to show that we're sinners. That's why
the law was given. It's kind of like a mirror. If
you get up in the morning, before you take your bath or whatever,
and before you primp up and put your makeup on, you look at yourself,
you might see a lot of flaws. That's what that old covenant
was. Then you have to do some work. And that old covenant showed
the flaws, showed the sins, showed the impossibility of being saved,
of being made righteous. So he says in verse seven, if
that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place
have been sought for the second. The second one is the new covenant,
which again is the accomplishment in time. That refers to Christ,
the gospel. the accomplishment of the everlasting
covenant of grace, how salvation, how we have no duty of our own
concerning our works in the sight of God. For all have sinned and
come short of the glory of God. We have no righteous, there's
none righteous, no, not one. Romans three. We're sinners. And we cannot be saved by Our
works and our efforts. It's impossible. The best of
us. The Bible says man at his best state is altogether vanity.
Worthless. How in the world is salvation
going to come? Well, we need something better.
Someone better. And that someone better is Christ. The grace of God in Christ. And
if that first covenant, if that old covenant could have done
the job, could have saved us, made us beautiful in God's sight.
There would have been no need for Christ to come. There would
have been no need for a new covenant. Look at verse eight. He says,
for finding fault with him, he saith, behold, the days come.
Now this reaches back to the prophecy that Brother Randy read
in Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah, was preaching, prophesying
to a rebellious nation, a sinful people. And they were about to
go into captivity because of their sin. They were under the
old covenant. They'd broken the law. And Jeremiah was telling
that God is going to bring you into, God's going to punish you
for your breaking of that law, and he's going to bring you into
captivity. And you know what his message was to them? Think
about this, he said, accept it. This is what you deserve. They
didn't like hearing that. That's why they called Jeremiah
a burden. Oh, he didn't say anything good
about us. And so Jeremiah says, but look,
there is still hope. Even though you've sinned against
God, even though God's going to punish you and bring you into
captivity. And Jeremiah told him, it's going
to be 70 years you're going to be in captivity. He said, even
though all that's true, there's still hope. But that hope is
not in yourself. That hope is not in your works.
That hope is in the future promise, the promise of God in the future
to send the Messiah. the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what he's talking
about in that prophecy, and that's what is spoken of here in the
book of Hebrews. He says, verse eight, behold,
the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Now
Israel and Judah refers to a divided kingdom. That physical nation
of Israel was divided. But what he's saying is under
this new covenant, God's chosen people, and who are they? Believers. Out of every tribe,
kindred, tongue, and nation, they won't be divided. They'll
be together. This is the new covenant. And
he said this new covenant, look at verse nine, not according
to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when
I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.
Not like that old covenant. Conditioned on them which they
break he says behold Because they continue not in my covenant
and I regarded them not saith the Lord They didn't keep that
covenant They're sinners So are we? You realize now that if salvation
were to ever be conditioned on us it would be impossible to Verse 10, he says, for this is
the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after
those days saved the Lord. Now look at it, here's the turn.
This is a unilateral covenant. God says, I will put my laws
into their mind. You ever heard the story about
the little boy who wouldn't sit still in church? Who wouldn't
listen? And his mother grabbed him by
the ear And he said, if you don't sit still and listen, I'm going
to whale the tar out of you when we get home. You know what? He sits still. And when he got
home, his mother said, well, I guess that worked. And he looked
at her and he said, well, I was sitting still on the outside,
but I was jumping up and down on the inside. That's what this means. He said,
I'm gonna put my laws into their hearts. It's not gonna be just
a threat to get them to physically comply. It's gonna be the desire
of their heart. How can that be, Lord? He says,
I'm gonna give them a new heart. I'm gonna write my laws on their
heart. That's God's way of salvation through Christ. He says, I'm
going to write it on their minds and in their hearts. It's going
to be their inner desire to believe God and to follow Him. This is
all by God's grace. You know what he's talking about?
