It is not that I did choose thee,
Lord, for, Lord, that could not be. Todd's Road Grace Church would
like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Todd
Niver. We are located at 4137 Todd's
Road, two miles outside of Manowar Boulevard. Sunday services are
at 1030 a.m. and 6 p.m. Bible study is at
945 a.m. Wednesday services are at 7 p.m. Nursery is provided for all services.
For more information, visit our website at toddsroadgracechurch.com. Now here's our pastor, Todd Nyberg. I've entitled this morning's
message, Able Ministers of the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians
2, beginning in verse 14, Paul said, Now thanks be unto God,
which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest
the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. For we, we
who preach the gospel, he's talking about the gospel minister, for
we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ in them that are saved
and in them that perish. To the one we are the savor of
death, unto death, and to the other the savor of life, unto
life, And who is sufficient for these things? For we're not as
many which corrupt the Word of God, but as of sincerity, as
of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ. Now, who
is sufficient for these things? Certainly not those people who
corrupt the Word of God. But look what he says in verse
5 of 2 Corinthians chapter 3. It's not that we're sufficient
of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency
is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the New
Testament. Not of the letter, but of the
Spirit. For the letter killeth, but the
Spirit giveth life. We, Paul says, are sufficient
as able ministers of the New Testament and our sufficiency
is of God. The little word of has to do
with origin. Now let's start in 2 Corinthians
chapter 3 and see what led Paul to make this statement. He says
in verse 1 of 2 Corinthians chapter 3, do we begin again to commend
ourselves or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation
to you or letters of commendation from you? Paul is saying, do
we need to recommend ourselves? Are we trying to gain your approval? No. Or do we need, like the false
apostles, letters of recommendation, papers stating our qualifications
for this work? in order to gain your approval
or confidence. So let me ask you a question
in light of what Paul said. Would I have more credibility
to you if I had a doctor of divinity and a paper showing my education
and my understanding? You know, when people ask me
about the church, the Todd's Road Grace Church, the first
two things they ask me Or, how big is it? How big is your church? And where did you go to seminary?
Now here's my answer. How big is it? 10,000 times 10,000
and thousands of thousands, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And where did you go to seminary? I didn't. You see, seminary doesn't
make a preacher. God does. You know, there's a
preacher of the past in the 1700s, and while everyone would have
DM and PhD by their name, he would sign his name, and at the
end he'd put SS. And somebody said, well, what's
that stand for? sinner saved. Now that is our recommendation. Now he says, do we begin again
to commend ourselves or need we as some others epistles of
commendation to you or letters of commendation from you? Do
we need that for credibility? Paul says in verse 2, you are
our epistle written in our hearts and known and read of all men.
The fact that you believe is our epistle. When God has sent
a man to preach, sinners will be saved through that man's preaching. That's what men can see. Verse
three, he says, for as much as you are manifestly declared to
be the epistles of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink,
but with the spirit of the living God. Not in tables of stone,
but in fleshy tables of the heart. Now you, Paul says to Corinthians,
are our commendation. And you're written, not with
ink, but by the Spirit of God. The writing was not done on a
tablet of stone, but in the fleshly tables of the heart. Now, in
true preaching, if someone's an able minister of the New Testament,
the Spirit of God is the one who writes this epistle. And the tablet of writing is
not a tablet of stone. It's the heart. Now, what is
written on the heart by the Spirit of God when God does a work of
grace in someone's heart? Because the scripture does point
out that God writes on the heart. What is written? Somebody says,
well, it's the Ten Commandments. the law of God. No, it's not
that, because everybody born into this world has that law
already written on their heart. We're born into this world knowing
it's wrong to steal, it's wrong to kill, it's wrong to lie, sexual
sin is wrong. Everybody knows that. Somebody
says we need to be taught to live. You already know how to
live. You know you're supposed to pay your bills. You know you're
supposed to lead a responsible life. You know that. That's not
what God writes on the heart. That's in the heart of people
who've never even heard the scripture. Well, what's the heart he writes
in? We see it's not just the Ten
Commandments, but what is the heart he writes in? Because the
scripture says our heart is bad, desperately wicked, deceitful
above all things. Does he write on that heart? No. He gives a
new heart. A new heart will I give thee.
