Good morning. It's good to be with all of you this morning as we gather together. I am not Andy Rice, unfortunately, but we miss our brother dearly and we're praying for him as he's away. You see in your bulletin, the title of this sermon is A New and Greater Covenant. So we'll be looking at Hebrews 8 today. We won't go there yet. I want to do a little bit of an introduction first. When Andy first asked me to preach today, I thought the timing perfectly lined up with where we were with the young adult study on Thursday nights. We're just about finished up discussing the New Covenant, and so I wanted to bring that out to you all this morning. This is the culmination of our study on covenant theology. And as students of the Bible, this should be at the forefront of all of our minds throughout our pilgrimage on the earth. In Hebrews chapter 8, we see the writer there comparing and contrasting two covenants together. One of them is the old and one of them is the new. In our young adult study, we worked chronologically through the order that the covenants are presented in the scriptures. And so in the same way, by the time we got to the new covenant, we'd already seen the points of the old covenant in detail. It was similar for the original recipients of this letter to the Hebrews in that they were a Jewish or Hebrew audience. They were no doubt trained from a young age in the stories of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea and they went to the synagogue regularly to hear the law read from the scrolls. So the writer of this letter knew it would be impactful to compare and contrast the covenantal condition these Hebrews were familiar with in their own culture to the new covenantal condition they found themselves in as fairly recent converts. He needed to do this because the Hebrew converts were being persecuted for their refusal to continue living on like the Jews and maintaining the Jewish religious rights. They were a new people, a new creation and so they had new ways to live and so they needed instruction on how to live and what to do and who is this Christ? How does this all work? You have to remember they didn't have the benefit of all of the scriptures like we do. This was the first time they were hearing some of this instruction. But if you, now here in 2025, are a Christian today, you are also a member of the New Covenant, just as those Hebrews in the days of the Bible. You, like them, have heard the call to repent and believe the gospel, and have placed your faith in Jesus Christ for deliverance from your sins. This new covenant is the highest expression of the love and grace of God towards humans that there has ever been and that there ever will be. If you are in Christ today, you have absolutely nothing to fear in this life or the next. You have been blessed beyond measure by God, and as a result, enjoy blessings that even the angels long to look into and understand. Through faith in Christ, you have been transported out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light. It is my goal today to remind and inform you of those covenant blessings that are ours in Jesus Christ and encourage you to give thanks today and exhort you to share this good news with others as we leave this place. I hope to achieve this goal at first by asking four questions and answering those with the time we have during this hour. So our first question today is, what is a covenant? I have said covenant probably ten times already. I've been throwing it around. I think it's important that we define that first. A covenant is literally a guaranteed commitment. Biblically, we might say it's a divinely sanctioned commitment. A covenant is typically understood as two parties making commitments to one another. This can best be understood by swearing and answering. In the Noahic covenant that we covered last time I preached, God committed to humanity to never again destroy the earth with a flood, and humanity committed to trust God for this and serve him faithfully. So there are two types of covenants that we see in scripture, covenants of works and covenants of grace. Covenants of works function such that God commits to do something depending on what humans do. If humans do good, they will be blessed. If they do evil, they will be cursed. Covenants of grace function uniquely in that God commits to bless the human members independent of their actions. Grace is a free gift and it's the same in a covenantal context. The Noahic covenant was itself an example of a covenant of grace. God is not going to destroy the world again regardless of what humans do. He's going to preserve it. Now that we've seen what a covenant is, let's actually turn to our passage for this morning. So if you'll turn with me to Hebrews chapter eight, and we'll start reading there in verse six. But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as he is also mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them, he says, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when 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 when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. None of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. In that, he says, a new covenant. He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. So, that leads us then to our second question. We've seen what a covenant is. Now, what was that first covenant? We see that's how the writer here talks about the first covenant. He says, that first covenant. Broadly, this is the Kingdom of Israel. There were numerous covenants in the context of the Kingdom of Israel, but we don't have time to look at them individually today. So, suffice to say that first covenant refers to the covenant of works economy between God and men in Israel. if their priests made the right sacrifices, if the people loved God and abstained from sin, and if the king lived righteously, the nation would gain and keep the land of Canaan as an inheritance forever and God would bless them. If they failed to do these things, God would curse them at the individual and corporate