Hebrews chapter 10. And I would like to read verse
9 again, for this is our text today. Hebrews 10 verse 9. Then said he, Lo, I come to do
thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that
he may establish the second. One of the old Puritans said,
the way of God with men is to go from good to better and from
better to best. And God often gives us darkness
before he gives us light. as he gives us a measure of light
in the rising sun before he gives us the full glory of the noonday
sun. God could give the best first
if he chose, but the arrangement is necessary because of our weakness
and our infirmities. you wouldn't give a starving
man a piece of meat. You first start with milk, and
then some soft food, and when he's strong and able to receive
it, you give him the meat. It would never do for weak eyes
to have to open suddenly and look into the brightness of the
full ray of the sun. And so God starts with the dim
things and the symbols and the shadows and the types God, knowing
the feebleness of His creature, is pleased to bestow His mercies
little by little. Now, the types and ceremonies
of Moses go back to verse 1 of Hebrews 10. The types and ceremonies
of Moses acted as a teacher to prepare us to receive the full,
complete, revealed gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says
in verse 1 of Hebrews 10, the law having a shadow, a beginning,
a type, of good things to come, not the very image of these good
things to come, can never with these sacrifices, which were
offered year after year after year after year continually,
can never make those who offer them perfect. Go over, if you
will, to verse 11. And every priest, that is, the
priest under the Mosaic law, the priest of the tabernacle,
the priest of the temple, and every priest, and there were
many of them, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them, standing
daily, ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices,
which can never take away sin. These priests and these ceremonies
and these types and these symbols were teachers to prepare us to
receive the gospel of Christ. The tabernacle was the twilight.
The tabernacle was the early dawn that preceded the true light
of the Son of God. But you know, even heaven is
not entered until we know something. of heaven here below. Even heaven,
the presence of God, is not entered by the believer until he knows
something of awakening grace, of regenerating grace, of redeeming
grace here below. There has to be a first before
there can be a second. There has to be a beginning before
there can be a completion. We ought to be thankful for the
first and use it properly. But when the second is come,
the first is put away, the first is forgotten. Now, let's look
at the first application. There are four things I want
you to see from this verse today. He taketh away the first that
he may establish the second. First of all, what is the first
application of this text? What is the first meaning? Well,
here it is. God takes away the first covenant. God takes away
the first temple. God takes away the first tabernacle. God takes away the first priesthood. God takes away the first sacrifice. God takes away the first offering,
all of the ceremonial law, that he may establish the second,
which is Jesus Christ our Lord. The first sacrifices of the tabernacle
were given to reveal Christ. And those who had clear vision
of Christ saw him in these sacrifices. Our Lord said, Abraham saw my
day. Where did Abraham see the day
of Christ? He saw the day of Christ in the atonement. He saw
the day of Christ in the blood offering. He saw the day of Christ
in the tabernacle. He saw the day of Christ in all
of those things which were brought before the Lord in worship. Moses, Christ said, wrote of
me. Isaiah wrote in chapter 53, he was wounded for our transgression. He was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes
we are healed. So those who had clear vision,
who ministered about the things of God, they saw Christ in these
sacrifices. They saw Christ in these ceremonies. They saw Christ in these tithes. And after Christ came, there
were some who wanted to hold to them and who wanted to continue
them. Turn to Galatians 4. Even after Christ came, there
were some who wanted to hold to these relics, to these elements. There were some who wanted to
hold to these ceremonies. In Galatians 4, verse 1, Paul
writing to the church at Galatia said, Now I say that the heir
as long as he is a child, different nothing from a servant, though
he be Lord of all." Now here's what Paul is saying. There's
a very wealthy father. He owns many houses and much
land, has much, much wealth, and perhaps he's a king. He has
a little boy in his home, his firstborn son, and this boy is
the heir. After the father dies, the boy
becomes the king, or after the father dies, Everything belongs
to the boy. It all becomes his after the
father dies. But right now, he's not the owner.