And he writes on that heart, the new heart that he gives that
was not there before. Our Lord described this in that
parable where he says no man takes new wine and places it
into old bottles. If he put it in those old bottles,
they would burst. They were skins. The alcohol would ferment. It would burst the skins and
everything would be lost. No, he puts new wine in new bottles,
new skins. God takes the wine of His grace
and puts it in a new heart. If He put it in your old heart,
it wouldn't stay there, but He gives a new heart that is the
product of His grace, and He writes on this heart. Now, question,
what does He write? I'd like to read a passage of
Scripture from Hebrews chapter 8, beginning in verse 10. This is the covenant that I'll
make with the House of Israel after those days, saith the Lord.
This is a quotation from Jeremiah 31 that the writer to the Hebrews
is using. He says, I will put my laws,
plural, into their mind and write them in their hearts. Now, this is what God does when
he writes in the heart. He puts his laws, plural. in their mind and writes them
in their heart. Now, in the New Testament, we
read of six laws, and when God writes in your heart, He writes
these laws, and these laws are written with permanent ink. The first we read of in Romans
chapter 7 is the law of sin. Now if God has given you a new
heart, a new nature, and he's written on that heart, one thing
that you recognize is the law of sin. You realize that in your
flesh dwells no good You find a law working in you,
a principle of evil. You see that in and of yourself
you are nothing but sin. And if you don't see that, God
has never written in your heart. You don't have a new nature that
can see things like that. But if God has given you a new
heart, you say with Paul, I find in a law that when I would do
good, evil is present with me. You have some understanding of
the law of sin. And then we read in Romans chapter
9, verse 31 of the law of righteousness. Now if God has written in your
heart, you can't be satisfied with anything but perfect righteousness. That's the only thing you have
any confidence in. And the only perfect righteousness
there is, is the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. You
can't rest in anything but His righteousness. You have no confidence
in your own because you understand this law of sin. You know your
righteousness is as filthy rags. but you look at his righteousness
as your only ground of acceptance before God. And then we read
in Romans 3, 27 of the law of faith. If you're a believer,
you cannot not believe. It's impossible that you have
unbelief. The man said in Mark 9, 27, I believe help thou mine
unbelief. That old nature never does believe,
but the new nature always believes, and it cannot not believe. It
must look to Christ. It cannot see Christ and say,
He's not enough. The new nature knows He's all.
I don't have a Christ-centered life. Christ is all. He's all
my salvation. He's all my desire. And then
in James chapter 2, verse 17, we read of the law of liberty.
A believer must have freedom. What is freedom? Freedom is freedom
from debt. I don't owe anything. Christ
took away my debt, and I get to do what I want to do. I'm
not serving God because I'm afraid not to, but because that's the
desire of my heart. Liberty, the law of liberty. And then we read in James 2.12
of the law of love. When God writes in somebody's
heart, that person loves God as he's revealed in the scripture.
He loves every one of his attributes, and he loves his neighbor. That's
nature to him now. God has given him a new heart.
