We turn together now in the scriptures to the New Testament, and you can find the passage that we read together, from which also our sermon text is taken. You can find it in Hebrews 8, which is actually an exposition of Psalm 110, the psalm we just sang together. It's an exposition of Psalm 110, and both also together with Psalm 2. And one of the things that Psalm 110 says that is that Jesus Christ is a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. And that's what we just sang together. And that's where the chapter actually picks up as well. So let's read together God's word and give it our undivided attention as we prayerfully listen to hear what the Lord has to say to us. Now the point of what we are saying is this, all the preceding chapters, this is the point. We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man, For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now, if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old, as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises. 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, behold, 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. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. 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 into 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 his brother saying, know the Lord. For they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. Dear congregation, tonight I would like to focus with you on the glorious riches of the New Covenant, as we can find it in the chapter that we just read together. Our text is Hebrews 8, verse 6. I read it with you for a moment. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent that then the old as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises. So what do we hear in this verse? We hear that Jesus is a mediator, a go-between of a better covenant. And so we are first going to look at the contrast to those two covenants that are contrasted in this passage. And that's our first thought, a better covenant. And then we want to look and zoom in on the glorious promises of that new covenant. And they are glorious. So let's pray that these would minister to our souls as we think about these things. So let's go back for a moment in our minds and hearts to Exodus when God has just given the law. Look, there is Moses. He's slowly, as it were, coming down from the mountain. And boys and girls, what is he carrying? He is carrying the law of two tables of the law. And they are, think about it, they are written with God's own finger. Moses has been with God on that mountain, but now God at a certain moment has sent him back, and he's there with Joshua. Probably he met him somewhere on the way down. And as they come closer, what do they hear? They hear a certain noise, and Joshua thinks it's the noise of war. But Moses knows, no, it's something much worse than war. In a certain type, in a certain way, it is war. And as they come closer, he sees it. The people are dancing and feasting around a golden calf. And they are having the time of their life. And someone has been telling them that they, by worshiping this golden calf, can worship the Lord. And they believe it. But it is a lie. And in holy and righteous anger, Moses approaching that foot of the mountain, overlooking this idolatry and this feasting, throws those two tables of stone on the ground, and there you see them lie in your mind. It's all in shambles. It's actually just a visible sermon of what the people were just doing. What just happened? God had said, serve no other gods. Don't make an image of me. Serve me alone. They had heard it. And now they had dishonored him, and they had not listened to him, and they had broken God's holy law. And there they are, children. There's this glistening golden calf in the hot desert sun. It's all reflecting. It's probably beautiful to see, but it is something that declares war on a holy god who wants his people only for himself. Not too long ago, when they had just received the law, and they heard explanations of that law, they said to God, all that the Lord has spoken, and they said to Moses, we will do. And they promised it, and they were sincere. But what came of those promises? Not much. And it wasn't that God hadn't blessed them or cared for them. No, that was not the issue. No, that's not what it is. God had actually showered them with blessings and care. And in Hebrews 8, verse 9, it tells us that God made a covenant with them. What he did, he led them out of Egypt, a house of bondage, a house of slavery, a picture of sin, he leads them out of the land of Egypt, and literally it says in our text that he, as it were, grabbed them by their hands and pulled them out of this house of bondage. And when you look at Jeremiah 30, 31, which is quoted in this chapter clearly, the idea here is that God actually made a covenant, and it was the idea, the picture of a marriage. God married His people, and He made promises to them, and they married Him. They became one. And they gave their promises. And God firmly takes them by the hand, and promises to care for them, and promises to love them, and promises Himself to them. And He shows His mercy. And He comes down to them, close to them. He shows them kindness, outward