All right. If you'll take your Bibles, please, and open them to the book of Hebrews, the eighth chapter, and join me in standing out of reverence for the reading of God's word. We're going to begin reading at the seventh verse and focusing our attention this morning on the 13th. Hebrews 8, beginning at verse 7. 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 will be my people. And none of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother saying no 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. Let's pray. Father, I ask that you would give to us wisdom and understanding, that you would give us a heart that sees clearly the need to let go our hold on the old covenant, on the gospel of works, and grant us, God, wisdom and prudence and understanding to lean in to the gospel of your grace, to the truth that you have done all that is needful and that we can contribute nothing to our salvation. We pray, God, that you would never let us mix the two, but that we would be clear and that we would be faithful to declare that salvation is of the Lord. And we ask it in Jesus name. Amen. There are things that God says will end. And there are things that he says will not end. And it is incredibly important that we understand the difference between the two. That we understand that there is a difference between the two. It's even more important that we understand which is which. Because confusing the two, especially when dealing with the matter of your soul, is not only foolish, it's dangerous. It can leave you trusting in that which will vanish away when you need it most, and despising that which will be the only matter on the Day of Judgment, when your final and eternal home and destiny is announced. We've been looking at the issue of the New Covenant. We've been thinking about it for quite a while, about the fact that God has said, I have done away with the Old Covenant, I am bringing in the New Covenant, and this New Covenant is not like the Old Covenant. There is a distinct difference, a distinct change. And I wanna just kind of echo what the writer of Hebrews is doing here in verse 13, when he's sort of pointing out the obvious. He says, look, what's new is not old. And what's old is not new. Right? And he uses the word new very plainly and very clearly. And I want to just point out a couple of things that he does not say. He does not say that I am remaking the covenant. He does not say I'm renegotiating those old rules. He does not say that I'm giving you simply another covenant. or an additional covenant or a second covenant, he uses the terms new and old because when you think about those terms, when you have something new, that which is old is gone. It is no more. It is vanishing. It is moving away. It is no longer required. Nobody has something new that they like and use and desire and still holds on to the old because, well, I want to use it too. You might foolishly hang on to the old thinking, well, it served me for a long time and if I need it, I might want it. But then your life is just filled up with a bunch of broken things. But what God says here, is that in the end, because I'm giving you something that is profoundly new, the old is no longer necessary. The old is no longer required. The old no longer has any part in this. It is, in fact, no more. He goes on to say that the old is actually done. It is no longer applied. It is no longer useful. It is no longer contributing anything. And he does this. so that we recognize the truth that it has passed away, okay? He does not say, I'm going to get rid of it because it's old. You understand the difference? He doesn't look at it and say, well, this covenant's been around for a long time, and I think we can maybe do something better. That's not the issue. The issue is I have brought in something new that is far superior And because of that, the old one is now discontinued. Let me put it in some different terminology. Anybody here still remember Windows 3.1? Anybody still running a computer with Windows 3.1 on it? Of course not. It was garbage. Well, it was pretty cool when it first came out, but it's garbage compared to what we have now, right? We don't have the desire to maintain that which is obsolete, as the words writer of Hebrews uses, when something new and better has been given. And so God says, look, I am calling this old and removing it. I'm making it pass away. because I've brought in something better. And I am announcing that it is old because it has been replaced. And that's a really important distinction for us to lay hold of, because God is not laboring to try and simply upgrade how we come to him, right? What was the problem with the Jews and the law? It didn't work on the heart. It couldn't change the heart. You can have a list of things to do all day long, and you might get some of them done. Let me just grant you the impossible and say you can outwardly get all of them done. But it doesn't change your heart. And if we paid attention when we were reading the words of Jesus to the Pharisees, what was he saying? You get all the outside stuff done, but inside? Not so good. Inside, you're full of filth. Inside, you're full of dead men's bones. Inside, you're full of rebellion against God. Inside, where it actually matters, is untouched. This was not necessarily or exclusively the fault of the Jews. Trying harder wouldn't have changed it. This was fundamentally a flaw in works-based righteousness. This is fundamentally a flaw in anything that says if you do this, you can please God by your work. Now if you're paying attention, you'll recognize that you've probably heard somebody say something like that if you listen to television preaching or radio preaching or whatever else. You've heard somebody say something akin to the idea that if you just do this list of things, then God's blessing is gonna be unleashed on your life and you're gonna have all the good things that you want because you can do these things and you'll make God happy. Let me tell you plainly, it's a lie. The