Wait a minute. Can you find it? Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come? Why should my heart feel lonely
and long for heaven and home? When Jesus is my portion, my
strong defense is He. His eye is on the sparrow, and
I know he watches me. His eye is on the sparrow, and
I know he watches me. Let not your heart be troubled,
His tender word I hear, and resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts
and fears. But by the path He leadeth, but
one step I may see, His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he
watches me. His eye is on the sparrow, and
I know he watches me. Let not your heart be troubled,
His tender word I hear, and resting on His goodness, I lose my hearts
and fears. For by the path He leadeth, but
one step I may see, His eye is on the sparrow and I know he
watches me. His eye is on the sparrow and
I know he watches me. I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free. And his eye is on the sparrow
And I know, I know he watches me If you will turn back in your
Bibles with me now to 2 Corinthians chapter 3. Let me read verses 4 through 6 again. 2 Corinthians 3 verse 4. And such trust have we through
Christ to Godward, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to
think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God,
who hath made us able ministers of the New Testament. Before
we look at more here in 2 Corinthians chapter three, I want to read
a couple of passages that speak to us about the New Covenant.
The Apostle Paul here confesses that God had made him and those
who ministered with him ministers of the New Testament. The New
Testament, first of all, was prophesied in Jeremiah chapter
31, beginning with 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, 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, although I was in husband unto them, saith the
Lord. 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 and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they
shall be my people. And they shall teach no man,
every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, know
the Lord, for 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. That is the covenant prophesied. And then one verse of scripture,
the words of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 26 and verse
28, for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for
many for the remission of sins. The false teachers in the days
of the apostles and even unto our day have always worked to
subvert the gospel, the gospel of the grace of God. And one
of the ways that they've done this, of course, is by teaching
men that believers are still under the old covenant, the Old
Testament. And before I go on, let me mention
this fact that in the New Testament, the word that is translated testament
and translated covenant is the same word. Sometimes it's translated
testament, And sometimes it's translated coveted. But I want
to speak to us this morning and point out to us five contrasts. Five contrasts that we see here
in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 between the Old Testament and the New
Testament. Paul was a New Testament minister. That's what I am. I'm not an
Old Testament minister. And neither is any other pastor
or preacher that God calls in these days to preach the gospel,
to pastor his people. We are new covenant, New Testament
preachers. And I want to point out five
contrasts that we see here in this chapter. There are others,
but these are the only five we're going to look at. First of all,
if you have your Bibles open again here to 2 Corinthians chapter
3, the first contrast is the letter is contrasted with spirit. Notice in verse 6, who also hath
made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter,
but of the spirit. So the first contrast that we
see here is between the letter and the spirit. What does he
mean here by the letter and the spirit? Well, the letter, of
course, must mean the old covenant, the old covenant. And that's
all it was. That's all it was. It was just
the letter. It was a letter. It declared
what men must do. and what men must not do, but
it gave no power. It gave no power to do what was
commanded. And the letter there was written
on tables of stones. But the spirit, the contrast
is between the letter and the spirit. The letter refers to
the law. We're talking about the law that
God gave to Moses at Mount Sinai, the law under which the nation
of Israel lived until the Lord Jesus Christ ratified the New
Covenant. That's the reason I read that
verse in Matthew. This is my blood of the New Testament. The New Covenant, the New Testament
was ratified by the blood of Jesus Christ, just as that old
covenant was ratified by Moses with the blood of animals. So
the letter here is the law, that law, and it was a law, a covenant
of works. It demanded much. but it gave
no power, no ability to do what it commanded. The spirit here,
of course, refers to the gospel, the gospel which promises spiritual
blessings and gives spiritual blessings to all who believe
and receive the gospel. I want you to hold your places
here, but look with me in Galatians chapter three. Now, the churches
of Galatia were especially bombarded with this false teaching. After
Paul had gone among them preaching the gospel of the grace of God
and many were saved, then these false teachers called Judaizers. They were legalists. They came
from Jerusalem, probably, and they began to teach the believers. that they had to submit to the
law of the old covenant. They had to submit to the old
covenant. Now, Paul writes this letter of Galatians refuting
that and showing the error of that. But here in chapter three,