deliverances. But verse 7 and 8 tells us that God found fault with His people. It wasn't God's lack of care. No, absolutely not. It wasn't the problem of the covenant either. The covenant was good in and of itself. The problem lies deeper. It's the problem that you and I have by nature, all of us, a hard problem, so much so that these people were taken with power out of Egypt, led out of Egypt, but the problem was Egypt was still in the hearts. Years later, Jeremiah would speak about this as well, and he found himself in similar circumstances as Moses. We heard about it this morning. Things had certainly not improved since the days of Moses, and things had gotten worse, and Jeremiah, whom we know as the weeping prophet, He warned the people over and over, God's judgment is coming. If you don't obey him, if you don't keep his covenant, he will wipe you off the land if you continue to serve your idols. But the people didn't listen. And so he wrote in chapter 17, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, or sinful, or sick. And who can know it? Who can understand the depth of depravity in the human heart ever since the fall? Who can? God does. And he speaks then to people, Jeremiah, calling them back to honor God in their hearts. But they had set up idols in their hearts. And they clung to them in love and didn't want to get rid of them. Jeremiah asks in Jeremiah 13 verse 23, can an Ethiopian change his skin or lap at his spots? Only then you may also do good who are accustomed to do evil. It's a picture of something that cannot be changed. And so it is with evil, when that is in our heart, when it is taken root in our hearts. Something really radical needs to happen to change us, change the heart of God's covenant people. And so in Jeremiah's day, the Lord punished them, as we saw this morning, by sending them to Babylon. And you see, the point is with all this, we can have all these privileges, we can have all these blessings, and we can call ourselves blessed, but we are not really blessed when something is an idol in our hearts. And idols have a... a way of doing things in our heart to blind us for everything else. For the goodness of God, idols have a way in our hearts so that we don't even realize how they are deceitful. They deceive us. We don't see it by nature, but unless God uncovers it with His Holy Spirit, then we start to see what's in our heart. Pride, self-pity, gossip, a love of money, or love of pleasure, love of the world, love of ease, or whatever sin besets us. Too often what we do in church circles, it's very easy, it comes very natural to all of us, is we compare ourselves with others. We look, okay, they are doing that, I can do this. If they are doing that, oh, then I should be okay. But when we look in the law of the Lord, we come away different. We realize we stand before a holy God. who sees our hearts, who sees the secrets within, who deals with those secrets, and wants to expose those secrets so that your heart, my heart, can be healed. But God's people in the days of Jeremiah, in the days of Moses, Jeremiah's days especially, they finally ended up in Babylonian Egypt. And many never returned to the promised land. And they began so good. It was so promising. And we see that in verse 9, don't we? They did not continue in God's covenant. So they started somewhere. So he showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. You know what it is, what it was? The problem, the deepest problem was that they had no power to continue to be faithful to God, and no power to conquer sin and to keep God's laws in their own strength, and no power to conquer temptation and the evil of their hearts. And so God had to say about that generation, I showed no concern for them. Which means, basically, that God is saying, I turned away from them, and they had to fend for themselves. If God would come to us tonight and say, you love your idols so much. You've broken my covenant. Now, you look out for yourselves. What would become of you and me? Where would you and I end up if there would be no grace? We would end up in hell, won't we? It's a serious reality. That's where you and I would go. But this broken covenant and this terrible sin, this dark, dark backdrop, is the backdrop in which God presents a better covenant, a new covenant. God knew that about his people. God knows that about you and me, that we can't keep the law, that we are lawbreakers. God knows that about you and me, that by nature, we are perfectly fine with just some outward blessings and with our sins. And God knows that, that you and I, by nature, we need a far more drastical change than we can ever work up in ourselves. And he made provision for that. That's the glory of the gospel. He anticipated that. And so that's what we read in Jeremiah 31, before any sign of Jesus coming was there, before Jesus ever walked on the earth in his human flesh. God knows how to get to change someone deeply within, to take away the spots of a leopard and make them different so that we change at the heart level and the worship level. Now, if you want to know this evening, and I want to know what's in our hearts, just think with me for a moment. How do you find out where there are idols in your and my heart? How do we find that