He's talking about the new birth there. I'm going to give them a new
heart, a new mind, new life. And I will be to them a God,
and they shall be to me a people. That's the language of a marriage
that cannot be broken. God's going to join, God has
joined himself to those people. He will reunite them to him through
Christ by his grace, and they'll never be parted. They can never
lose it. Verse 11, he says, they shall
teach not every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying,
know the Lord, for all shall know me from the least to the
greatest. Back in Israel under that old covenant, there were many who were in that
nation, who because of their sin and rebellion, They didn't
recognize and worship the true and living God. They didn't know
him. They were religious. There are
a lot of people today who are religious. They go to church,
but they don't know God. Many of them are not hearing
the true God preach from these pulpits. And so the prophets
were sent into the nation, and their cry was, you've got to
know the Lord. What you're hearing is a false
God. What you're hearing is an idol. You have to know the Lord
as He reveals Himself. And the Bible teaches us that
God reveals Himself through Christ, the God-man, and the glory of
His person and the power of His finished work. Well, under the
new covenant, it's not gonna be that way. There's not gonna
be people of God who don't know Him. He said, they shall all
know me from the least to the greatest. How do we know God?
We only know God savingly through Christ, the God-man, the Lord
our righteousness. How does God save sinners? By
his grace and his mercy based upon the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ, based upon his righteousness imputed to us. And without that
knowledge, you don't know God. Not savingly. You might know
some things about God. You might say, well, he's the
creator of this universe, and he is. You might even say he's
in control, and he is. But until you know Jesus Christ
is the Lord your righteousness, the Savior of your soul, you
don't know the Lord God savingly. You don't know him in salvation. But under the new covenant, every
one of his children will know him. Verse 12, he says, for I will
be merciful to their unrighteousness. That's the only way God can be
toward us. When he saves us in mercy, it's
through Christ. Christ is the mercy seat. And
their sins and their iniquities, will I remember them no more?
What that means is that God will not impute our sins. He will
not charge us with our sins. Why will he not charge us? Because
he charged them to Christ. He imputed our sins to Christ.
Our sin debt. Before the foundation of the
world, Christ was made our surety. You know what a surety is? That's
someone who takes responsibility to pay your debt. We've sinned
against God. That runs up a debt. Just like
a criminal, who sins against society, he goes to prison because
he's going to pay his debt to society. Well, we've sinned against
God. We've run up a debt. We can't
pay it. We can't even contribute one
penny to the payment of that debt. But Christ is my surety. How do I know he's my surety?
Because God has given me a new heart, a new spirit to believe
in him, to repent of ever thinking that I could pay the debt. with
my works and my efforts, my prayers, my going to church, whatever. Nothing I do, even what appears
righteous unto people, nothing I do can contribute to the payment
of my sin debt. But God says for his people in
the new covenant in Christ, saved by his grace, their iniquities
and their sins, I won't bring them up again. There's no charge. The Bible says, who shall lay
anything to the charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies.
You know what it means to be justified? It means to be forgiven
of all my sins. On what ground? The blood of
Christ. It means to be declared righteous in God's sight. On
what ground? His righteousness imputed to
me. God cannot charge me with my sins. And verse 13, listen
to this. He says, in that he saith, A
new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth
and waxeth old is ready to vanish away. That old covenant is abolished
by way of fulfillment. Believers today are not under
the old covenant. Believers today were never under
that old covenant. But you know what, there are
preachers who tried to bring people under that old covenant.
They do. And you know what they're doing
when they do that? They deny Christ. They deny salvation by
grace. They may hide it. They may say,
oh, you're saved by grace, but you've got to do this. You've
got to keep this. You've got to stop doing that
in order to be really saved. in order to be really righteous
in God's sight. That's a denial of Christ. But
don't you thank God for the grace and the mercy that comes to his
people in Christ in that new covenant. Now we'll talk more
about that in future messages, but that's the issue as it lies. We're under that new covenant. We're saved by grace. And that's
what we're going to sing about, amazing grace.