up here, it's more comfortable. Follow with me please, I'm gonna read verses eight, actually verse seven, I'm gonna begin at verse seven and read through verse nine. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says, The days are coming, declares the Lord. When I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, where they did not continue in my covenant, So I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. I'm gonna read through verse 12. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. And I will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach each one his neighbor And each one is brother saying, no, the Lord, for they shall all know me. From the least of them to the greatest, for I will be merciful toward their inequities. And I will remember their sins no more. Speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Let's pray. Our Father, we come before you and we worship you through the reading and expositing and hearing of your word. Our minds are small. We are so finite. Our understanding is bound by what we learn, what we are taught, what we have experienced. And so we ask that as we open your infallible word, that you would give us ears to hear. We seek this in Christ's name, unto your glory. Amen. A question that we often have before us as we study the scriptures is how can a perfectly holy God receive fallen humans into his presence? We sing amazing grace, but we don't put much emphasis upon amazing. Not as Neaton did. Many will say, I don't see an issue. If a person sins, he or she needs to ask God for forgiveness because that's what God does. That's the job of God to forgive our sin. Easy peasy. Does God simply and rather cavalierly forgive sin? An attitude that presumes upon God's forgiveness reveals either an unawareness of or an unconcern for the perfection of God's holiness. As you well know, one of my favorite passages of scripture is in Isaiah 6. Well-known words to us, the first five verses in particular, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and a train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim, each had six wings. With two He covered His face, and with two He covered His feet, and with two He flew. And one called to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. What a declaration. Isaiah wasn't like I might have been when I was in school. And we had a minimum number of words for an essay. And I would devise different ways to say the same thing. Sometimes repeating the very words maybe. Isaiah isn't repeating. the words, he hears these words repeated. And in the Hebrew language, when a descriptive word is repeated to the third time, that is the superlative degree that we have in English. It's the most, it's the highest. He is pointing to the, okay, this is not the correct way to say something. It's for emphasis. He's pointing to the absolute perfection of God, okay? I know, you can't get any more perfect than perfect, but just hear me. It's beyond what we can imagine. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory and the fount foundations of the thresholds, shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." He sees this In this vision, he sees the purity of the holiness of God. He's never experienced anything like that. And he was overcome with a realization, with a recognition of his own sinfulness as well as that of his people. Now, it's not real popular in our culture to talk about sin. But nevertheless, if we deal with the Bible with intellectual honesty, we have to. What can be done about sin? How can a holy God receive into His presence unholy people? Well, do the best you can. And if your good is better, greater than your bad, He will receive you to His presence. I know that doctrine well. That's what I was taught growing up. That's what my church taught. But is such a notion about goodness good enough? What's the measurement of good? What's the biblical support for that understanding? In Mark 12, 28 through 31, we find this account. One of the scribes, and one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, seeing that he answered them well, asked him, which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus answered, the most important is this, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. The second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. Can anybody in here honestly say that you've done that? I can't. With all My being? I would like to say I did it like one nanosecond of my life. Jesus says, taught in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 48, you therefore must be perfect even as your Heavenly Father is perfect. Well, but you understand that in the New Testament Greek, perfect doesn't mean perfect, yada, yada, yada. Well, yeah, it does. Look in the lexicons. You'll have things like perfect, complete. Can we say that our holiness, our righteousness is complete? Can we say that we really and truly love our neighbor as we love ourselves? I pray that I will. I pray to grow into that more. I've often said when I grow up, I want to be whatever. I'm still saying that. The Bible teaches in Romans 3 that all people are under sin. These things, none is righteous, no not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. Those are not generalities. He's talking individually. All are turned aside. No one does good. Not even one. He's quoting from the Old Testament. Well, that's not me. I've always sought after God. I'm basically a good person. I used to say that. I know some of you used to say that because I talked with you. When you have a bad set concept, you need to get a grip. Or maybe. What's the Bible teach? A lot of people do search for God. Unfortunately, too many seek for a God that aligns with their preconceptions of what deity should be. Some see God as a stern schoolmaster. You get out of line, he's going to whack you. And others see God as an emotionally driven, indulgent grandparent. Sometimes people will say, well, my God That's, to me, strikes me as a bit hubris and dangerous. Calvin was right when he said this, when he wrote this in his Institutes. Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols. Man's mind, full as it is of pride and boldness, dares to imagine a God according to its own capacity. As it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God. I've been a Christian since I was 18. I was a student at George Southern and came to the recognition and realization that my good was not good enough. I started reading the scriptures because the scriptures weren't really taught where I grew up in South Georgia. And the more I read, the more concerned I was, because it didn't align with what I was being taught. And yet you have the same testimony. We can conceive a God that aligns with where we are politically, culturally, socially, intellectually, But I've had to do a lot of retraining of my mind through the decades, even as a minister. There are things that I believed when I was in my 20s that now, as I'm approaching 70, every time I say that, it's like somebody hits me between the eyes with the reality of my own getting older. I've had to change a lot of things. explored the word as I learned more, as I grew more in this word, trying to understand all of it, not just parts of it that line up with what I want. The Bible teaches that the absolute holy God hates sin, and this sin-hating, perfectly just God is also perfectly loving. Before creation, the triune God decreed that God the Son would condescend to take upon Himself humanity, and that He would be enfleshed, incarnate, would live a perfect life as the second Adam, and die upon the cross as a human. in the place of sinful but repentant and believing humans. Perfect justice requires the eternal death of the sinner, and that would be satisfied upon the cross by the holy and loving Son, who condescendingly, voluntarily gave Himself to satisfy not simply the Father's justice, but the triune God's justice. John 10, 14 through 18, I am the good shepherd. I know my own, Jesus says, and my own know me. Just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep, and I have no other sheep that, I'm sorry, I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason, the Father loves me, because I laid down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own accord. I have authority to lay it down. I have authority to take it up again. Another one of my favorite verses, 2 Corinthians 5, 21. For our sake, he made him to be sin, who did us sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. So this thread of redemption runs through the Scriptures. The writer of Hebrews has belabored the point, as we've seen week after week after week after week, that everything about the Old Covenant, from its lawgiver Moses to the Aaronic, priesthood, priesthood of Aaron, to his sacrifices, to his temple, all are fulfilled in what they pointed to in Jesus Christ. Jesus inaugurated the new covenant that the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah had announced some six centuries earlier. So notice, the necessity of the new covenant, verse seven and eight. That was a long introduction, wasn't it? For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no reason to look for a second. For he finds fault with them When he says, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord that I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Now, as we have seen, the first covenant, the old covenant, was necessary and good, but it was not perfect because the people did not have hearts to obey. The first covenant laid down God's standard of righteousness, but it did not transform hearts that yearn to be righteous. And as we've seen also in Scripture, the new covenant was planned all along. The old covenant was necessary because the people needed to be shown that they could not fulfill God's requirements. He doesn't just start out with this new covenant. There was This old covenant and the way Hebrews is using it, it pretty much encapsulates the Mosaic covenant. I think that the way the New Testament uses it, you can also bring into that the Davidic covenant for certain. Well, I don't want to get too deep now. I'm already way past time. But he's using it synonymously for the covenant with Moses, primarily. And so this is not a different covenant of all the covenants. It's the way he's using it. God made this covenant with Israel when he led them out of Egypt, and had them stand before him at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20. A covenant, as you well know, requires two parties. God initiated the covenant, the people accepted it. Notice Exodus 24, verse three. Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules, and all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words that the Lord has spoken, we will do. Well, God would fulfill His part of the covenant. He would bring them into that land of promise. He would provide for them, fight their battles for them, enable them to be victorious. But unfortunately, the people continually failed as a nation to fulfill theirs. They refused to be obedient and would even transgress into unimaginable wickedness and idolatry. Remember that later, Israel and Judah would be separated during the reign of Rehoboam, when Jeroboam led the northern tribes to secede from the rule of Jerusalem and its kings. But you know the history of the northern kingdom, of the kingdom that took the name Israel. their disobedience and their idolatry became such a putrid thing to God. After many prophets, much warning, he had been taken in captivity by the Assyrians, 722-721 BC. and basically never heard from again because the Assyrians dispersed that captured people, as the Assyrians typically did, among other peoples, to quell any opportunity for rebellion. The southern kingdom, Judah, comprised of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin and some Israelites from the northern nation who had fled the Adonitry of the north. They were removed in three exiles, three movements, if you will, from Judah to Babylon. the late 7th century or the 6th century BC. Though the people of Judah returned a few decades later, the northern kingdom never did. Now, this prophecy that the writer of Hebrews is pointing to is a quotation from Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34. You say, well, what does Jeremiah 31 through 34 say? You can go back and look or you can read verses eight through 12 here, which we won't cover all of this this morning. We'll just kind of get into it and then explore it more deeply next week, I'm willing. But notice that the prophecy says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant, hence the name, new covenant, with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, which is really interesting, because the house of Israel is no more now. It was really no more when Jeremiah wrote these words, but we find as we study the New Testament, especially the Pauline epistles, that he is not talking about a literal people being reunified, but he is pointing to spiritual Israel, to the church, which is more than the northern and southern kingdom of the Jews, because even as Jesus, you might have picked up on it, the passage I read in John 10, as well as the prophetic books, you find over and over and over, especially Isaiah, about the bringing in of the Gentiles into the kingdom, Paul, brings this out in Galatians 3, 26 through 29. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God. That's a status that there is no second class citizen in God's kingdom. It doesn't matter what you are, you are all at the same status through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you're Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. Stand before God. There is no distinction. All who come to faith in Christ Jesus have the same status. And yet, the old covenant is insufficient. Notice verses eight and nine. He says, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern to them, declares the Lord. The old covenant stipulated that God would be Israel's king and they would be his people. He demanded their obedience just as any king would a people that he made a covenant with. And as a people, they were to reflect who God is. Now, Exodus 19, verse 6, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, a set-apart nation. These are the words that you, Moses, shall speak to the people of Israel. Deuteronomy 6, verse 5, the people are told, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, simply talking about your very being. to be submissive to God. The word love does not simply mean an emotional attachment in scripture. But the very word love carries with it the understanding of obedience. Obeying from the heart. But the covenant made at Sinai was not long-lasting, it was inadequate had to be replaced. Its purpose was to reveal the inability to satisfy God's holy commandments and to drive them to faith in the coming Messiah. This new covenant would be entirely different, not like the covenant that I made with the fathers. God did not replace the old covenant with the 2.0, an updated version A similar covenant, but better. Rather people replaced it with a different one. Now the old covenant itself was God's own covenant, so it was in itself not a failure, it had a purpose. Romans 7, 12, so the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. With the old covenant, both parties had to fulfill their responsibilities or the covenant would be broken. God fulfilled His. The people failed to fulfill theirs. The law set the standard and could only reveal the inability to meet that standard. It does not change the human heart. Hence, trying to do good enough for God to accept you. What about all those years where you didn't? That's a big debt. What do you do? The law only goes so far. We need it. We need that standard by which to judge right and wrong. We can't just go from our own heart, what my heart tells me. Jeremiah says the heart is deceptive, wicked. Who can trust it? Your heart will give you so trouble. Thomas Adams, 17th century, wrote this, where it's still applicable. For the law so humbles a man with the grief of sin and the terror of judgment that it sends him hacking to Christ. If any man sins, and the law tells us that we've all sinned, we have an advocate with the Father. And this the gospel shows us, even Christ, the propitiation, the satisfaction for our sins. 1 John 2, 1 and 2. It makes a man sing with David, sweet O Lord is Thy mercy, the law may express sin, but it cannot suppress sin. For that were to invade the office of the promise, the office of the law was to kill. The office of the promise is to give life. Thus we have in the gospel the promise of life. The Lord gave us faith to apprehend the life of the promise through Jesus Christ. So that's why John knew God, right? Amazing grace. How sweet the sound. Saved a wretch like me. It wasn't because he lived in himself and said, boy, I'm, according to the world's eyes, I'm so bad and so wicked. He didn't compare himself to the world, he compared himself with God. And when our comparison, when we get off about the standard, we'll get off about everything. fulfilled in Christ, initiated and installed by Christ. Jesus died on the cross as the perfect sacrifice, paying a debt of sin that he did not owe, that we might be gifted a righteousness that we could never earn. We may be tempted, as Christians have throughout history, to declare the law useless, to disdain the law. To the contrary, it's very useful. It drives us to see the vanity of our self-righteousness, to see the darkness of our sin. It points us to the righteousness that we need, a righteousness that is fulfilled in Christ, a righteousness of our loving Christ, applied to our account through believing in Him and His atoning Work on the cross, one of my favorite prepositional phrases in English. It's found in the epistles in Christ. In Christ. I don't stand, I can't stand before God in myself. My own works, my own intellect, my own ability. I stand in Christ. And so do you, if you want to be accepted by the Father. The Father always accepts the Son. And the Son's righteousness is accepted. That's what I see in the Bible. I encourage you. Study it and read it for yourself. Not some favorite tidbits of verses that make your heart feel good. But all of it. Every bit. Let's see what you see. Would you stand, please, for a prayer? Our Father, what hope do we have left to ourselves. The greatest judgment that you can place upon a human is to leave him or herself to themselves. Open our hearts. Open our eyes, our minds. to see Christ, and to see Him, to see in Him the love of God personified, made flesh. From Mary's conception to His death, His resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father, where he ever lives to make intercession for us. Praise thee to your name. We pray in Christ's name, amen. We close singing of this marvelous, infinite, virtuous grace, M78, grace greater than all ours. God is a slave that he cannot own. God's grace, grace that is greater than all. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that is greater than all. For those who can't stay, we invite you to stay for lunch with us. You may already have plants and that is perfectly fine.