just two verses, verses one and two. If you then be risen with
Christ, well, that's a wrong book. Let me find Galatians here,
I'm sorry. Galatians chapter three. O foolish Galatians, who hath
bewitched you? that you should not obey the
truth before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set
forth crucified among you. What does he mean by that? He
means the message that he preached the gospel. He said, I determined
to the church at Corinth, I determined not to know anything among you
save Jesus Christ and him crucified. You see, the gospel, Christ,
he is the gospel. He is the gospel. And Paul had
gone among these people in Galatia and preached Christ and Him crucified. Now he's writing back to them
as they were tempted to go under the law to listen to these false
teachers. O foolish Galatians, who hath
bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before whose
eyes Jesus Christ had been evidently set forth, crucified among you? Now, he asks this question, this
only would I learn of you. Received you the spirit by the
works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Is the Holy Spirit, in other
words, they had heard the gospel, they had believed the gospel,
and they had received the Holy Spirit. Now Paul is asking them,
did you receive the Holy Spirit by the hearing of the law by
hearing a rabbi get up and read the Ten Commandments or any of
the part of the law? Is that the way the Holy Spirit
was communicated to you that came to live in your heart and
in your soul? Or was it when you heard the
message of faith, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ? This
only would I learn of you. Received you the Spirit by the
works of the law? by your obedience to the law,
by trying to keep the law? Is that the way the Holy Spirit
came to live in your heart? Or did it happen as you heard
the gospel message, which is believe and be saved. Believe in Jesus Christ and be
saved. Is that the way the Spirit of
God came into your life? If you turn over just a few more
pages to Ephesians, to emphasize this, in Ephesians chapter one
and beginning with verse 12, he said that we should be to
the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ in whom you
also trusted after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel
of your salvation, in whom also after that you believed you were
sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest
of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession
under the praise of his glory. He traces these four distinct
steps First of all, a person hears the gospel. Our Lord commanded
men, his disciples, the church to go into all the world and
preach the gospel to every creature. No one is ever saved before they
hear the gospel. First of all, we say they heard
the word of truth. That is the gospel of their salvation. And number two, they believed.
They believed in the Son of God as He was presented and preached
and declared in the gospel. And number three, they were sealed. They were sealed with the Holy
Spirit of promise. In other words, the Holy Spirit
came to live in them. And number four, as the Spirit
of God came to live in them, He's now the earnest. We know
what earnest money is, don't we? When you want to buy a house
and you make a signing agreement, you put down earnest money. And
that just means you're going to go through with it. It's your
intention. You're going to go through with
this contract. Well, God, the Holy Spirit lives
in you and lives in me as the earnest until the redemption
of the purchase possession. And when we read of the purchased
possession, it's not just our soul, but also our bodies, that
He lives in us. And yes, even when this whole
body is put in the grave and turns back to dust, yet the Spirit
of God is still with us until The body is raised from the grave,
the earnest of the spirit. And that's one big contrast between
the letter and the spirit. The letter commanded but gave
no power, no ability to obey. The spirit, the gospel brings
blessings, spiritual blessings, untold blessings. We preach the
unsearchable riches of Christ. Unsearchable riches of Christ. He's like a well that has no
bottom. You just dip your bucket down,
drop your bucket down in the well, and it's never going to
hit the bottom when you preach Christ and Him crucified. That's
the reason every man that's called to preach, his message is Christ. Someone said, you have one string
on your on your guitar. That's all I need. And that string
is Christ. That's who I'm going to be preaching
until the Lord takes me home, the Lord willing. What else would
I preach? I'm a minister of the new covenant,
not of the old covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit. All right, here's a second contrast. Death is contrasted with life,
again in verse six, who hath also 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. The law, which I've
already said is the letter here, Paul says here that it kills. You know, in Romans chapter seven,
he said this about the law. He said the law is holy and just
and good. But here, he tells us that the
law kills. In other words, it threatens
death for all disobedience. You offend in one point. Think
about this. Here I am in this world. If I
live to be 100 years old, and I have one thought One foolish
thought, one sinful thought during these hundred years, I'm guilty
of disobeying the whole law. And the law curses me. It curses
me because it says, cursed is everyone that continues not in
all things which are written in the book of the law for it
to do them. One offense. Well, you know,
that's supposition. One offense. How about a hundred
offenses a day? The law kills. That's all it
can do. That's all it was given to do.