level and banish them from the kingdom." So that's what that first covenant was. If I had maybe a series I could really go in depth on that but we don't have time today so just to summarize it, It's the kingdom of Israel and everything that pertains to that with Abraham, with Moses, with David and all the covenants and the outworkings of God in that context. That's the first covenant. So we see that the writer then says there was a fault with that first covenant. So that's the next and third question is what was the fault of that first covenant? We see it in verse nine, because they did not continue in my covenant. God is faithful to the uttermost. He never lies and he always does what is right. I say that to say I've heard many argue in many scenarios on the campus and online and other places that if God were truly loving, he would just forgive people and overlook their sins. Let me tell you something right now. This is exactly the kind of wicked justice that man contrives and is foreign to the God of the Bible. The wicked are those who wink at sin and who cry, peace, peace, where there is no peace. We must remember that our God is holy. He is righteous. He is above us. He's completely different from us. He can't overlook sin. That would be an affront to the justice that He is. So, our God is faithful to the other most, and that includes his faithfulness to punish evil, and in this case, fulfill his covenant promises to Israel. He warned them time and time again that if they did not heed the words of his covenant, they would be destroyed. He showed so much more forbearance and patience than you and I could ever be capable of, but at the end of the day, we arrive to the exact issue with this first covenant. It's a covenant of works. It's dependent on the actions of sinful man. Adam failed in the Garden of Eden, and every single man and woman since that point forward have proven that the desire of their hearts is wicked and sinful. There is no one good, no not one. None seek after God, none seek to please Him. We know this, as we've talked about before, not to mean that we are completely as wicked as we possibly could be at all times, but that we're not interested in pleasing God or serving Him in our human condition. Any covenant that is contingent on the thoughts or actions of humanity will always be broken by humans. This is not speculation. This is true of every single covenant of works in the scriptures. We cannot do it. This is what God wants us to learn. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, Nick, you said you were going to encourage us and exhort us, and I'm not feeling very encouraged by this message yet. I say, if you're looking to be encouraged in human ingenuity or human ability, I have nothing to offer you today. But if we're looking to be encouraged by God and his mercy, I have everything to offer you today. So then, our fourth question, what is different about the new covenant? Why is it so much better than the old? And why does the writer of Hebrew spend so much time exhorting and explaining and talking about it? Let's read again verses 10 through 12 in Hebrews 8 and see what we can extract here. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people. None of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother, saying, know the Lord, for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. Do you see the key operator here? I will. God is the one working in this new covenant. Not you, not me, but God. I will put the law in their hearts and minds. If you are a Christian, you love the law of God and you desire to keep it. You don't keep it perfectly, but when you find yourself failing to keep it, it hurts your heart and your mind until you repent and return again and are restored. This is because God himself has placed the law in you and is going to keep you there. I will be their God and they will be my people. This covenant is not impersonal. God himself promises to reveal himself and be near to us. He will not forsake us nor abandon us. All shall know me from the least of them to the greatest. Every member of this covenant knows God and has a relationship with him. No one can be a part of this covenant and yet not know God personally. Bonds of family do not suffice, nor appeals to information or knowledge. This is one reason why we do not baptize infants. David talked about the sprinkling this morning. I'm going to talk about another reason just by providence. This is one reason we don't baptize infants. A personal relationship with God is required and is promised by God. If you do not have a personal relationship with God, you are by definition not a member of the new covenant. There's no benefit to you for baptism or for communion or any of the other means of grace until you have been added to the kingdom. I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. Perhaps the gears of your mind are turning at this point because Nick you said that God will not overlook sin or wink at it. So how will he be merciful to their unrighteousness. Well. I say, wow, thank you for that fantastic question. The answer to this is alluded to back in verse six. But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry inasmuch as he is also mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. He, being Jesus, the Christ, has obtained this ministry and is the mediator between God and man of this new covenant. God no longer holds our sins against us, not by overlooking them, but by punishing Jesus Christ in our place for them. Christ obtained this ministry by humbling himself to be found in the form of man and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. All of the blessings of the new covenant for sinners like you and me are secured by the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, by his incarnation, his life, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension. He has done it all. Isaiah 53 5 says, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed. I want to briefly read a passage from 1 John 2 that helps us understand the New