Very bottom of the page, the Old Covenant never resolved the issue of sin and guilt because, quote, every priest stands daily at his service offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since, excuse me, he did this once for all when He offered up Himself. Now, if we would look there, that's from Hebrews 9, verses 25 to 28. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own. For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him. And I'm going to read a little further, and I'm going to come back, and we're going to look at Hebrews 9 in some depth. The New Testament worship is over against that of the Old Covenant, affirms a once-for-all time completed sacrifice. The Lord's Supper is not a re-sacrifice of Christ, but a memorial of His having entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. Through this means of grace, through the power of the Holy Spirit who lifts believers up to Christ, they have communion with the Body and Blood of Christ. The bread and wine remains bread and wine, The bread remains bread, and the wine remains wine, and the effect is on the believer, not on God. Now, let's think about this for a moment. If you think about what's stated there, you understand that when Jesus died on the cross, He fulfilled all of those things in the Old Testament, and it's a once-for-all sacrifice. What does that speak to with our friends who are Christians but with a certain belief regarding the Lord's Supper? Well, one, have you ever heard the word hocus pocus? There's a liquor store in Alexandria called Hocus Pocus. Do you know what hocus pocus, where it comes from? It comes from this expression. And I may misspell the ma'am there. But it's Hawk Est Corpus Ma'am. What does that mean? It means, this is my body in Latin. Now, in the Middle Ages, when the priest would say that expression, hoc est corpus meum, at that point something happened according to the doctrine of the medieval church. The bread ceased to be bread, and the wine ceased to be wine. They became the actual, literal, physical, chew with your teeth, swallow with your mouth, body and blood of Christ. Literal, actual, physical. And also, priests did not always have much literacy, but they had to memorize. And also, they were in a hurry. So if you say, Hacus corpus meum, It could sound like hocus pocus. So the expression hocus pocus came from somebody running through the Latin Mass and saying that expression, this is my body. And again, that's taken directly from the words of Jesus. But in the Latin Mass, which was still around when I was in high school, when the priest said those words, something magical happened. And that magical thing was, again, the bread's no longer bread, the wine's no longer wine. It's the literal, actual, physical body and blood of Christ. And what is the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist? It is a re-sacrifice of Christ. In other words, Christ is re-sacrificed and He is offered up to the Father again. So that's what Hebrews says. Hebrews says that this doesn't happen. He's saying that Christ only suffered once for all time. That's a very important truth. And it's interesting, by the way, if you ever go into a Catholic church, you will notice that there is a red or there's a candle burning inside a red piece of glass. What does that mean? It means that Jesus Christ is literally, physically in the church. What does that mean? It means that when people have eaten the bread, and traditionally not the cup, When they've eaten the bread, there's leftover wafers, and those leftover wafers are put into the tabernacle. It's called a tabernacle. So, as in the Old Testament where you have the tabernacle, and God dwelt in the tabernacle, so in a Catholic church, God literally, physically, actually, literally dwells, because they save over the bread. And so, the candle burning in red glass signifies that God is literally, physically present inside the tabernacle, where they lock up these things, because they don't want people taking it. I remember reading a book entitled, Malleus Maleficarum, which was written in the 1400s by two Dominican friars. It means literally hammer against witchcraft. And one of the things that the medieval church had to fight was that people who wanted to do witchcraft would try to find a way to steal the Eucharist because then they could do all kinds of magic tricks with it. So for example, The wafer is put on somebody's tongue and is designed in effect to melt, not to be put in somebody's hand. We're talking the old way. And so, because they didn't want somebody who was into black magic to take it, you know, act like they put it in their mouth, but not put it in their mouth. So anyhow, it's important to understand that the book of Hebrews teaches us very plainly that Christ has only been sacrificed one time, and His death was effective for all time. And it's just an important truth. Anybody have any comments or questions? And I'm not trying to attack the Catholic Church, but I'm simply saying that that is a significant difference. And anyhow... No, the Episcopal Church actually believes exactly what Presbyterians believe in terms of these things. I'm talking about the traditional Episcopal Church. I'm not talking about what happened in the 1800s in England with the Tractarian movement. The Tractarian movement was a kind of Anglo-Catholicism, and in the Tractarian movement, they began to move more and more in a Roman Catholic direction. And interestingly, some leaders of the Church of England actually moved over into becoming Roman Catholics, like Cardinal Newman. But there was the Tractarian movement. Interesting, in the Church of England, you had a movement towards Rome, on the one hand, and then within the evangelical party, you had a movement towards modernism. And yet, if you look at the 39 articles of religion, they are identical. for all practical purposes to the Westminster Confession of Faith on the core points. Now, of course, they have a different form of church government. It's government by bishops rather than government by elders, but on the core points, how we're saved, the power of the sacraments, baptism in the Lord's Supper, that there are only two sacraments, not seven, that that the Scriptures are the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament. They're also the Apocrypha. There is also the Apocrypha. But in the language of the 39 articles, these are not of binding force, but are read for an example of of manners and how people did things. So there's information in the Apocrypha that covers that time period between the end of the Old Testament and beginning of the New. The tortures that were inflicted on the Jewish people by the Greeks and whatnot. So if you look at the Church of England, historically what they believe and what Presbyterians historically believe are one and the same on the essentials of things. Kind of an interesting point. What about predestination? Yes, they believe that too. I thought so too. I had somebody tell me, they asked me what church I went to and I told them and they said, predestination. And there were