out? How can we know? It often is telling how we spend our money. What kind of sacrifices we want to make for them. You can also know where your idols are by how you respond to certain situations. What is it that makes you angry, irritated, frustrated? Then you need to dig a little deeper and say, what do I really want here? And what is it that makes you and me just so happy that you want to skip around? For joy! Jump for joy! What is it? Is it the things of God or is it something else? God knows you're in my heart. He sees it. And God had a plan. He doesn't want us to just give words to Him. He says, no, I want your heart. I want your heart allegiance. I want you completely with everything in you. I'm a jealous God. I will garden this marriage. That's what it means. It's a good thing. And so he comes with glorious new covenant promises to people. Who are these people? They are people just like us. We don't deserve a thing of it. We are by nature, the way God finds us, deeply idolatrous. We have a worship problem. The things of God generally, naturally don't stir us. And so, you see, he wants to make this new start a better start with a better covenant, because we are just like those people dancing around that idol calf in the past, just as what happened there in the valley in the days of Moses. And so that's the glory of this new covenant. That's the backdrop of this new covenant. He says in verse 8 of our text, Behold, 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. A new covenant, instead of that broken covenant. Instead of all our trying, and instead of all our going astray. And the covenant that was transgressed with all our sins, God says, I've got a better plan. I have a new covenant. What does that mean? A covenant is, just as a merit, it's an arrangement, a contract, we could say, between two parties with promises and responsibilities. And God says, now I have something better. I have a new covenant. And the word that is used here in the Greek is not necessarily brand new, as if never anything before that had been like it. The word that is used here is a different word in the Greek, and it means it's similar, but it has a better quality to it. It's a better covenant. So we have had all those covenants in Abraham and Noah and Moses and David. And this one is better. And who comes with this covenant? Whose plan is it? It's God's plan. Verse eight. He initiates it. He says, I will establish it. And this word establish is a very interesting word in the Greek also. It means concluded. This is the high point. This is how it comes all together. This is how it consummates. This is the final covenant. the glorious covenant, the better covenant with real power, real power to change people and change hearts as we hope to see in a minute. And the beauty of this covenant is that God initiates it and says, I will do it. Just look at these verses for a moment. Verse eight, I will establish. Verse 10, I will make. I will put. I will be. And verse 12, I will be merciful. I will remember no more. You see, it's all coming from God. He promises to do it all. It's a one-sided covenant in which God acts in glorious and majestic ways. It is such a temptation, is it not, for us to be busy to somehow do something to impress God or others, and thinking that that's the way of the covenant. No, it's not. That's not how we can be blessed. You and I need to learn to look to the promises and begin to trust them by the power of the Holy Spirit. Receive what you freely have been given and offered in the gospel. Yield. Yield. Surrender. surrender to Him, trust Him, trust His promises, trust His better covenant, this climactical covenant. And He works that in us. Then He works in us both the willing and the doing according to His good pleasure. As we depend on Him, as we receive from Him, as we abide in Him. And what glorious promises there are, which are given to us. And these promises are, yes and amen, how? Through the mediator of the new covenant, Jesus Christ, the mediator, the go-between. Holy God, I can stand before him. I am a filthy sinner. But now here is Jesus who stands in the middle and brings these parties together. the mediator of the new covenant. He has a more excellent ministry as we see from this chapter, as we see from our text. Where is his ministry? It's not just on earth, like the earthly priests in the Old Testament. No, it's a ministry he does in heaven. How does he do that? He pours out his Holy Spirit upon his people. He has promised. And it brings us to our second thought here, better promises. Go back once more to those mountains and look at those broken tables of the law. Those tables of the law that are just in shambles, all in pieces. Unfortunately, at that time, many hearts of the people were not broken like those pieces. They were still hard, they were still unchanged. Maybe there was a little bit of shock, like, what is Moses doing? Perhaps they mourned for some time, but their hearts were not really changed. And so Moses has to go back up to the mountain. And he is that mediator who then speaks on behalf of God's people to God and pleads his gracious character. Lord, please forgive these people. He pleads for a sinful, filled, hardened and stiff-necked people. And remember what he