He's the heir, but he's not the owner. And he's no different
in the household than one of the servant boys. In fact, he
has, verse 2, he's under tutors. He's under his father's servants. His father's servants teach him
They tell him what he can do and what he can't do. He's the
heir. All of this someday will be his, but right now, he hasn't
enough maturity and enough wisdom to control it and to direct it. So he's under these tutors and
under governors until the time appointed by his father. His
father may have written in the Testament, now my son inherits
all this when he's 21, or he inherits all of this when he's
35, or he inherits all of this after I die, but right now it's
not his. He's under these teachers, these
teachers who teach him to read and to write, who teach him how
to plant corn, and how to shear a sheep, and how to take care
of the cattle, and how to run the farm. He has to learn all
of these things from these teachers, from these people who are really
under his father. So he's nothing more than a servant
himself. Now, even so, verse 3, We, when
we were children in the wilderness, before Christ came, when we were
children, we were in bondage under the elements of the world,
under these washings and sacrifices and offerings and all of these
things. We were under these things, verse 4. But when the fullness
of time was come, in God's own time, in the time set by the
Father, God sent forth his Son. made of a woman, made under the
law. Christ was born under the law
because Christ was born as a man, subject to the ceremonial law,
subject to the judicial law, subject to the law of the home,
subject to the moral law of God. He was born under the law as
a man to redeem them that were born under the law that we might
receive the adoption of sons. Because you are sons, God has
sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying,
Abba, or Father, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a
servant, no more under tutors, no more under teachers, no more
under governors, but now a son. And if a son, then an heir of
God through Jesus Christ. Howbeit then, when you knew not
God, you did service unto them which by nature are no gods.
But now, after you have known God, or rather are known of God,
this church at Galatia was going back to these symbols and back
to these old ceremonial laws. In other words, when someone
became a Christian, they commanded them to be circumcised. When
someone became a Christian, They commanded them to go back under
the mosaic economy and eat certain things, and leave off certain
things, and keep the feast days, and keep the Sabbath day, and
keep the holy days, and keep all of these things. And Paul
says, now that you're a son, now that you're full grown, now
that you've entered into your inheritance, why do you want
to go back to being a servant? Why do you turn again to these
beggarly elements whereunto you desire again to be in bondage?
You observe days and months and times and years. Paul says, I
am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. Now these relics, they are all
put away, they are all fulfilled in Christ, just like the Son,
who is the heir of all things, is under a tutor, under a governor,
while he is still young, being taught And when he comes to a
certain age and his father's designated, he's the heir. Well,
he's not going to go back to this time of immaturity and this
time of teaching and this time of learning. He's now the king,
he's now the heir, he's now the director, he's now the leader.
And God kept the Israelites and God kept the people of the Old
Testament under teachers. The law is the teacher or schoolmaster
to bring us to Christ. And all of these types and ceremonies
and sacrifices and holy days and feast days were just teachers
and symbols and types to point us to Christ. Now, when the fullness
of time was come and Christ came into this world as a man and
met the law and obeyed the law and died under the curse of the
law, we enter into our inheritance. We enter into the fullness of
Christ. We enter into the fullness of
the knowledge of God. We enter into our sonship. Now
Paul said, why do some of you want to go back to these things?
And it's prevalent in our day. We have what we call the seventh-day
Adventist. And I'm not beginning now to
show who's right and who's wrong and all the denominations. Most
denominationalism is wrong, all of it. But what I'm saying here
is I'm giving you some of the instances or examples where men
today are going back to what we call the weak and beggarly
elements. Keep the seventh day. The seventh day has been abolished
the same as the killing of a lamb and the shedding of that lamb's
blood. If I were going back to keeping the seventh day, I'd
go back to shedding the blood of lambs and bulls and goats.
If I were going back to observing the seventh day, I'd go back
to the tabernacle, I'd go back to all of those things, and by
that I would say, Christ is not the Messiah, we look for another. And then to insist that the sprinkling
of an infant is necessary to salvation, that's going back
to these same weak and beggarly elements. To try to turn or change
the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ is to go
back once again to symbols. and to seek some efficacy and
some saving power in symbols. It is just not to be found. There
never was any. Look at Hebrews 10, 4 again.
There never was any saving value to this blood of bulls and goats. There never was any saving value
or spiritual significance in a day. I spoke to a group yesterday,
and I said, as I shall repeat again tonight in my message on
the birth of Christ, but this is the season of the year, and
you can read Spurgeon on the back of the bulletin when we
think of the birth of Christ. Well, most historians and most
theologians agree that we have no assurance at all that Christ
was born anywhere around December the 25th. There's not any assurance
of it at all. In all probability, he was not
born at all at that time of year. But the same thing goes for Easter.