And then we read in Galatians 6 of the law of Christ. Paul
said, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual,
restore such a one into the spirit of meekness. Considering yourself,
lest thou also be tempted, you know if you're tempted, you do
worse. Bear ye one another's burdens, put up with one another,
and so fulfill the law of Christ. You see, when God writes in a
heart, He writes his laws in the heart, and they cannot be
erased. Now, back in 2 Corinthians chapter
4, Paul said, or verse 3, for as much as you are manifestly
declared to be the epistle of Christ, written by us, written
not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not in tables
of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart, and such trust
have we through Christ the Godward. Trust the Lord to do this. This
is his work, verse 5. Not that we're sufficient of
ourselves to think anything as of ourselves. We know it doesn't
come from us. We know that we're nothing but
vanity in and of ourselves. We don't give ourselves. We're
not sufficient. We can't even think right. But our sufficiency
is of God. who also hath made us able ministers
of the New Testament." Now, if the Lord has equipped me to preach
the gospel, if He's made me an able minister, one who truly
speaks in behalf of God, and there is such thing as a God-called
He's made me an able minister of the New Testament. Not the
old, but the new. Not of the letter, but of the
Spirit. For the letter kills, and the
Spirit gives life. More on that in a moment. But able ministers of the New
Testament. Now what is meant by the New
Testament? Is that talking about Matthew through Revelation as
opposed to Genesis through Malachi? No, the New Testament's in the
Old Testament and the Old Testament's in the New Testament. You can't
separate them. The New Testament, what's the word testament mean
or covenant mean? The word covenant or testament
in the scriptures is a promise. A covenant is a promise predicated
on a condition being met. Now, we deal with covenants on
a daily basis. Every time you go into the store
and purchase something, there's an agreement. This product will
be yours if you meet this condition and pay this amount. So you pay
the amount, the condition is met, And the product is yours. That is the promise. What about
a last will and testament? All of my property will one day
belong to my daughter. Everything will be hers. It will no longer be mine. It
will be hers. But a condition has to be met. I have to die. And when I die,
it all becomes hers. Now, there is the Old Testament
and there is the New Testament. Remember, a testament is a promise
and a promise being predicated on a condition being met. Now there's the Old Testament
and the New Testament and they're both promises from God predicated
upon a certain condition being met. Now let me show you a scripture
that I think tells exactly what the Old Testament is or the Old
Covenant. It's a promise predicated upon
a condition being met. In verse 25 of Luke chapter 10,
And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying,
Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Now he has a bad
motive. He's tempting the Lord. You can
see right off the bat he's mixing works and grace. What shall I
do to inherit? What work can I perform to inherit
something? That's mixing works and grace.
Behold, a certain lawyer came up and tempted him, saying, Master,
what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And he, the Lord Jesus
Christ, said unto him, What's written in the law? How readest
thou? He answers him on the ground
he came. And he answered and said, Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart. This is the lawyer giving the
right answer from the scriptures. And he answered and said, Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy
neighbor as thyself. And I can almost feel him swelling
with pride as he gives the right answer. There's the right answer.
And look how the Lord replies. And he said unto him, Thou hast
answered right. this do. Now just answer right. This do and thou shalt live. Now there is the old covenant
salvation being dependent upon you doing your part. Salvation by work. If you keep the law perfectly,
if you do your part, if you love God with all your heart and all
your soul and all your strength and your neighbor as yourself,
you will be saved. Here's the promise of salvation,
but it's predicated on you meeting the condition of perfect obedience. Now listen, the old covenant
Is salvation dependent upon you in some way? If any part of your
salvation is dependent upon you, then you're under the old covenant. You're under salvation by works. Listen, all you have to do is
believe in free will. that salvation is for anybody
if they will exercise their will. That Christ can die for you,
but you might go to hell anyway if you don't of your will decide
to allow him to save you. That still makes salvation dependent
upon you. If any aspect of salvation is
dependent upon you, you're under the old covenant, the covenant
of works. No one can be saved in that old
covenant. And then there's the New Testament,
the New Covenant. That too is a promise of salvation,
a promise of God. And it's also predicated on a
condition being met. But here's how the New Covenant
works. Here's how the New Testament works. Salvation is dependent
upon Christ living for you, Christ dying for you, Christ being raised
for you and Christ standing in judgment for you. It's salvation
conditioned upon Christ. The old covenant is salvation
conditioned upon you. The new covenant is salvation
conditioned upon Christ. Now, back in Hebrews chapter
8, let me show you this new covenant. This is the covenant that I'll
make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord. I'll
put my log in their mind and write it in their hearts and
I'll be to them a God. And they shall be to me a people.