scripture tells us that by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. It is not possible that you will ever be able to do enough good works to overcome your basic sin nature. And this was the fundamental problem with the law. This was the fundamental reality that made God promise somebody new all the way back at the beginning of the fall, right? What did he tell the serpent? One day, the seed of the woman is going to come and crush your head. You're gonna bruise his heel, but he's gonna crush your head. That's not talking about Moses bringing a list of rules. You understand that? Moses bringing a list of rules was a covenant agreement, and it gave us some insight into who God was, it gave us some insight into his character, but it was not the seed of woman coming to crush the head of the serpent. The seed of woman coming to crush the head of the serpent was accomplished in the person of Jesus Christ. And through him, the new covenant has been initiated and established. It is called old because it has passed away. It's important for us to note that only God could have done this. Because only God has the power or the right to put an end to what God has instituted. That make sense? We don't have the power to stop what God is doing. We don't have the power to alter what God is doing. We don't have the power to change anything about God's intention and purpose. And if there has been a change, it comes only because God has done it. The covenant accomplished its purpose. The first covenant, the old covenant. The problem is we misunderstood what that purpose was. We thought that by keeping the law we would make God happy. But that was not the purpose of the Old Covenant. Paul tells us in Galatians that the Old Covenant was a tutor to bring us to Christ. The Old Covenant existed for one purpose and one purpose only. It was to teach us that you cannot. It was to teach us that you could not ever be good enough to please God. So, let me ask you the question. Did it accomplish that purpose? Yeah, if you're reading it right. If you're reading the Bible, and you're reading the Old Covenant, and you're reading just the Ten Commandments, when God says, I am God, and you will have no other gods before me, immediately your heart should just cry out and say, oh Lord, help me, I am doomed. I am condemned by my own loves, I am condemned by my own lusts, I am condemned by my flesh, I am condemned by the things that I cannot change. And that's just one. You go down the list and you look at, don't ever tell a lie. Anybody ever tell a lie, even one? Of course we have. Every last one of us. And if you say, no, you've never told a lie, let me tell you, you just did. Right? Because we've all lied. But what the scripture tells us in James is that if you're guilty of one, you're guilty of them all. So what the law is designed to do is to show you your own need for something that you cannot accomplish. It is designed to show you that you need God to do a work that only God can do. It is designed to teach you and to show you that apart from Him, you are without hope. And the law accomplished that purpose. Our problem with the Old Testament, with the Old Covenant law, is that we misunderstood its intent. Now, a couple other things I want to point out about this. When God changed the law, and altered it and said, the new is coming and the old is gone away with. It was not a response to him suddenly deciding or learning or figuring out that we couldn't keep the law. Right? It wasn't that God gave the law and said, well, we'll see how they do with this. And then after a while he went, I don't know. It's very simple. It's only 10 rules that you would think they could keep it. That's not what happened. The law served its purpose, and it served its purpose for the time that it was appointed to serve its purpose. It was never intended to last one moment beyond the coming of Christ. And the coming of Christ was manifested, according to scripture, in the fullness of time. So the law, when God gave it, had a shelf life, if you will. It had a closing date already built in. It had a time when God would say, it is no more. And that day has come and that day has gone. Now, why am I laboring this point? Because there are many people who want to try and conflate the old covenant with the new and to bring into the new covenant the old covenant of works. They do it in innocuous sort of ways. They'll say things like this. Are you sick? It's because God doesn't want you to eat pork. Well, he said that in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament, he told Peter, don't call anything unclean that I have said is clean. Rise, Peter, kill and eat. Everything there is for your consumption. And the book of Acts tells us that in the vision that Peter saw, it said the sheet was filled with every single kind of unclean critter that existed. No exceptions. So what's happening here? Well, people are conflating the Old Covenant, which has come to an end, with the New Covenant, which has replaced it. And they are saying, yes, you need Jesus, but you also need works. Yes, you need Jesus, but you also need to contribute something, because Jesus isn't just quite enough. Now, that last statement, they'll never say out loud, and if you accuse them of it, they'll get very offended at you, but that's precisely what they're telling you. Beloved, hear me. The Old Covenant is gone. The moral law of God, the Ten Commandments, still stand because they are reflections of the character of God. But the Ten Commandments were never intended to give us a pathway to God. The Old Covenant, the system of religious obedience, the system of sacrifices, the system of dietary restrictions, the systems of you shall not, you shall not, you shall not, that was built around the Ten Commandments as an outgrowth of that superstructure, those things are gone. And what remains is the character of God manifested to us in the person of Jesus Christ. What remains is the fact that God Himself fulfilled every single thing that the