said. Do you remember? When he was up the mountain, what he said was, Lord, please blot me out of your book. In other words, put the guilt on me. You know what God's answer was? No. That's not possible. Why? Because there is someone greater than Moses, a greater mediator than Moses, who was the mediator of the Old Testament or the Old Covenant, and someone who would do what Moses couldn't do. He would offer himself up, and he would allow himself to be blotted out of the book. He would go up the mountain, heaven itself, to be in God's presence, to plead for his people, to make intercession for them, to pray for them, to plead the blood that he had just sacrificed. You can learn about that in the preceding chapters. And you know His name, don't you? His name is our precious Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He came to fulfill in the lives of the people what you and I can never do for ourselves. The new covenant promises. He is that mediator of the better covenant and that glorious, what glorious promises He has given to His people. And those promises are going to be fulfilled. I read them to you, right? I will, I will, I will. And when you flip back to Jeremiah 31, you would see actually in the Hebrew, there would be seven promises that say, I will, I will, I will. Seven is a full number in the Bible. It's a complete number. So God is fully set on fulfilling those promises. And how does he fulfill them? By sending Jesus to heaven and pouring out his spirit upon his people. And that's going to make the difference in the new covenant. So let's look at the promises that he gives. They are glorious. The first promise is that they would have better hearts. Better hearts. Look at verse 10a. 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 into their minds and write them in their hearts. Remember, God had put his finger into the stone and he had written those laws upon the tables of stone, but they were broken. Now God says, I have a better idea. a glorious idea. I will write with my own finger upon the hearts of people and write the law upon their hearts. And not just the hearts, but it starts in the mind. It says here, I will put my laws into their minds, engraven them, as it were, and write them upon their heart. Our minds are our thoughts and our feelings and our hearts that goes deeper, that goes all the way. It includes our minds, but it means our will, our desires, our emotions, our conscience, our understanding what is good and what is pleasing and what's not pleasing to God. All that. He promises to change all these things for us in the new covenant. Just as we read from Ezekiel. A new heart will I give you. A new spirit will I give you. I will take away the stony heart and I will give you a heart of flesh. I will sprinkle clean water upon you. I will cause you to walk in my ways. That's all these promises again. Same promises. That's what God promises in the new covenant. So let's ask ourselves this question. Has he done so for you? Is he writing the law of God upon your heart so that you can do it with desire? You want to serve the Lord with all your heart and you mourn when you don't. You are sad because you have sinned against God. Is he doing that? That's how he fulfills the new covenant in our lives. That's what he does. And he prays for us from heaven, and he does that work in our heart. But maybe there's someone who's saying here tonight, but Pastor Peter, I so often come across more hardness, more sin. I feel that I need to pray this all over again at times. Lord, please give me a new heart. But when I see those sins in my heart, you know, that's actually God's way. He shows us our emptiness so that He can fill us. He shows us the wickedness of our hearts so that we would thirst and desire to be changed truly, deeply, transformatively. And so that we would desire the power of these promises to be found in our lives. The promises of the New Covenant. You see, that actually shows that you no longer have a stony heart. A stony heart sins and says, well, whatever. But when you have a broken heart, you want to please the Lord. And therefore, I want to encourage you and say to you tonight, like, take this promise. Take this promise and plead it. Plead it. Lord, write the law upon my heart. Lord, make me as obedient as a saved sinner can be. Just as once you wrote those laws upon a table of stone, but now write them upon my heart, upon my mind, upon my conscience, upon my will, upon my emotions. Write them and engrave them. Engrave them. Edge them upon me. So that everything is changed according to your promise. Jesus is the mediator of a better covenant and better sanctuary, we read in these chapters as well. And Andrew Murray put it like this. He said, a heavenly sanctuary, where Jesus is right now, at the right hand of God the Father, a heavenly sanctuary and a heavenly high priest, Jesus, asks for what? A heavenly Christian and a heavenly heart. And this is what is promised in the New Covenant. And this is what the Mediator of the New Covenant can truly give to you. Will you ask Him for it? Will you ask Him to work it out in your life? Plead the blood of the promises of Jesus Christ? That's the first promise. A better heart. The second promise of the New Covenant is a