Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program. I'm glad
you could join us today for the message from the Bible, from
God's Word. And if you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'll be preaching from the book of 2 Corinthians
chapter 3. 2 Corinthians chapter 3. The title of today's message
is The Glory of the New Covenant. The Glory of the New Covenant.
And in this passage, the Apostle Paul was inspired by the Holy
Spirit, first of all, to do something that he didn't want to do and
didn't like to do, and that is to defend himself against the
false accusations of false preachers who had entered into the church
in Corinth and who had disparaged Paul's reputation, mannerism,
all sorts of things, because they didn't like Paul's message.
You see, the Apostle Paul was a minister of the sovereign grace
of Almighty God. And his message was Christ crucified
and risen from the dead for the salvation of God's chosen people. He preached Christ in the glory
of his person as God-man, God in human flesh without sin. And
he preached Christ in the glory of his redemptive work on the
cross to accomplish the salvation of all for whom he died, was
buried, and arose again the third day. And the apostle Paul sought
to motivate believers to obedience not by the legal whip of the
law or the mercenary promises of earned reward, that's legalism,
that's false religion, But he sought to motivate believers
by grace and love and gratitude to God. But these false preachers,
they hated Paul's message. And so they would often try to
recommend themselves to believers with their credentials. Many
of them were Jews who claimed to be Christian, but who denied
the truth of Christianity by seeking to bring the old covenant
law down upon Gentile believers, saying things like, you have
to be circumcised, you have to keep the law of Moses in order
to really be saved. to really be a child of God,
to really be righteous. Paul dealt with that throughout
the New Testament epistles that he wrote. For example, in the
book of Galatians, he dealt with that, and he called it another
gospel. These Jewish, these professing
Christians who were Jews by ethnic, by ethnic natural birth, and
they claimed to believe in Christ, but they added things to Christ
for the salvation, for it to attain and maintain salvation.
It was a Christ plus religion. Yes, your salvation is by Christ,
we believe in Christ, but you have to do this, you have to
do that, you have to not do this and not do that. And so their
Christ plus religion in reality became a Christ less religion. And that's what was happening
here in Paul in Galatians 1. He called it another gospel.
In other words, it was another of a different kind. It was no
gospel at all, not good news for sinners. Well, here in 2
Corinthians chapter 3, Paul begins to bring a marked contrast between
the old covenant law of Moses and the new covenant. And you
know, when you read in the Old Testament, most of the Old Testament
books were recording things that were happening or stated during
the time of the Old Covenant Law, which was from Mount Sinai,
all the way up into the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, His
cross work. And that was probably around
1,500 years, 1,500 years. And so you have that from Exodus
all the way to Malachi and really through Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
and John because the Old Covenant did not end by way of abolishment
until Christ said it is finished on the cross. Remember the veil
was rent in two, the veil in the temple was torn in two from
top to bottom. And that was the transition.
But if you read the passages of the Old Testament during that
time of the Old Covenant, there are many things that are wonderful.
Many glorious things. But Paul's point in 2 Corinthians
3 is that in the New Covenant, the New Testament rather, and
we're talking about the New Covenant, when I say New Testament now
during this message, I'm not talking about the books of the
New Testament, Matthew to Revelation. I'm talking about that dispensation
of time, the New Covenant, which began with the death, burial,
and resurrection of Christ, and will go on until he comes again
the second time, his return. That's the New Testament, that's
the New Covenant times. But let me tell you something
about the New Covenant now. The New Covenant, one old writer
defined it this way, and I think it's a great way to see it, because
it fits right with the scripture. The New Covenant, in Christ,
which is a covenant of grace, not a covenant of works. The
Old Covenant was a covenant of works. All the if passages of the Old
Covenant, they're conditional ifs. All the if passages in the
New Covenant are evidential ifs, evidence. But the New Covenant
is a covenant of grace, the terms of which, the conditions of which
were all placed not upon sinners, but upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
And Christ came in time and fulfilled those conditions by his obedience
unto death as the surety and the substitute of his people. Now all of the conditions of
the salvation of God's people, the eternal salvation of God's
people, can be summarized in one word. And that's the word
righteousness. That's why I preach so much on
righteousness here. That's what the gospel is. It's
the gospel wherein the righteousness of God is revealed, Romans 1,
16 and 17. And that word righteousness refers
to perfect satisfaction to God's law and God's justice. Now that
could not have been accomplished under the Old Covenant law because
that law was conditioned on sinners and sinners cannot perfectly
keep or satisfy the law of God. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. But you see, that's why the Old
Covenant was given. It was never given to be a way
of salvation by sinners keeping the law. It was given to expose
their sin and their depravity, the impossibility of being able
to be righteous, to redeem from sin, to wash away sin by their
works. And it had pictures and types
and shadows of Christ. I talked about that last time.
How Christ, all those things point to Christ. The Old Testament
is a book of Christ. In other words, the law was given
to show them the impossibility of being justified, being saved
by their works, and to show them their need of God's grace. And
that's where the New Covenant comes in. Now the New Covenant,
as I said, is a covenant of grace. But why is it called new? How
were people saved back in the Old Testament? Well, if anybody
was saved eternally, it was by grace, according to the terms
of the everlasting covenant of grace. The new covenant is the
establishment in time of the terms of an eternal covenant,
the everlasting covenant of grace, which was all in Christ. So when
God saved sinners back in the Old Testament, it was by grace,
through Christ, who was revealed to them by promise, the promise
of God to send His Son into the world to establish righteousness,
establish judgment and justice. Talked about that in Jeremiah
23, in Jeremiah 33. He is the Lord our righteousness. It was always by grace, it'll
always be by grace. Conditioned on Christ, based
upon His righteousness imputed, charged. accounted to his people. Now, another thing about the
Old Covenant that you need to understand, and this really pertains
to what I'm going to read here in these first verses of 2 Corinthians
3, is that the Old Covenant was an imposition that was placed
by God on a rebellious, unwilling people. That's so. And you see that throughout Israel's
history under the Old Covenant. They failed to keep the terms
of the Old Covenant. They failed to meet the conditions.
They were always rebellious. But now under the New Covenant,
it's not going to be like that. The New Covenant is the people
who are members of this New Covenant are those who have been made
willing by the power of God. In other words, it's not going
to be placed upon a rebellious people. Now we're sinners, sinners
saved by grace. We struggle now. We war with
the flesh. But God has given his people
a new heart in the new covenant. You see this as everlasting salvation. Now let's look at this in 2 Corinthians
chapter three. Look at verse one. Paul writes,
do we begin again to commend ourselves Or need we, as some
others, epistles or letters of commendation to you, or letters
of commendation from you? Now this is, do we need credentials? Now this is what Paul is saying.
These false preachers, they had credentials. They were men of
reputation. Remember over in Galatians 1,
he said, though we or an angel from heaven preach any other
gospel unto you than that which we've preached, let him be anathema.
It doesn't matter what their reputation. It doesn't matter
what their outward appearance. Is that what I need? Paul said.
Paul had been to Corinth. He preached the gospel. This
church was started under the ministry that God had given the
Apostle Paul. And he preached the gospel of
God's grace. He preached Christ. So he says,
do I need to commend myself to you? Do I need letters of commendation
to present to you? Or do I need letters of commendation
from you? Look at verse two and listen
to this. He says, you are our epistle
written in our hearts, known and read of all men. Now here's
the only recommendation Paul needed. Here's the only proof
of his ministry. It was the people who God had
brought under the preaching of Paul to believe Christ. And he
says in verse 3, For as much as you are manifestly declared
to be the epistle of Christ, the letter of Christ, ministered
by us, in other words, you're the product of what Christ has
done. You're not the product if you're
a believer. If you're a sinner saved by the grace of God, The
preacher didn't save you. I don't save anybody. I am not the savior. I can't
even save myself. But if you're truly saved by
the grace of God, if you truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,
then you're His workmanship. Ephesians chapter two and verse
10. God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works
which God has before ordained, that you'd walk in them." So
in other words, you don't owe your salvation to any preacher
you owe it to God. God gets the glory. And he says,
you're manifestly declared to be the letter of Christ. You
are like a, if you're saved, if you're a true believer now,
if you're submitted to Christ as the Lord, your righteousness,
you're a living letter. that Christ has written, and
he said, ministered by us. In other words, God used preachers. He used Paul as a minister, as
a servant. And he says, written not with
ink. In other words, this is not a
physical list of rules and regulations. Or even, he says, written not
with ink. But with the spirit of the living
God, this is Christ sending the Holy Spirit in the new birth,
regenerating, converting, you must be born again. The spirit
of the living God. In other words, this is not just
a dead religion. And he says, not in tables of
stone. Now, what does that refer to?