The resurrection of Christ, we celebrate that sometimes in March,
sometimes in April, sometimes in May. And all of these other
different days, there's no spiritual significance in it at all. There's
no spiritual value in a day. Our spiritual life is in a person,
in Christ. It's not in a day, it's not in
a ceremony, it's not in any of these outward rituals of religion. And it never was in these Jewish
rituals either. Look at verse 4. It is not possible
that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin. And verse
11 says, these priests stand daily ministering and offering
the same sacrifices which can never take away sin. These things
were not given to take away sin. These special days when the people
came together, this special tabernacle to which they came, these special
sacrifices which were offered, these special priests that ministered
about the temple, There was no spiritual value in the day itself,
nor in the tabernacle itself, nor in the person himself, nor
in the sacrifices themselves. There never was any saving power
in any of these things. The saving significance and power
was in the person whom they represented, Christ. Christ. That's the key to this thing,
to enforce holy days and confessions. Any man-made rite or any man-made
ceremony that must be performed in order for a sinner to be saved
is to return to the bondage of the law. It's to return to the bondage
of the law. The Christ who died on Calvary
will never have to die again. the atonement which he made at
Calvary is sufficient to the saving of all who believe. All
our sins are purged in the blood of Christ and paid for, and nothing
needs ever to be added to what he is, what he has done, and
what he is doing." Now our text again says, "...he
taketh away the first." What was the first? The first with
all of these ceremonies here in the Old Testament, the holy
days, the tabernacle, the priesthood, the sacrifices. This is the first,
and this first never had any saving efficacy, any saving power. These days and these ceremonies
and sacrifices could never in themselves do anything for anybody. That's the reason it said, God
delights not in sacrifice. Not in the sacrifice itself.
God never delights in watching a poor, bleating sheep dying
and its blood running out in a basin or on an altar on the
ground. A man would have to be sadistic
to get any pleasure out of watching that. God has no pleasure in
sacrifices and offerings. But he has pleasure in Christ.
And these sacrifices and offerings represent Christ. They stand
in the stead of and in the place of Christ till he comes. And
when God looked upon the sacrifice, he saw Christ dying on the cross
for our sins. When God looked upon, and the
observance of holy days, while the observance of holy days meant
nothing to God, whether a man was sitting in a chair or driving
a nail. But it was the spirit and the
attitude of that man. The man who came on that seventh
day and rested was saying he believed God. He believed in
the rest which we will have in Christ. He believed in the rest
which we look forward to eternally with our Lord. He believed in
that, therefore he typified that by his behavior on that day.
But the man who said, I have no regard for days and took a
nail and built him a house is saying, I don't believe God.
And God's satisfaction was not in the position of that man's
body, but in the attitude of his heart. The same thing has to do with
the Lord's day today. I'm not saved by coming to church. I'm not saved by observing a
day. A day has no significance for
me whatsoever. But on the Lord's day morning,
the people of God meet together. And the people of God have set
aside that special day, the morn on which Christ rose from the
grave, the first day of the week. They have set aside that day
to come together to praise God, to worship God, to thank God. If I refuse to do that, I am
saying by my attitude, I don't need God. I can get along without God.
I am not especially thankful to God. I am my own man. I have done, accomplished what
I've accomplished through my own strength and what I have.
I got through my own efforts. God didn't give it to me. That's
my attitude. And our sufficiency is never
in a day or a ceremony or a position of the body. You take bowing
the head in prayer. There's no, a man may bow his
head and go to hell while another man holds his head up and goes
to heaven. The position of the body has nothing to do with it,
but a lot of times the position of the body reveals the condition
of the heart. Men cry when they're sad, and
they throw their chest back and their heads up when they're proud.
So a lot of times the position of my body reveals the condition
of my heart, and it's the condition of the heart. God looks not on
the outward countenance, He looks on the heart. There were a lot
of these people in the Old Testament who brought blood sacrifices
who went to hell because they didn't bring them in faith. So
the blood sacrifice had no efficacy whatsoever. But it was the condition
and attitude of the heart. Now, secondly, let's look at
this text again. He taketh away the first, that
he may establish the second. Now, we know the first instance
here is the tabernacle and the priesthood and the sacrifices
and the ceremonies and circumcision and all of these things that
Christ may be established. Christ is our refuge, Christ
is our high priest, Christ is our sacrifice, Christ is our
sin offering, Christ is our life, Christ is our temple, Christ
is everything. I see some historical instances
in which this rule has been carried out. First of all, God took away
the first paradise, the Garden of Eden. That was the first paradise.
God has taken it away because sin entered, and God has given
us a second paradise, eternal heaven, with Christ our Lord.