Covenant better. I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His namesake. I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one. I write to you, little children, because you have known the Father. I have written to you fathers because you have known him who is from the beginning. I have written to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the wicked one. That's verses 12 through 14, I didn't say that. John here treats the New Covenant Church as a family born from heaven, some of which are newborn Christians or little children, some are growing in the faith or young men, and some of which have spent years in the Lord, referred to as fathers. Despite the varying levels of growth and maturity, they all have the anointing of the Lord and they all have knowledge. This is true because in the New Covenant, as I said earlier, all will know the Lord from the least to the greatest. This is important, I like little word things like this. There are variations of quantity of knowledge, but not quality of knowledge. Everyone knows the Lord. The Old Covenant was vastly different. Seeing the fruit of the Spirit was an exception, not the rule. This is because the Old Covenant did not grant the new birth in and of itself, and it offered no help for obedience therein. The blessings of regeneration, which we'll talk about later, highlight the complete freeness of the new covenant. Sinful mankind is justified by faith in Christ as offered in the new covenant, but mankind does not have saving faith in his nature. Man's mind and will are corrupt, delighting in sin and suppressing the truth. The fact that God causes the people of the covenant to believe has led some to describe the new covenant as unconditional. This can be an unhelpful way of speaking, although true. The new covenant, again a little word thing for you here to chew on, the new covenant has conditions of connection, but not conditions of merit. In other words, God has ordained that the way to obtain the promised good of this covenant is through faith. There is a necessary connection in sequence. Faith unlocks the treasure chest of forgiveness. But faith is not a condition of merit. It is not something that earns or accrues anything. It is simply the outstretched hand of a helpless sinner. It is a necessary condition in connection, but not a condition of merit or reward. If that didn't feel like plain English, let me try again. You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary. God has done all the work for you. The faith that you first believe the gospel with is itself a gift from God, is what Ephesians 2 says. The old covenant was the exact opposite of this. You had to be circumcised. You had to follow the law. You had to do everything right to stay in the covenant kingdom. To this point, we've seen the blessings listed here in Hebrews 8 of the New Covenant, and they're already wonderful, but I want us to see some other blessings that may be considered the most critical of the New Covenant. There are seven doctrines we must cover with this topic. These are a lot of big words, but I'm going to try and go through each one. slowly and hopefully we'll all cover them and not leave more confused than we started. Justification, regeneration, sanctification, adoption, preservation, resurrection, and glorification. Every one of these doctrines could have a full series devoted to it in and of itself, but it's my purpose today to remind you of these truths and identify them so that we'll see the true nature of the New Covenant blessings in Christ. So we'll start with justification. What does justification mean? If you weren't here, I think, last Wednesday, Andy spent the bulk of his time explaining this in great detail, and I'll join, I know David's done this in the past, I'll join him at this point in exhorting you, if you're able, to please join us on Wednesday nights, because Andy delivers wonderful messages to us, and our time of prayer is just so encouraging together, so I can't recommend it enough that if you're able to come and join us as we lift up our voices together in prayer. But, what is justification? If you weren't here, let me explain it now. It is a legal declaration of righteousness for the one concerned. If you are justified, you're not given actual righteousness at this point, but the righteousness of Christ's life is credited to you legally before God as if it were your own. So it's a legal declaration of righteousness before God. This is done one time when you're saved, and it's a permanent declaration. You are truly and genuinely clothed in the robes of Christ's righteousness. This forgiveness of sins permanently and fully, as opposed to only temporarily relating to the lands and laws of Canaan in the Old Covenant, is one of the chief blessings of the New Covenant. And this alone already makes it far greater than the Old Covenant. But, we see this argument in Hebrews chapter 10 in verses 1-4 if you want to follow along. For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of these things, can never, with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then, would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. David Schiller talked about this this morning when he was speaking of talking to modern Jews and how they appeal to either they just don't really know or it's just symbolic now. That's not the way that the author of Hebrews argues. He argues if these sacrifices that were offered were effective, then they should have continued to be offered if there was no new covenant. That you can't just symbolize them without- there's nothing from God that says that. That's something that humans have made up to make themselves feel better. But that's not biblical. We see the exact opposite stated here. So, that's justification. It's the legal declaration of righteousness from God towards sinners. That's absolutely critical and that's foundational. That's why that's number one. But number two is regeneration. The corruption and pollution of man's nature, inflicted at first by Adam's sin, was untouched by the