better relationship with God. We read in verse 10b, And I will be their God, and they shall be my people, and they shall not teach each one his neighbor, and each one his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. Now, this doesn't mean that now we don't need any teaching anymore, ever. It's a glorious promise, but it means this. It means that you and I have such an intimate relationship and knowledge of who God is, that we know it so deep in our hearts that no one needs to tell you that He is your God and you are His child. No one needs to tell you, this is my God and I'm His child by grace. The people in the days that the book of Hebrews was written didn't need types and shadows, didn't need Levitical priests, didn't need sacrifices after sacrifice. No, no. What they needed is a relationship that is better, that brings us closer, that brings us more deeply knowing the love and the heart of God. Not just outward change, but a heart change. Not just going through the motions, but a deep change. Isn't this a glorious promise? Boys and girls, there's a promise for you here. Did you see it? Did you hear it? From the least to the greatest. This is what He can do for you. That's what you need him for. Seek the Lord. Trust Jesus. Trust his promises. He allows himself to be found. He is a God who loves to invite the little children. Trust in his promises. Each of us needs it from the least to the greatest. We need its knowledge. I know this is my God and I am His. He knows me. He knows me to the depth of my soul. He ministers. He speaks to me. I hear His voice in the preaching. I hear His voice when I'm reading my Bible. I speak to Him and He answers me. I know Him. He's my God. I've tasted of His grace. I've rejoiced in who He is, in His mercy, in His kindness, in His love, in His glory. He hears my voice. He has forgiven me all my sins. And that brings us to the last promise here. Because this new covenant brings us, promises us rather, Better forgiveness. You remember that the priest had to go into the tabernacle in the Old Testament, in the temple later on, and they had to do sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice. And those sacrifices, Chapter 10 tells us, cannot cleanse our consciences. They don't get to the heart. It needed to be done over and over and over and over. But here, here, through Jesus Christ, there is a promise of better forgiveness. Verse 12, For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. In this new covenant, God promises to be merciful to us. Maybe you hear the echo. There's this man standing in the back of the temple, and he's beating his breast, and he realizes how sinful and wicked he is, and he's broken by it. And what does he say? God, be merciful to me, the sinner. And that same word is used here. And that same word means, God be propitious toward me, which basically means, God, look upon that sacrifice all the way in front of the temple. I'm all the way back here, but look upon that sacrifice. Be merciful to me. And God says here in our text, I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. The Lord promises here, I will look upon that sacrifice and I will forgive you your transgressions and your sins against my holy law. I will look upon the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, my son, and forgive their sins. I will take them away. I will remember them no more." Remember them no more? How is that possible? God is a God of infinite wisdom. He never forgets anything. He can't forget anything. But what God promises here is that He will consciously remove the memory of your sins from His mind, His holy mind. God is not like us. We forget things. But God cannot forget things. But He does promise that He will not hold those sins against you anymore. He won't bring it up again. Why? We heard it already, didn't we? Because of the sacrifice. Because of Jesus Christ. Because of the glorious cross. That cross on which the Prince of Glory died. That one mediator. What did he do there? He remembered your and my sin. all the sins that you and I have ever done, He remembered them very vividly at that moment. And Jesus experienced the wrath of God over those sins. And God looked upon His beloved Son in a way He had never looked at Him. with holy wrath and anger toward those sins. And He laid those sins, He heaped them upon His Son. The Bible tells us He was made sin for us who knew no sin. He was made sin. He was made a curse there on the cross of Golgotha when He cries out, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? in utter horror as the darkness pours upon his heart. And he has never seen his father like that. Always he had enjoyed that glorious presence of his father, the smile of his father. Remember at his baptism, it said, like he said, the father said, this is my beloved son. I'm well pleased in him. And now in utter horror, he heaps upon him the sins of all his elect people from every age, from every tribe, from every tongue. He was made a curse. Now what does that mean? This is what it means. That God looks upon him and he sees sin in his son. And he accounts him guilty and he says, for the sins that you and I have done, you are an idolater to his beloved son. You have gossiped. You have slandered. You have