He taketh away the first, He established the second. It's
awaiting the people of God. All right, he took away the first
man. Turn to 1 Corinthians 15. Who was the first man? The first
man was Adam. The first man was Adam, and God
took him away, and God established the second man. That's Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 15, verse 45, as it is written, the first man,
Adam, was made a living soul. The last Adam, a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first, which
is spiritual, but that which is natural. The first Adam came
along, and afterwards the second Adam. The first man is of the
earth, earthy. The second man is the Lord from
heaven. And as is the earthy, such are
they also that are earthy." We are part of Adam, we are like
Adam, we are born of Adam, and as is the heavenly, Such are
they that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image
of the first Adam, borne his transgression, borne his fall,
borne his sinful nature, thank God, we shall, by the grace of
God through the blood of Christ, bear the image of the second
Adam, Christ our Lord. All right? The first covenant.
God took away the first covenant. What was the first covenant?
This, do and live. And that covenant was given to
Adam, and Adam broke that covenant, and Adam died. So God established
a new covenant, a better covenant, a covenant established and ordained
on better promises. That covenant is in Christ. It
is done. The great transaction is done.
I am my Lord's, and He is mine. The first tabernacle in the wilderness
in which God revealed Himself to man, where God met man. That first tabernacle was taken
away. It is no more. The second tabernacle, Christ.
For the Scripture says, Christ tabernacled among us. And that's
where God meets man. Christ said, No man cometh to
the Father but by me. He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father. I am the Father One. This principle
goes all the way through the Bible. God took away the first
king. Who was he? Saul. And he established David's
throne, and he established it forever. God took away the people.
The first people, Israel. The second people, the children
of grace. This has been God's way. First
the twilight, first the evening, then the twilight, and then the
morning, and then the full noon of God's revealed glory. Possibly,
I don't know, but possibly. That's the reason during the
days of creation it is said, and the evening and the morning
were the first day, and the evening and the morning were the second
day, and the evening and the morning were the third day. God
gives good things in order that he may give better things, in
order that he may give the best things. And God established these
sacrifices and all of these things in the Old Testament to instruct
and to teach. And when these things are fulfilled
in Christ and we become sons of God, we put away these things.
Now then, watch this. There are some instances in your
own personal experience where God has to take away the first
in order to establish the second. Now listen to me briefly. First
of all, God takes away our own righteousness. and gives us the
perfect righteousness of Christ. What's the first thing Adam did
when he found out that he had fallen, that he had sinned? He
sat down and made him some clothes. That's the first thing Adam did.
Adam saw his nakedness and he made himself a covering. It was
a fig leaf apron. It was not a sufficient covering.
It would not hide his transgression. And God came to him and removed
his fig leaf apron and made him coats of skin out of an innocent
victim. And how fiercely men try to hold
on to their own covering, to their own righteousness, but
it's got to be taken away. In order that we might have a
perfect covering, the righteousness of Christ to cover our nakedness,
the perfect holiness of Christ to put away our sin. We've got
to be brought to see that our first righteousness will not
do. And God takes it away. And God
makes us to see how wicked and sinful and evil and corrupt we
are and depraved we are, and then he brings in that perfect,
spotless, holy righteousness of Christ and covers our sin. And then God takes away our first
peace. We have a false peace. There
were many of you who were perfectly happy at one time. I'm talking
about when you were unfaithful, when you were unbelievers. You
were actually happy, weren't Before you ever came to know
you were a sinner, before you ever came to know Christ as your
Savior, you were happy. Don't say about the unsaved man,
he's unhappy. All of them aren't. Some of them
have a false peace and a false refuge and a false security and
a false happiness. And God has to destroy that.
God has to take that away, that false peace, that false happiness,
in order that he might give us a certainty. an eternal peace,
a peace that really satisfies, and that's the peace that passeth
understanding. That's the peace of Christ. And
then God takes away, thirdly, our confidence in the flesh,
that we may have confidence in Christ alone. He takes away our
righteousness and gives us the righteousness of Christ. He takes
away our false peace and gives us the peace that passeth understanding
in Christ. and then he takes away our confidence
in the flesh. Now this is especially true after
a man is converted. I find this, I've been preaching
a long time and dealing with people a long time, and I find
this almost invariably to be the pattern that God adopts in
dealing with true redeemed people, people who are really saved.
First of all, a man In this, as I pointed out a minute ago,
he's stripped. He comes to see, oh, I'm a sinner.