covenants of Israel. But this new covenant does a definitive work of renewal, followed by an ongoing work of renovation in the hearts of each of God's people. These two blessings are regeneration and sanctification. Jesus himself said in the incarnation, most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. That from John 3, 3. We saw this in our primary passage for today from the quotation of Jeremiah, the law is now written in your heart and mind by God and you are alive to him. Regeneration is making a sinful person into a new creation. It's God removing our hearts of stone and replacing them with the heart of flesh, malleable and alive to God. The new covenant is better, not only because it promises lasting, perfect, heavenly forgiveness rendered through obedience outside of and apart from the one receiving it, justification, we're credited the righteousness of Christ. Not only that, but because we are promised an inward work of renewal for the people of God. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. That was 2 Corinthians 5.17. This blessed release flows through the whole of a person, both mind and will are changed. And have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him, Colossians 3.10. We see there your mind is changed, you're renewed in knowledge, you have new knowledge, you have new information that makes you think differently, you will live differently. But not only your mind is changed, your will. In Romans 6, Paul says, We see there that not only do you gain knowledge, which anyone can gain knowledge, that in and of itself isn't enough. Your will has changed. You were a slave of sin. Now you're a slave of righteousness, in a way of speaking, that you are now from the heart desiring to obey. Like I said earlier, if you're a Christian, you're not going to perfectly obey, but you're going to strive to. And when you fail, you're going to feel it. You're going to want to return to God and repent and be restored again. This regeneration of the whole man was not a feature of any past covenants. The people of the old covenant were, as a general rule, hard-headed, stiff-necked, and wicked. The people of the new covenant have had their wills changed, so they now desire to follow and obey God, and their minds changed, so they're taught by God himself and begin to think like him and act like him." So we've seen justification, we've seen regeneration, now let's look at sanctification, our next blessing. If regeneration is the birth of a new person, sanctification is the growing of that person. By feeding on the word, praying to God, fellowshipping with the church, and making use of the means of grace, such as baptism and the Lord's Supper, God is making you more and more into the image of Christ day by day. But now, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life, Romans 6. You do not feel your justification, but you surely do feel your sanctification. God has promised it and will surely perform it, but he performs this by your obedience to his law and your meditation on his truths. God uses the ordinary means he's provided us with to grow us. You will not experience sanctification as you ought if you neglect the means that God has provided. Your physical body will not grow if you don't feed it. It's the same with your spiritual life. So at this point we've seen justification, regeneration, sanctification. Next up is adoption. 1 John 3.1 says, Romans 8 15 says, For you have not received the spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father. One of the key benefits of divine paternity or adoption is the discipline and chastening of sonship. Turn with me at this point to Hebrews chapter 12 because I don't, we can't miss this at this point. This is a critical consideration. Hebrews chapter 12, we'll start in verse three. For consider him, that is Jesus, who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not yet resisted the bloodshed, striving against sin. and you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as sons. My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening seems to be present, Sorry, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. The Lord chastens those whom he loves. If one is not chastened, the author argues, therefore God is not their father. This discipline is what preserves God's people. God removes the idols of his people's hearts and little by little weans them off the world, preparing them for heaven. You have to remember that we, with our human fathers, I'm sure not everyone here has had an amazing father that did everything right and that they wanted them to do, especially in regards to discipline. God our Father is not like that. He disciplines us out of love to make us better, to grow us, not out of anger or out of hatred or flying off the handle or this kind of thing. That's not how God the Father is. So when we're disciplined by God, it is always for our good. It is always to draw us back. I heard this analogy one time and I appreciated it that in hockey if players fly off the handle and they start fighting they get put in the penalty box. And so it's this idea that when you mess up you go put in the penalty box and you spend X amount of time in there depending on if you knocked a tooth out or how bad you messed somebody up and then you get to come out and play again later. This is not how God wants us to operate. This is how Satan wants us to operate. If when you sin, your first instinct is to hide, you're doing the same thing that Adam and Eve did in the garden when they first rebelled against God. That's not what God our Father wants us to do as members of the new covenant. When He disciplines us, when we feel the weight of our sins, and we're Christians, we should always, always run to Him, immediately run back to Him, repent, be restored. Don't try and flog yourself like a monk in a temple in the first thousand years of A.D. It's not, you can't punish yourself for it. Christ has already paid for all of your sins, so what are you contributing? It's nothing. It's a mockery. You must return to Christ and be restored. And He will receive you. He promises. His mercies are new every morning. So, that's adoption. Moving on to our fifth point, preservation. If, in the new covenant, God is the one who changes his people's hearts and causes them to walk in his ways, then they will certainly be preserved. God promised in Jeremiah 32, 40, I will make with them an everlasting covenant that I will not turn away from doing good to them, and I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me. God's discipline of his children, therefore, is not condemnation, but chastisement. It does not push away, but draws in and preserves. This is very different from the old covenant, which itself exiled the unfaithful totally. The everlasting covenant includes the promise of preservation and perseverance. When you feel fear and terror in your heart over sin, it is the discipline of God. As we talked about before, you need to respond appropriately and run to him. So preservation, this is the key point. In the old covenant there was no promise of preservation. It was a covenant of works. You were responsible for keeping yourself a member of the covenant. The new covenant doesn't operate this way. God has you in his hand is the illustration that he gives us. You're in his hand and you can't pry yourself out and nobody else can pry you out. God is of infinite strength. He will not lose one that has been given to him. Okay, so we've seen the first five. Now resurrection and glorification we'll look at together as a unit, because it's kind of hard to separate those meaningfully. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible is put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. First Corinthians 15. Jesus declared that his mission, the will of the Father, was to gather up a people to be raised up on the last day, Death, therefore, does not lead to a curse for the child of God. It is a release and a homecoming. Death's sting has no venom, the law lays no claim, sin has no power, and Satan cannot but watch as he is bound and his captives are plundered. This is indeed good news. And this is the message of the gospel. And these seven points that we've looked at at this point, we've seen a number, I'm sure there are many even other blessings of the new covenant. But from Hebrews 8 and from these seven, I believe we've seen what are the primary blessings of the new covenant. So let me kind of summarize. The New Covenant is God the Father covenanting the sinners forgiveness of sins and eternal life based on faith in God the Son, through whom they receive all the benefits. The eternal life that Jesus obtained when he kept the covenant of redemption is offered to the world in Christ by the Father. The Old Covenant longed for faithfulness. It longed for someone to fulfill it and keep it. The New Covenant is a covenant already kept, already completed, and now delivered. The New Covenant is not like the Old Covenant that Israel broke. The New Covenant is a covenant of works already kept and mediated in Christ to an elect people. Its blessings are freely and fully bestowed upon its people without any merit or work on their part. The guaranteed fulfillment of the delivery of these blessings rests solely on the promisor, God. The blessings have been definitively obtained and they are definitively distributed. Even the faith required to enter this covenant is a gift from God, as we mentioned earlier from Ephesians 2. The New Covenant is a covenant of grace. I've said that like five times now because I want you to understand this point of how different it is from the Old Covenant. If you read through Hebrews, you'll see that it's like one chapter of some new information, and then another chapter about how Christ is a better high priest, and then a chapter of new information, and then another chapter about how Christ has fulfilled everything that was promised in the Old Testament. It's this back and forth of When he's writing to the Hebrew believers there, everything I'm telling you is all found and promised in yes and amen in Jesus Christ who has fulfilled all of these things. That's the critical thing. It unfailingly and infallibly blesses all of its children. They all know the Lord. They all enjoy forgiveness of sins. The certainty of this covenant rests on the covenant of redemption. Now I've said that a couple times now, I haven't really talked about the covenant of redemption. That would definitely require its own lesson, but at this point I'll say it. The covenant of redemption, chronologically in terms of covenants, comes before even the covenant with Adam of works in the garden. It is, simply put, it's the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in eternity past, covenanting together to redeem out of the world a people for his namesake. So it's, if you read Isaiah and you read the servant songs there, you'll see the Father is saying what He's going to do, what the mission the Son has is. You see the Son talking about how He's going to fulfill it, how He's going to do all these things. You see the Father promising to send the Spirit to help the Son in His mission. This is the covenant of redemption. We don't think of it maybe as a covenant because it's not with people, but this is a covenant within the Trinity. And so it is as guaranteed as the members of the Trinity are themselves. So when I say the certainty of this covenant rests on the covenant of redemption, what did Christ come into the world to do? He came to redeem out of the world a people for his namesake. This is the covenant of redemption, and he completed it perfectly, amazingly, in every way. So the covenant of grace, the new covenant that we experience, is the reward of that covenant of redemption. Saying it plainly, Christ did all the work, he fulfilled the covenant, he lived the perfect life, he died the death that we could not, he was resurrected, raised to the right hand of the Father, and his reward from the Father for all these things is his people that he died to redeem on the cross. Us, and all around the world, those from since