It was never given to give life. You know, in Romans chapter three,
The Apostle Paul tells us this, that it was not given to give
life, Romans chapter 3, but the gospel gives life. The gospel,
and I want to say it's usually the preached gospel. It's usually
when the gospel is preached. I'm not saying, like I know some
men, good men who they believe that a person must hear another
man preach the gospel to be saved. I'm not saying that. Maybe that's
so. But I just believe a person could
read the Bible, you know, read God's word, be in a jail cell
somewhere and no preacher ever around and he gets the Bible
somehow and begins to read the word of God And God, the Holy
Spirit, strikes him in the heart and reveals the truth to him. But it's usually under the preaching
of the gospel. I will say that. It is usually
under the preaching of the gospel. As James said, of his own will
begat he us with the word of truth. Look at the passage in
1 Peter. 1 Peter chapter 1. In every birth, there's a seed. There's a seed. In 1 Peter 1,
verse 23, the apostle said, seeing you have purified your souls
and obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeigned love
of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure
heart fervently, being born again, not of corruptible seed. This
book here, God's word, the gospel, this is not corruptible seed. This is living, the living word. Peter told the Lord Jesus, thou
hast the words of eternal life. Words of eternal life. The seed
is the word of God. Being born again, not of corruptible
seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth
and abideth forever. In John chapter five and verse
21, Jesus declared that he quickens whom he wills. But it is through
his word, it is through his word, which are words of eternal life,
that God quickens his people. What does the word quicken mean?
It means, of course, to give life. To hear the gospel, a person's
dead in trespasses and sins, and he hears the gospel, and
God, the Holy Spirit, blesses that word and quickens him, gives
him life, gives him life. That's one reason we continue
to preach here. They call it the romance of preaching. A person could come into a service
like this as dead as a doornail spiritually and walk out full
of life. Well, that must be some preacher.
No, not the preacher, that's for sure. It's God. It's God's
word he uses in quickening. That's another contrast here. The apostle Paul points out where
New Testament ministers, not of the letter, but of the spirit,
for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. A third contrast
here in verse nine, the ministration of condemnation versus are contrasted
with the ministration of righteousness. For if the ministration of condemnation
be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness
exceed in glory. The law here, of course, is a
ministry. Those who preach the law, they
have a ministry of condemnation. It was never given that men might
earn salvation. Wouldn't you think, wouldn't
you agree with me today that probably 60 to 70 to 80% of people
in the world believe that salvation comes by somehow doing what the
law tells people to do? Wouldn't you agree to that? I
mean, there's only two religions. Brother Streeter pointed this
out. There's a religion of works and a religion of grace. And
the ministry of condemnation is this law, that's all it can
do is condemn. Because if a person doesn't keep
the law perfectly, not some of the time, but all the time, perfectly,
in thought, in word, in deed, then all the law can do is to
condemn, to curse. That's all it can do. It's a
ministry of condemnation. In Romans 3, Paul said, now we
know that whatsoever things the law says, it says to them who
are under the law. Now listen, that every mouth
may be stopped. I tell you, until the word of
God comes to a person in power, his mouth, her mouth, it's as
open as it can be. His tongue's always wagging. It's always has an excuse. Always something to justify ourselves. No, I'm not guilty. It was somebody
else, you know. Somebody did this. Someone said
this. It's my parents. It's my environment. No, no,
no. It's you. Out of the heart, the
Lord Jesus Christ said, proceed these things. You can, men, lost
men and women, they blame everyone and everything on their sinful
condition until God, the Holy Spirit, brings the gospel and
shuts their mouth. I'm guilty. May not be anybody
else in this room guilty today, but you're looking at someone
who's guilty. And I know you'd say the same
thing. I hope all of you, most of you would. We're guilty. We're guilty. We don't have any
excuse. Don't have any alibi. We can't
turn state's evidence on somebody else and somehow get turned free. Oh, no. God's justice is just. It's righteous. We're guilty. And the law is a ministration
of condemnation, but the gospel, the New Testament ministry, is
a ministration of righteousness. Now, how do we explain this? It's a ministration of righteousness. In preaching the gospel, we preach
Christ, who is the righteousness of God. We declare that the righteousness
of God the righteousness that you must have, that I must have. Oh, hear me now. Please, everyone,
hear me now. We all are going to stand before
God one day. You know that. It's before all
of us. And unless we have a righteousness
that God will accept, he's not going to accept us. We're going
to be cast into a devil's hell. because of our sin against the
holy God. We need a righteousness that
will allow God to receive us, to justify us. Where are we gonna
get that righteousness? Well, I'm gonna keep the law.