Episcopalians, and I wanted to say, you need to go back and read your... Absolutely, Lynn. Episcopalians believe in predestination. And it's in the 39 Articles. The 39 Articles are really a beautiful statement of the Christian faith, not as thorough and complete as the Westminster Confession of Faith. And remember what you have there, give you a little snippet of history. Henry VIII felt he was cursed by God because he could not get a male heir. And so it wasn't lust that drove him, because as king of England he was free to practice his lusts any way he wanted to without anybody holding him in check. It was his desire for a male heir. And the reason is there had been great disturbance in England, the War of the Roses and whatnot, and so Henry wanted to make sure he had a male heir to succeed him. And he had ended up marrying his brother's widow, who happened to be Catherine of Aragon, and her nephew happened to be Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. Henry wanted to divorce his wife, saying that his conscience was bothering him, being married to his brother's widow, anyhow. So he sent a delegation to Rome, and they traveled in those days with their dogs. Horses, dogs, and whatnot, so they get an audience with the Pope. And when the Pope put his foot out for these Englishmen to kiss, guess what happened? One of those English dogs bit him on his toe. Now that wasn't the whole deal. What was, those Englishmen all laughed. That didn't go over well. And then the poor Pope has the pressure of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire saying, you're not going to treat my aunt this way and her children as illegitimate, which was the effect. So he wasn't granted the divorce and at that point the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, sides with Henry VIII. And so they come up with the 39 Articles of Religion. Then when Henry dies, his son succeeded him, and the 39 Articles are revised to 42 Articles of Religion. And so things that are somewhat vague in the 39 Articles, like on election and predestination, became extremely explicit So in other words, Episcopalians do believe in predestination, but it wasn't as glaringly spelled out as in the Confession of Faith. So anyhow, they went to 42 articles. And then when he died, his sister, who was Mary Tudor, who was Catherine of Aragon's daughter, She came to power, and her nickname, well, no, her nickname is the name of a famous drink that you can get in New Orleans. That's it, because she shed so much blood. And so, interestingly, they were tortured to death. The bishops and archbishops, and Cranmer at one point under torture, signed that he renounced his faith. and signed. And then his conscience ate him alive and so he renounced his renunciation. So he got burned at the stake. And as he is being burned at the stake, he held that right hand down into the fire and he said, let this guilty right hand burn first. Anyhow, so then Mary dies, and her half-sister, Elizabeth, becomes the queen. And Elizabeth was a very shrewd woman, and she realized that the Church of England needed to be in the model of the Eastern Orthodox Church in terms of church government, meaning that the head of state would be the head of the church. That's Eastern Orthodoxy. And so the Church of England adopted that model, the head of the church, And they went back to the 39 Articles. Now, troubles go on for some decades. When Elizabeth dies, she died without an heir. That's why Virginia is called Virginia, the state of Virginia, because she died as a virgin. And so, anyhow, there was pressure on King James, who was James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, to reform the church. That didn't happen. But they did come out with a King James Version to counter the Geneva Bible, which was an English translation with many of Calvin's and Knox's notes in it. And what happens then in the English Civil War, you end up with Parliament meets and they call together the theologians from Ireland and England and Scotland to come up with a revision of the 39 articles and they met in Westminster Abbey and the revision of the 39 articles to make it more explicit is what we call the Westminster Confession of Faith. So anyhow, Now you can all pass an exam because any elder or deacon elect needs to pass certain exams by the session. I don't test well. Yeah, there you go. Anyhow, I just want to, you know, I've focused in on this a good bit, but Episcopalians And Congregationalists, I'm talking about the New England Congregationalists and Presbyterians, all essentially think the same way in terms of the plan of salvation and of the sacraments. And so if you ask somebody, well what's the closest denomination of the Presbyterians? It's the Episcopalians. There's a difference in church government. And it's not just government by bishops, it's government by the head of the state, but not in the United States. I don't think most modern liberal Episcopalians would like Donald Trump as the head of the church. I should probably close in prayer on that note. We're down at the I'll just read this next paragraph at the bottom of the page. The bloody death of Jesus on the cross fulfills the tabernacle with its bloody animal sacrifices. And those are Hebrews chapter 9 and chapter 10, 1 to 22. The glorious temple of the new covenant is composed of the people of God whom the Holy Spirit indwells, each believer is a living stone in the edifice that the Lord Jesus is building. But now there is..." No, let me turn the page, page 95. heavy veil separating sinful man from a holy God. It is gone. It was ripped apart as the flesh of the Son of Man was ripped on the cross. I guess I'll read it just a moment more. Instead of a focus on outward beauty, magnificent special buildings covered with gold and silver, also speaks something there, with professional musicians and billows of incense, New Testament worship is profoundly simple and spiritual. The church in the New Testament is not a holy building, but a holy people. Believers themselves are the living stones comprising the temple of the new covenant. Incense is fulfilled in the prayers of all saints and the sweet aroma of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the Rubicon of redemptive history has been crossed. That's when Julius Caesar took his army across the Rubicon River and made himself dictator of Rome. The Rubicon of redemptive history has been crossed in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus who has secured full forgiveness of sins by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands." Oh my gracious, I just caught another typo. I thought I had corrected this so many times since I typed it back in 2010. Notice that I repeat that sentence. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in the question of food or drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. This is because these Old Testament ordinances are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness. For the law made nothing perfect, but on the other hand, a better hope is introduced through which we draw near to God.