I'm lost. I need Christ. I need salvation. He comes to see that he has no
hope, no covering. He gets unhappy. He can't be
happy in his home. He can't be happy on his job. He's lost his first peace. And
then God saves him. God saves him. God gives him
a new new name, and God gives him a new peace, and God gives
him a new nature, and God gives him a new family, and God gives
him happiness. He loves the people of God. He
loves the preaching of the Word. And then he begins to grow, and
he learns a little bit, and he thinks he knows a whole
lot. He's saved now. I'm not saying
he's not saved. I'm saying this is the pattern.
That seems to be the pattern God uses in the lives of truly
saved people. He's saved, or she's saved, and
then they begin to be critical of other people because they
really think they are something. They begin to learn a little
doctrine, they begin to learn a little bit about the Word of
God, they begin to enjoy the things of God, the people of
God. They enjoy the salvation which they have, and they begin
to get a little bit confident in themselves. And the first
thing you know, the Lord will come along and he'll permit them
to fall. He'll permit them to stumble.
He'll permit them to begin to doubt their own salvation. And
what is he doing? He's trying to teach them that
flesh is still flesh, whether it's saved or whether it's lost,
whether it's old or whether it's young. God is teaching them that
they have to have no confidence in themselves. Turn to 2 Corinthians
chapter 12. You're not the only one. I'm
not the only one. He had to teach his greatest
servant this lesson. He had to teach it to Paul. Paul
the Apostle. Paul had a peace in his religious
experience. He said, I was a Pharisee of
Pharisees, a Hebrew of Hebrews. I was it. I was above many of
my elders, and God killed me. God took away my false refuge. God destroyed my false peace. God destroyed my righteous rag. God slew me, and it came to Christ. And I received a perfect righteousness
and a new name and a new hope. I received life everlasting.
God even took me to the third heaven. But I got a little cocky. I got a little smart. I got a
little holier than thou. And so in 2 Corinthians 12, verse
7, "...lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance
of the revelations that were given to me." there was given
to me a thorn in the flesh. God gave me a messenger of Satan
to buffet me. Why? Lest I be exalted. And God will do the same thing
to you. He's got to take away your confidence in the flesh.
He's got to take it away. Our confidence, I don't care
who we are, where we are, what stage in the Christian experience,
what stage in faith, our confidence must never be in ourselves. It's got to be in Christ. You
say, well, my confidence never was in myself. I trusted Christ,
I believed on Him, I rested in Him. Don't let it be in yourself
now either. What you know, God taught you.
What you have, God gave you. The scripture tells us this,
what do we have that we have not received? What do we know
that we haven't been taught? And then I'll tell you another
experience you're going to have. It frequently happens that we
put too much confidence in others, especially early teachers and
leaders. We put too much confidence in
them. When a man is an infant learning
to walk, he reaches up and takes the hand of his father or his
mother. And while he's tottering on uncertain
legs, he is walking, but he is holding to a great extent to
this individual. Or perhaps he has a walker, perhaps
he has something wooden or aluminum that he's holding on to, and
he's learning to walk. Well, after a while, you've got
to turn it loose. And walk, think for yourself. And be removed from the crutch. And if you're not willing to
turn it loose, God will make you turn it loose. by destroying
that particular person or that crutch. He'll destroy that crutch.
God Almighty, and you may not like this, but God's ruthless
when he's dealing with his people. It's just like a surgeon. If
you're out yonder, well, like a person gets bitten by a snake.
And you don't have anything to deaden the leg or to deaden any
novocaine to keep the pain away. The father's got to take that
knife and he's got to cut and draw that blood out, that poison.
It's going to hurt like blazing. But in order for you to stand,
in order for you to be strong in the Lord, God will remove
your crutch. And he'll take it away. And he'll
make you lose confidence in that particular thing you're leaning
upon. We can't stay infants, we've
got to grow. We can't stay on milk, we've
got to eat meat. We can't let somebody else do
our thinking for us, the rest of our Christian experience.
We've got to think for ourselves, as the Holy Spirit leads. So
God will take away the first, that he may establish the second.
Now here's the next thing. Then God will take away our earthly
delights, that we may think more on him. Now, I don't know whether you
have experienced this yet or not, but I assure you, unless
God is able to wean you from natural delights so that you
might think more on him, he has a good way of doing it. He can
just take the delight away. How much we gain sometimes by
losing, only God knows. How much we're enriched by our
losses, how high we can climb by falling. The Scripture tells
us to be rich, we must become poor. To be filled, we've got
to be emptied. To be wise, we've got to become
a fool. To rise, we've got to be humble. To live, we've got to die. To
gain, we've got to lose. To be clothed, we've got to be
stripped. And so God wants you to think
on Christ. God commands that you set your
affections on things above. But if you can't set your affections...