loved your money. You have loved your sexual sins. You are a fornicator. You are a liar. You are unkind to his only beloved son. You are selfish. You are covetous, unbelieving. You are full of pride. You are full of self-pity. You are full of worldliness. You have your heart that sets itself upon the things below. You're prayerless. You're sinful, independent. And He points His finger, His holy finger, as it were, humanly speaking about God the Father, and He points it at His Beloved Son. And he heaps all your and my sins upon him, our sharp tongue, our anger, our unforgiveness, our unthankfulness, all the sins that make us desperately wicked, as Jeremiah told us. And he lays that on Jesus Christ, the mediator of the new covenant, and the infinite, unbounded fury is compressed in a few hours and is heaped upon Jesus Christ as if he had broken every commandment of the law. Why? so that God can say to sinners like you and me what our text says. I will remember their sins no more. I will be merciful unto them. I will be merciful unto them. I will forgive them for all those sins Can you believe it? And it actually says here very strongly in the Greek, a double negative. I will absolutely no, never, ever remember your sins against you anymore. Do you see it? Do you believe it? Do you rejoice in it? Even when your heart weeps at the sight of the Savior, who is full of love and never sinned, pure and spotless and holy, He made sin for me. Full forgiveness, complete forgiveness, so that He doesn't even bring it to His mind anymore. I can imagine that some of us have a hard time believing it. It's hard to believe. It is. But this is the reality that God assures us of in the New Covenant, and He can give His Holy Spirit that we welcome this gospel news of God's grace. And that we value this, the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, as nothing else. That the more we see this, the more we realize about it, the more we actually say, well, whatever happens in my life, all those other things are, compared to the excellency of knowing Jesus Christ, are worth nothing. Or do you want to pay something, perhaps? Do something yourself, and therefore you doubt. Then you remain doubting. You need to look away. You need to look to the cross of Jesus Christ. But wherever you are, whatever state you are in tonight, however the Lord finds you in with his word tonight, I pray that each one of us sees it, maybe just a glimpse tonight of the glory of the gospel in the face of Jesus Christ, the glory of Jesus' sacrifice, and begin to glory in nothing else but Jesus Christ. You see, what we see at the cross is that God is very serious about sin. He means business. He spared not His only beloved Son, but gave Him up for us all. How will He not give us freely all things with Him? He redeems. He sets free. And that's what you monthly remember, don't you? When the Lord's Supper is celebrated, that covenant meal of the New Testament, of the New Covenant, It's through these reality, through the bread and wine, God communicates those realities to each believer and it comes as it were close and puts these realities in your hand to assure you. That night in which he was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it and he took the cup and poured it out and said, this is the blood of the New Testament, of the new covenant, which he shed for many for the remission, for the forgiveness of sins. And this is what we are supposed to remember when we break the bread. Broken bread, we see it. pointing to a broken body on the cross for a broken law, the law that we broke with our sin. And that breaks our heart, if we really understand it. And that cup of wine is pointing us It's filled. The cup is filled, pointing us to the poured out blood of Jesus Christ, that poured out His wrath in a cup that Jesus Christ drank, so that we can have the cup of blessing through the power of the Holy Spirit. Does that not fill your heart with joy when you think about these realities? This is Jesus, the mediator of a new testament, a new covenant. And He comes and wants to assure each one of His sinful children who come with broken hearts, who come looking to the cross, powerfully to assure them by the working of the Holy Spirit of this glorious promise, I will remember your sins no more, never, ever. Praise God, from whom all blessings flow. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, your word is glorious. Your promises are beyond what we dare to believe. your son has done something far more glorious and amazing than we have realized, Lord. Help us to value the precious blood of Jesus Christ, who was made a curse so that he can pour upon us his blessing. Lord, we want to believe it. Fill us, Lord, with more faith, with more hope, with more joy. Fill us with your Holy Spirit so that we receive those things that are freely given and offered to us in the gospel. And as we go into this week, Lord, we pray that you would go before us and strengthen us and remember us, remind us of these words as we go through the week, that they might have a deep impression upon our souls. That we would come to you for the reality of these promises to be realized and worked out in our lives. Bless us for Jesus' sake. Hear us. In His name we pray.