And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man
his brother, saying, Know the Lord. For all shall know me,
from the least to the greatest. For I'll be merciful, I'll be
propitious, I will be, not I might be, not I'll offer it, but I
will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins, and their iniquities,
will I remember no more." Now the reason God is going to do
all these things is because of what He has done. Salvation depended
upon what he had done. Now back in 2 Corinthians chapter
3, Paul says he's made us able ministers of the New Testament,
not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills,
and the Spirit gives life. Now, the letter represents the
law, the spirit, the gospel. The letter is works. The spirit
is grace. The letter is man's understanding. The Spirit is God the Holy Spirit
giving life. The letter kills. The Spirit
gives life. Now, this word letter, not of
the letter, but of the Spirit, If you look at the etymology
of the word, it means literally to trace. That's the Greek word,
and the meaning is to trace. It's like you're putting a paper
over another paper and tracing what is there. And that's how
these copies were preserved. It was tracing. When I was a
little boy, I used to like to get out the Sunday comics. And
I would put a piece of paper over it, and I'd go over Donald
Duck or Mickey Mouse, and I would trace it. And I would pick up
my piece of paper, and it looked good. It looked just like the
Donald Duck and the Mickey Mouse. I did a really good job, so I
thought, but it wasn't really my work, was it? Not at all. It was just a tracing. It wasn't
the real thing. Now, most people's understanding
of the gospel and of righteousness and so on is tracing. We have
a righteousness that's based upon Christ. It looks very much
like His, but listen to me. My righteousness is not based
upon Christ's righteousness. My righteousness is His righteousness. It's not a trace. It's the real
thing, not the letter, but the spirit. Now, you may say correct
things in the letter, but there's no impartation of life. Only
the Spirit of God gives life. You can say all the right things
and yet have no life. You see, the letter is external. The Spirit is internal. The letter
is the correct spelling, knowing how to Spell right. You can win a spelling bee. I
always wanted to, never did, always wanted to, but you can
win a spelling bee and not know the meaning of one of those words.
Not the true meaning, but yet give the right spelling. That's
the letter. The Spirit is understanding the
meaning. You can even defend the truth.
Now listen to me real carefully. This is the letter of the law.
You can be accurate and defend the truth. You can believe men
are dead in sins, and you can go to the scriptures and say,
yes, God elected a people. There it is. Christ died to the
elect. God's grace is invincible and irresistible. I can see where
the scripture teaches this. You can teach the perseverance
of the saints, and you can be right down the line giving what
you think the scripture teaches and still not truly have any
understanding. For instance, it's one thing to stand and say,
yes, I believe the Bible teaches men are totally depraved. I see
that in the scriptures. It's another thing to believe
you're totally depraved. Now, when you believe you're
totally depraved, all of a sudden God's grace becomes an absolute
necessity. You need Him to choose you. You need Him to pay for your
sins. You need Him to invincibly and irresistibly call you by
His grace. You need Him to enable you to
persevere. You see, that's hearing with
understanding. The gospel comes as good news, not just in the
dead letter, but in good news. You see, the letter really doesn't
understand the intent of the law. You know, if you look at
God's law and think that it's given in order to enable you
to obey it and keep the law of me in heaven, you don't have
any understanding of the intention of God's law. Paul said the law
was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. You see, the law
exposes sin, and the law shows me that the only hope I have
is the Lord Jesus Christ. It drives me from seeking to
earn God's acceptance by what I do because I can't earn God's
acceptance. All the law does is show me my
sin and my need of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if I look at the
law and the letter of it, I prove that God has not been my teacher.
I do not understand. Now, Paul says God has made us
able ministers of the New Testament, the new covenant, salvation predicated
upon what Christ has done and not what I do. Now let me ask
you, what would you prefer? Would you prefer salvation to
be totally dependent upon Christ? Or would you be okay with salvation
being mostly Christ, but you still need to do your part? Now, if you're okay with that,
you've never heard the gospel. You've never seen your sin. You've
never seen your need of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if you see
the only place of safety is for salvation to be utterly and entirely
dependent upon who He is and what He did. If you see that
your salvation must come from His words, it is finished. Nothing left for me to do. It is finished. If you see the
necessity of your salvation being found in those words of our Lord. It's finished. Beloved, that's
the New Testament. That's the New Covenant. And Paul says, God has made us
able ministers of the New Covenant. Now we have this message on cassette
tape, DVD and CD. We'll send you a copy. If you
write or email, we'll call the church. And also like to invite
you to services at Todd's Road Grace Church. Our Bible study
begins this morning at 940. The Sunday morning service at
1030. Sunday evening at 6. We'd love to have you come out
and visit with us. This is Todd Nygridge, praying that God will
be pleased to make himself known to you. That's our prayer. If you request a copy of the
sermon you have just heard, send your request to messages at podsroadgracechurch.com. Or you may write or call the
church at the information provided on the screen.