time began to now, those that have placed their faith in God through Christ. have been redeemed and set apart. It is sure. It is a done thing. It is contingent on Christ himself who cannot fail. The priesthood of Christ rests on the oath the father swore to the son. The oaths have been sworn by God himself. He who promised is faithful. We rest and rejoice in his faithfulness. I discovered this quote from a man named Henry Lawrence, who was an author in England in the 1600s. He said this about the new covenant. The great benefit of this new covenant, in opposition to the old, lies in this, that in this new covenant, God does not only propound the terms, but engages himself to perform the conditions. Whereas the old covenant set before you life and death, good and evil, but engaged you to the performance of the good without assistance. The law itself was external to you. You had no assistance. You were seeking to do the thing, to put it simply. In the new covenant, the law is within. It is written on your very heart by God. He has sealed you. He is keeping you. The spirit himself dwells within you. You have assurance, something you didn't have in the old covenant. It was up to you. This is a better covenant in every way. Let me close with this thought in addition. The new covenant of grace was always God's plan from the beginning. You heard me just talk about the covenant of redemption, but let me apply it now to the new covenant. The kingdom of Israel is a type of the church. Verse 13 in Hebrews 8 is clear that the covenant with Israel was obsolete, growing old, and ready to vanish. It's funny how, again, people even know this without really even knowing anything about scripture. As David said, when you talk to Jews, and I've had the same experience, and you ask them, well, the temple's gone. Where are you sacrificing? How is God pleased with you? What are you doing to keep up all your commitments before God? It's been destroyed. That wasn't an accident. This was God's plan. Christ has come. He has sacrificed once for all for everyone who would believe in him. There is no need anymore. As the author argued in Hebrews 10, the blood of bulls and goats is of no value to anyone. It was always meant to be a shadow. a representation of what was going to come. Well, Christ has come. There's no need for these things anymore. They're done away with. Even if people rebuild these things, well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me get back on track. That was a rabbit hole with maybe no rabbit at the end. Okay, where was I? Alright, the excerpt that we read in Hebrews 8 is actually an excerpt pulling from Jeremiah, from the prophet Jeremiah. And we see there what he's quoting is that the Lord, even all the way back then, was revealing this new covenant to his people. He was telling them, even then, through the prophet, that there was going to come a new and greater covenant. They weren't meant to put all their eggs in this basket of Canaan and this land. They were meant to look with their spiritual eyes, to look beyond these things, the physical around them, to see that God was going to send one who would save them and redeem them and be their help. The Old Covenant was meant to be a teacher and an example, mainly a negative example, but you see people failing and falling all throughout the Old Testament. That's meant to teach us something. It's meant to show us that humans cannot do it. Why do I say these things? Because there are many today, influenced by modern dispensational thought, that are seeking for Israel and the Temple to be rebuilt. This is like a dog returning to its vomit. It's foolishness. All of the promises of God are yes and amen in His Son, Jesus Christ. There is no hope in the Old Covenant. No one could keep it, and even if they could, the benefits of the New Covenant are so far greater. Romans 11 expresses that some sort of restoration is gonna occur for some portion of national Israel. And we should praise God for his mercy in that. But I can promise you that this will not look like rebuilding the temple and returning again to the ritualistic ways of the old covenant. Anyone throughout human history who has believed in God and received him by faith is a true saint, a member of the new covenant, or you could say a member of true Israel. This includes Jews in the days of Moses. This includes the Ninevites who repented at the preaching of Jonah. This includes all men everywhere throughout time who will be praising the Lord with us in glorification throughout eternity. Our message to anyone we meet today, self-proclaimed Jews, anybody from any walk of life, should be the same. Turn to Christ and live. Stop worshiping idols clinging to shadows of things of the past. Kiss the sun lest you perish. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for the truths that you've revealed to us in the scriptures. We thank you that we have your word recorded and accessible, that we can read it and glean truths from it about your new covenant, about who you are and what you've done for us. Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you for his life and death and resurrection and ascension on our behalf, that we can enjoy all the blessings of this new covenant. Lord, we ask that you would apply these truths to our hearts, that you would be with each of us as we go out from this place, that you would help us to live in light of these things, to serve you, to love you, but not in a place of trying to earn merit, Lord, but out of thanksgiving for what you've done. Lord, if there are those here who do not know you, I ask that you would use this message, use David Scholarly's message and the fellowship and conversations to follow, to work in their hearts, Lord, to renew them, to give them the gift of faith, Lord, that they would be justified and regenerated and sanctified, adopted, preserved, and Lord, one day resurrected and glorified with all of those who are in the new covenant. We give you thanks and praise for all your work, and it's in Christ's name that we pray and ask, amen.