You're not gonna get it there. Well, I'm gonna join the Baptist
church. You're not gonna find it there. Well, I'm gonna get
in that baptismal pool one more time. You're not gonna find it
there. No, this is a ministration of
righteousness. We preach Christ and his righteousness,
that he perfectly, perfectly in every way obeyed God's holy
law. so that the Lord God spoke from
heaven and said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. We must have that righteousness.
And there's only one way to receive it. That's through faith in Jesus
Christ. That's through believing the
gospel. You know, David, the psalmist,
he said this in one of the Psalms, I will make mention of thy righteousness,
even of thine only. I think that's the testimony
of every child of God. I'm not going to be talking about
my righteousness, my righteousness, your righteousness. You know
what God says about it? Filthy rags, filthy rags. No, I'm going to make mention
of His righteousness, the righteousness of God that is imputed to everyone,
charged to the account of everyone who believes in Him. Maybe you get your bank statement
one day, and you look down there, and somebody, you say, $100,000
was deposited into your account. Well, I didn't. I don't have $100,000. I didn't
do that. Somebody else did that. It was
accounted to you, deposited to you. And the righteousness of
Jesus Christ is accounted your righteousness when you believe.
It's yours. It's yours. Not like that man
that looked at this bank statement one time. This happened several
years ago. The bank had made a mistake and
put several hundred thousand dollars in his account, and he
ran out and spent it as fast as he could. Oh, and they started checking.
He said, I thought I'd won a lottery. What an excuse. No, no, they
want that money back. But I tell you what, when God
charges or imputes credits to your account, the righteousness
of Christ, it's yours forever. It's yours forever and ever and
ever. Never be taken back. And it'll
never grow old or tarnished either. A fourth contrast is between
bondage and liberty. Verse 17, the apostle said, now
the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty. You know, in Paul's allegory
in the letter of Galatians, between the two covenants, he uses Sarah
and Hagar. Sarah was the wife of Abraham,
a free woman, Hagar was his second wife who was a slave. And he
uses, Paul uses these two women to contrast the two covenants. The free woman, the covenant
of grace, her son was the heir. The son of the bond woman was
put out, was put out. But in that passage there, Paul
says this about that Old Covenant. He says, it genders to bondage. It genders to bondage. One writer said this about this
bondage. Everyone under that Old Covenant,
under that law, it begets in everyone under its sensible spirit
and influence a most miserable state of mind. under which he
becomes shut up as in a prison house under its condemning sentence,
aggravated by the accusations of a guilty conscience, the fear
of death, the dread of judgment, the temptations of the devil.
That's that ministration of death, that bondage that people who
are under the law But where the Spirit of God comes to live,
there's liberty. Now someone, I hear someone like
me say this, and it happens every time, they say, well, I guess
you're saying we have liberty to sin. Did you hear me say that? Did you hear any other preacher
say that? Of course not. Liberty is not the same as license. No, we have liberty to serve
God. to worship God without fear. In fact, when the Lord Jesus
Christ began his public ministry, you remember he went back to
the synagogue where he had gone for years as a young man, as
a boy, and they gave him the book of the law, and he found
the place where it was written, began to read, and this is what
he read. The spirit of the Lord is upon
me. because he hath anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor. Not physically poor, although
the gospel is preached to poor people, rich people, average
income people. Preach the gospel to every creature,
yes. But when he says here, he hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he's not talking
about people that don't have any money. He's talking about
people who are spiritually poor. poverty of spirit, blessed are
the poor. You people, you put up with a
lot. Oh, man. Deal, Mikey.