Old Testament law required in Jesus' life. He obeyed every law. He fulfilled every requirement. He continued to do everything that was necessary, and He never did anything that was wrong or sinful. For the entirety of His 33 years on the earth, Jesus never one time sinned. Scripture tells us he was tempted in all ways such as we are yet was without sin. So his coming and his obedience became the fulfillment that the law required, but that was not enough. If he had simply come and lived that life, all he would have accomplished in us is to give us an example to go, see, it can be done. Try harder. You understand? But it didn't stop at mere obedience. The Bible tells us that Jesus submitted himself to death, even the death of a cross. That God made him who knew no sin to become sin on our account, on our behalf, to become our sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. that God took all of our sin and placed it on the person of Jesus Christ and poured out His wrath for our sin on the Son whom He loved. This is why Isaiah 53 says that it pleased the Father to crush Him, to grind Him into powder. Because in Jesus Christ, all of the wrath of God for the sin of His people was extinguished. The wrath of God died a death of exsanguination. All of the blood has been poured out over it. It died because of the blood. It died because Jesus died. And the wrath of God for our sins is no more. When Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath, he drank it to the bitter dregs. And the last words that he cried out from the cross were, it is finished. Speaking of a multiplicity of things, but certainly among them is the reality that he was saying, the cup is empty. I drank it all. All gone. Right? This was the work of Jesus that accomplished our salvation. And there is nothing left for us to contribute to that work. There is nothing left for us to add. But God knew that we were going to struggle with this. And so right away, he gave teachers to the church in the form of the apostles and gave them, especially in the person of Paul, this fiery, constant determination to absolutely refute every single attempt at works. If you were to just take a survey of the letters of Paul and pay attention to the things that Paul was teaching and the things that he was accused of teaching, what you will find was that the place and the point where the Jews hated Paul was at any place where he said, no, you do not need to adhere to the Old Testament law of the fathers in order to become a Christian. You do not need to keep the law in order to please God. Jesus did that on your account. Now Paul, being a Jew, by his own preference and comfort, largely kept the law of the Jews. He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath. He obeyed those laws that were in his power to obey simply because that was his personal preference. That was the life he had grown up with. That was what he wanted. But he did not impose those laws on anybody. He did not require that obedience in order for people to become Christians. And if you read the letter of Galatians, he was vitriolic against that teaching. He absolutely despised anything and anybody that required obedience to the Old Testament law in addition to faith in Christ. This is why he writes in Romans that we are justified by faith and not by the works of the law. This is why he tells us so plainly that everything that we do is to absolutely rely on faith in Christ and nothing else. My point is, is that none of that is an accident. God sent Paul to teach us the truth. And by the adherence to the scripture and by obedience to what God has told us in His Word about loving Jesus above everything else, and as Jesus is revealed to us as beautiful and glorious and true, what does it do in our hearts? It makes us love Him. It makes us desire Him. Right? So God gave to the church a vision of Jesus that would cause us to no longer desire or love the Old Testament law. Now we're eight chapters, almost nine chapters. We're going to start chapter nine sometime reasonably soon into the book of Hebrews. And if you've been paying attention, I hope you have, you're going to think to yourself, oh wow, look, that's kind of what the writer of Hebrews has been saying for the whole book. and you would not be wrong. Because that's exactly what the writer, this is the heart of the argument for the whole book. The old has become obsolete and it has passed away. And the new has come. And the new has come in the person of Christ. This is the entire burden which the writer of Hebrews has undertaken because the church to which he was sending this, the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, they were stuck eyeballs deep in this dilemma of what do we do with the old law? We want to keep it. We want to obey it. It's what we know. And we believe it has to have some good. And Paul said, look, keep it if you want. It's not going to save you. This is what he told the people in Galatians. The writer of Hebrews echoes this. He says, keep it, but it's not going to save you. It's not going to change anything. That's not what you are required to do. What you're required to do is to love Jesus and to have faith in him. So in this teaching that is the heart of the book of Hebrews, God has caused the church to long for and to seek after the new covenant. He's given us by this teaching, a hunger and a desire for Christ. If the purpose of the Old Testament law was to be a tutor to lead us to Christ, it accomplished that purpose. But if you are told now, have faith in Jesus, but also you have to keep the Old Testament law. All the men, they have to wear the curly Q on their hair, and they have to have, you guys have to have a blue thread woven throughout, and you have to wear the phylacteries. It'd be hard to be a mechanic with one of those big old honking things on your wrist, right? You have to do these things, because if you try not to do these things, you're not gonna love Jesus enough, and so you have to keep the law. If you were told that, what