I'm talking to his people now, I'm not talking to anybody else. If you can't set your affections
on things above, God will remove the object of your affection
down here. He'll do it. He's got to take
away the first, that he may establish the second. Now there's some
people who can set their affections on things above. And their affections
can be on those things, without God having to move anything else.
But if he has to move it, he'll move it. Because the second has
got to be established. Christ, there's no room for Christ,
and there's only room for Christ. That's the reason the Lord Jesus
said, He that cometh to me must hate his own life, his mother,
father, brother, sister, husband, wife, yea, his own life also,
take up his cross and follow me. God's going to establish
that second, and in doing so, he will remove the first. Now,
last of all, in closing, there's some things out yonder. that
God's going to remove the first that he may establish the second.
This body's got to go. This natural body full of sin
and disease and aches and pains must be taken away in order to
make room for that glorious body which shall be in the image of
the Lord Jesus Christ. He taketh away the first. that
he may establish a second. Someone said to me just yesterday
about a very close loved one of theirs. This individual has
a sister who is in her eighties, and I think a very faithful Christian,
and I think a very strong believer, and at this time a very sick
person. And he said to me, he said, I would like to say that I wish
God would take her. I wish God would kill her. If I didn't think that were wrong,
that's not wrong. I wish these doctors had let
people die. They talk about letting people
live. I wish they'd let people die. I wish they'd let poor Harry
Truman die. I don't know about his faith,
I don't know about his love for Christ, I just know the man needs
to die. There comes a time when this
body has got to go, it's got to die. Why keep it here, especially
if a person is a believer? I hope if I ever get real sick,
you won't pray for my recovery. I hope you'll pray for my death.
Paul the Apostle said, for me to live is Christ, but to die
is gain. There's nothing here. This first
has got to be taken away. Don't fret over it. Don't mourn
over it. Don't grieve over it. Let it
die. I can't put on my new body till
I take this one and lay it in the grave. I can't be like Christ
until I die. The only way I can ever get to
God's presence is to die. And that will be the happiest
day of my whole Christian experience. It will be yours, too. You can't
see it that way now, I guess, but it's so anyhow. It's so. God's going to take away this
first family that he may establish, that eternal family. God's going
to take away this first earth. He said heaven and earth are
going to pass away. There's going to be a new heaven
and a new earth. There's going to be a new Jerusalem.
God said, Behold, I make all things new, all things new. He taketh away the first, that
he may establish the second. And I saw a new heaven and a
new earth. The first earth and the first
heaven were passed away. And I, John, saw the holy city,
the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband. I heard a voice out of heaven
saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will
dwell with them. They shall be his people. God
himself shall be with them and be their God, and God's going
to wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there'll be no more
death, no more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain, for the
former things are Passed away, and he that sat on the throne
said, Behold, I make all things brand new. And that's the way
it's got to be. That's the way God works. The
old sacrifices, the old priesthood, the old tabernacle, took them
away. Christ. Christ is all and in all. My first so-called righteousness,
my first peace, all these things, my first religion, God had to
bear it in oblivion and bring me to the end of myself that
I might have Christ for my righteousness and Christ for my peace. My early
teachers, my early crutches to which I held and walked, God
had to render them, as far as I'm concerned, to be what they
are. crutches, that I might set my
affections on things above, that I might rest in Christ, in Christ
alone. And one of these days, in the
days getting closer and closer and closer, this old body's going
to close its eyes in death, and God's going to put it away. And
it's going back to the dust, it's going back to nothingness,
it's going back to the ashes, and God's going to raise a brand
new body. incorruptible, immortal, eternal,
conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, and I shall stand in
his presence with a new body, with a new nature, with a new
family, with a new home, with a new future, and all because
of Christ. Our Father, take the words that
have been spoken and the words that have been read, and lift
up him who is worthy. of all honor and praise and glory. The things that have been contrary
to Thy holiness and Thy truth cause us to soon forget them.
But those things which are meant for the glory of Christ and to
turn the affections and hearts of men and women to Christ, let
us remember them eternally. Move in the hearts of Thy creatures
to accomplish Thy purpose. Thou art God, beside Thee there
is none The revelation of Christ is possible with thee. We pray
that it may please thee to accomplish that goal and that purpose in
this hour. For Christ's sake we pray. Amen.