That's the Ten Commandments. And he says, but in fleshy tables
of the heart. God's given you a new heart,
a new mind, a new spirit. Now, let me show you a couple
of prophecies of this very thing that shows you the glory of the
new covenant over and above the old covenant. One is in Jeremiah
31, I've referred to this passage before. But here's Jeremiah talking
about it in Jeremiah 31 and verse 31. And he tells the people of
Judah who are about to go into captivity because of their rebellion.
He says in verse 31, behold, the days come, saith the Lord,
that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and
with the house of Judah. Now, what he's talking about
here is spiritual Israel, spiritual Judah. And you say, well, how
do I know that? Well, first of all, Israel, as you know, by the time
that Jeremiah comes around, the kingdom had been divided for
years, the kingdom of Israel into two kingdoms, the northern
kingdom, which was called Israel, and the southern kingdom, which
was called Judah. And the capital of the southern
kingdom was Jerusalem. The capital of the northern kingdom,
Israel, was Samaria. And when Jeremiah is prophesying,
Israel, the northern kingdom, had already been destroyed, conquered,
destroyed, and dispersed by the Assyrian Empire. So there virtually
was no Israel as far as the northern kingdom. And then here's Judah,
the Southern Kingdom. They're about to be conquered
and go into captivity in Babylon for 70 years. They will be brought
back, but they will never again be independent. They'll be conquered by Babylon,
then the Medes and the Persians, and then the Greeks, and then
the Romans, and then destroyed and obliterated in AD 70. They
will always be under foreign rule. Israel, the name Israel,
means those who have prevailed with God. How does a sinner prevail
with God? By coming to Christ. And Judah,
the word Jew, you remember Paul dealt with that. Who is a Jew
spiritually? Those who have been circumcised
in the heart, that's the new birth. But look at what he says.
whoever he's talking about here. Now, you know, people today talk
about the Jews getting back into Palestine and they talk about
them rebuilding a physical temple and reinstituting the sacrifices
and all of that. That's the old covenant, folks.
That's already been fulfilled and abolished by way of fulfillment
in Christ. There'll not be another human
high priest. We have a high priest. Our great high priest is Christ.
And he cannot be replaced. But here he says, now look at
it again in verse 31 of Jeremiah 31. Behold, the days come, saith
the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah. Now look at verse 32. Not according
to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that
I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt,
which my covenant they break, You see, it was conditioned on
them and they broke it. The New Covenant's not conditioned
on God's people. They cannot break it because
Christ kept it for them. But they break, he says, although
I wasn't husband unto them, saith the Lord, although I joined myself
to them. And later on, Jeremiah talks
about how God gives them a bill of divorcement. He divorces himself
from them. But look at verse 33. He says, but this shall be the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those
days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts. What are the inward parts? Look
at it and write it in their hearts and will be their God and they
shall be my people. That's the new covenant. Whoever
he's talking about in Israel and Judah here, they're gonna
have a heart for God through Christ. And you know that every
prophecy in the Old Testament concerning the final regathering
of Israel and Judah is a regathering of them under the headship of
Christ. In other words, it won't be a
regathering of people who don't believe the gospel. It'll be
a regathering of people whom God has given a new heart to
follow Him. And he says in verse 34 of Jeremiah
31, they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every
man his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all
know me. Now how do we know God? We know him through Christ. My
friend, let me tell you something. If you don't know Christ, who
he is, God manifests in the flesh. God-man. If you don't know what
Christ accomplished, as the surety and substitute of his people
by redeeming them from their sins, satisfying God's justice,
making an end of sin, finishing the transgression, bringing in
an everlasting righteousness whereby God could be just and
justify the ungodly. If you don't know Christ, if
you don't know God, as the one who justifies the ungodly based
upon Christ's blood, his righteousness imputed, then you don't know
God. Now you may know some things
about God, but you don't know God intimately as your heavenly
Father, as your Savior. And that's what he's saying.
They shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest
of them, saith the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity
and I will remember their sin no more. Now you know what that
means when he says I will remember their sin no more? It means he
will not charge them with sin. He will not bring it up again.
The books of God's people, the law book, is erased totally clean
from all sin. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies. Who
can condemn us? It's Christ that died. Yea, rather. He is risen again and is seated
at the right hand of the Father ever living to make intercession
for us. You see that? God will not impute sin to His
people. Why? Because He imputed it to
Christ. He charged it to Christ and Christ
took Him to the cross and drank damnation dry in the place of
His people. He was made sin. For us, the
scripture says, the us there is his people, believers, not
everybody without exception. He was made sin, he was made
a curse. And he went under the law, under
the curse, and he died to satisfy justice against my sins. He paid
my debt in full, and he brought forth everlasting righteousness.
God cannot impute sin to me if I'm in Christ, because in Christ
he imputes righteousness to me. And because of that righteousness
imputed to me, Christ sends forth the Holy Spirit in the new birth
to give me a new heart, a new mind, a heart of faith in Christ.
Over in Jeremiah 32, he gives the same prophecy again. And
here's what he says in verse 38 of Jeremiah 32. Listen to
this. He says, they shall be my people
and I will be their God. And I will give them one heart
and one way that they may fear me, that's worship and believe
me forever for the good of them and of their children after them.
This is Jeremiah 32, 38 and 39. Now look at verse 40. And I will
make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn
away from them to do them good, but I will put my fear in their
hearts and they shall not depart from me. Can it be any plainer? Now that's what Paul is talking
about over here in 2 Corinthians chapter three. Incidentally,
read Ezekiel chapter 26 sometime in your own Bible reading. Because
Ezekiel says the same thing. He said, where God says, I'll
put my spirit within them. I'll give them a new heart. I
will take away the stony heart out of their flesh. But that's
what Paul's talking about here. He says in verse three, now this
is back in 2 Corinthians 3. Verse three, for as much as you
are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, a letter
written by Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink,
but with the spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone. It's not an outward law imposed
upon an unwilling subject, but in fleshy tables of the heart,
the mind, the affections, the will. And then he says in verse
four of 2 Corinthians 3, and such trust have we through Christ
to Godward. We believe in Christ. Verse five
says, not that we are sufficient, of ourselves to think anything
as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God. In other words, this
is not just an opinion of man or man's judgment or a consensus
of man. This is of God. He says, verse
six, who also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament. Now that's the new covenant.
In other words, the ability that we have in ministry is what God
has made us. And we're not sufficient for
these things. We can't save people. I can preach
the gospel to you, but I cannot give you a new heart. I cannot
give you faith to believe that that's God's business. I'm to
preach to anybody and everybody who will listen. But I can't
bring you to faith in Christ, repentance of dead works, and
the obedience of grace, love, and gratitude. Preachers try
to do it today, they use man-made methods. I hear people talk about
what they call seeker-friendly churches. Well now, let me tell
you something, and I don't mean to be cynical or anything like
that, but usually when I run into a seeker-friendly church,
I'll tell you what it is. It's a church that lets people
just do anything they wanna do, anything they desire, what pleases
men, And here's the main problem. They tell people what they want
to hear rather than what they need to hear. Now, I wanna be
seeker friendly. In other words, I invite anybody
and everybody to come and hear the gospel. But I've got to tell
you, I'm gonna preach to you the word of God. I'm not gonna
tell you what will scratch your itching ear. I'm gonna tell you
what God says. And that's what this is. He's
made us able ministers of the new covenant. This is the glory
of the new covenant. It's not the old covenant. And
he says in verse six, it's not of the letter, it's not that,
but of the spirit, for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth
life. Now I'll pick up there next time, but I hope you'll
join us next week for another message from God's word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.TheLetterRofGrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.