does that raise up in your heart? It's works, and it's also going to lower in your eyes the esteem that you have for Jesus. Because clearly, he just didn't do enough. Clearly, he just wasn't enough to satisfy God. So now I gotta put my boots back on and I gotta help. But when we see Christ as he's displayed in scripture, the only thing we long to do is worship him, to love him for what he's done and accomplished for us, to lay down at his feet and say, oh God, thank you so much for what you've done. It also, by the hand of God, right teaching and right understanding of God's placement in these things causes us to have less esteem for the Old Testament covenant. Right? And that's not a bad thing. That's a designed response. God wants us to honor what he did, but he does not want us to value it as if it's going to help us. He does not want us to be diligent students of the Old Testament law so that we can see how to apply what He told them to do in our lives. Right? So right now there's a whole lot of madness in the world, in the church in particular, about all the things that some teachers want you to believe God still wants you to do that are Old Testament requirements and they want to bring them into the church. They want to bring them into the life of Christians. They want to bring them in wholesale and say, these things are required. Now, if you are a student of the Bible, it should raise in you some level of, when you hear these things. Firstly, because they're false. Secondly, because they dishonor Christ. But thirdly, there's just something in your soul that immediately goes, no, it's not right. It's an offense to you. That is the hand of God giving you some discernment, right? That is the hand of God teaching you according to his word and not according to the babble of fools who want to return you to the slavery of the law. The Bible tells us that you were slaves to sin. But now in Christ, you have become slaves to righteousness. You have a new master, and that new master is Jesus. And for us as Christians, that's the distinction that we absolutely have to hang on to. God has removed the old covenant from our lives with any force. It no longer binds us. Now, what is sad about this is that he underwent the work of removing the Old Testament covenant from the lives of the Jews as well. Right? The Babylonian captivity necessitated a 70-year break from the faithful obedience to the covenantal sacrifices. Right? It's almost like God sent them to rehab. And he sent them to rehab for their idolatry, and it finally broke them of their idolatry. The Babylonian exile did have that incredibly positive benefit. It broke them of their outward idolatry. There is no mention whatsoever from the time of the return from the captivity until the time of Christ of the worship of Baals and the Ashtoreths and the high places and all the things that plagued Israel in the Old Testament. It broke them of that idolatry, but it also had the intended purpose of causing a break in their adherence to the law so that it could be pried out of their fingers. And when God returned them to the Promised Land, He told them, yes, go build the temple. But the old temple had been destroyed. The articles of worship had been carried off. Sometime in the intervening years, with about the last 500 years of Israel prior to Christ, the Ark of the Covenant went missing. We don't know where it went. We don't understand anything about it. According to Hollywood, it's in some museum in the basement of Washington, but that's probably not true. We have no idea where it is. Doesn't matter. The Ark of the Covenant is not central to our worship. What did the Ark of the Covenant represent? Anybody? Pardon? You couldn't get close because it was the presence of God, right? It was the place where God abides among his people. The lid of the Ark of the Covenant was called the mercy seat. Right? It was the place where the high priest, once a year, would go in and sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice. You should have some bells going off in your head right now. Because the mercy seat is a name that's given in Scripture for the throne of God. And it's the place where Jesus went and shed His blood and sprinkled His blood on the mercy seat, purchasing our salvation. So God took away the physical representation of the spiritual reality because no longer was the physical representation needed. He took it away. So even though he returned them to the land and he said, look, I want you to go ahead and build a temple and I want you to have some place because I'm going to have my presence in your midst. What he was telling them was, it's not going to be the same. And although some of the articles of worship returned, the king of Persia gave them back some of the things, but many of them had already been destroyed, lost, melted down, confiscated by others. And so they were carried back, or they returned from being carried away, with their ability to worship in the Old Testament covenant greatly diminished. That was by design. Right? That was God giving them a chance to come clean from their old ways of worshiping. When they returned to the land, they returned to ruin. Right? The temple had been destroyed, stone from stone. There was nothing left. There was an outline. It was gone. Jerusalem itself had been defaced. They attempted to rebuild the temple, but they were not able to restore it to its former glory. In our Wednesday night studies, we've been reading through the Old Testament, taking it at an incredibly fast pace, I might add, doing a whole chapter a night, every single week. It's been terrible. It's killing me. So, we've been just blazing through the Old Testament, and we're almost done with it. And we studied the history of it first, And then we went back and we started going through the prophets and trying to drop the prophets into their proper place in the history. And we are right now just about two chapters into Zechariah and Zechariah and Haggai are the two prophets of the restoration. They are the two prophets who came in and they were prophesying in Israel in Judah during the time when the temple was being rebuilt. And Haggai has something really interesting for us to note. So turn to Haggai chapter 2. I want you to see this. So Haggai chapter 2. And we're just going to read from verses 3 to 9. So they're discouraged because the temple doesn't look anything like it was supposed to in their mind. And God says, who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? How do you see it now? In your eyes, in comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as nothing? Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel, says the Lord. And be strong, Joshua, son of Jehoiazac. the high priest, and be strong, all you people of the land, says the Lord, and work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. According to the word that I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt, so my spirit remains among you. Do not fear, for thus says the Lord. Once more, it is a little while, I will shake the heaven and the earth, the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, and they will come to the desire of all nations, and I will fill this temple with glory, says the Lord. The silver is mine and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts. The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place, I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts. Now let me tell you something very plain here. He is not talking about temples built by hands. He is not talking about Herod's temple. He is not talking about the restoration of the temple built under Zerubbabel. He is not talking about any of the physical things that we want to allude to here. What he is telling them is, you have had a box that had to be here, hidden away from you, in the holiest place of all, held back by a curtain woven a foot thick, and outside of that, the holy place that only the priests may go, and outside of that, the temple courtyard where only the men could go, and outside of that, the court of the women, and outside of that, the court of the Gentiles. I may have gotten those reversed. But anyway, you've been kept from my presence. And you long for that box, but you can't go near it. Well, the box is gone, and the veil's been torn asunder, and the Spirit of God dwells in our hearts. You are the temple of the Lord. And this is the glory that we are being told of. This is the glory that Haggai is speaking of. This is the glory of the Lord that is coming. And in that day, he said, I will give you peace. How do you have peace with a God whose law you cannot fulfill? You don't. You can't. You're always at odds with Him. You're always struggling. You're always crying. You're always weeping. You're never able to get it right. But how do you have peace with a God who said, everything that I require of you, I give you? That's not so hard. How do you have peace with a God who says, ask me for mercy? and I'll give it. That's pretty straightforward. How do you have a peace with a God who says, I will accomplish everything that is needful for you to be accepted by me. I will pay the price and I will prove to you that I paid the price by raising my son from the dead. How do you have peace with a God like that? It's really very simple. You take him at his word. Either he meant it or he didn't. And the old covenant had nothing to do with a God of peace. It had nothing to do with the promise that God had given to us. It had everything to do with teaching us that we could not keep it. And in the fullness of time, and in the right of God to do what he said he was going to do, he ended the old covenant, and he ended it by his appointment. Now let me give you some insight here. Nothing that God decrees is going to end will last. You understand that? If God has put a time stamp on it and said it's going to end, nothing will last. Also, nothing that God builds will fail unless God himself appoints it. That make sense? God is the author of all of these things. No amount of time can cause God's purpose to fail. Sin cannot overcome the will of God by continual wearing down. And no amount of effort, attack, or indifference on our part will destroy what God has established. But out of that comes the truth that nothing will stand one moment longer than God Himself decrees. You cannot prop it up long enough to make it last if God says His time is over. You cannot throw enough money at it. You cannot throw enough people at it. No amount of effort, no planning, no draining labor. When God decrees a thing will end, it will end at exactly the moment that He decreed that it will end, not one second sooner, not one second later. He will fulfill all of His purpose. The law ended with the death of Christ. Why? Because Christ had fulfilled it. It had finished its final purpose. And through the death of Jesus, dying on account of our guilt, He had finished the law. He had triumphed over it. He had triumphed over death. He had triumphed over the grave. He had triumphed over every single thing that was set against us. And God, in His mercy, extended to us that which Christ purchased on our behalf. Do you understand that even that extension of it is mercy? Jesus could have just come and fulfilled the law. He didn't have to apply it to us. He didn't have to give it to us after he applied it. He didn't have to do anything, but he chose to call us to himself and to make us see his work and his mercy as mercy. He caused us to behold His glory and to love Him for it. You see, everything that can end is drawing to its appointed end. And it is being prepared for the purpose for which God set it out. Every single thing that God purposes will come to pass in the fullness of time. And it is coming to an end that God has purposed. When He set the law in place, He set it in place for its appointed hour. It fulfilled its work. It accomplished its purpose. And then it was done. Now, we look at the world around us, and sometimes we're guilty of thinking that it's supposed to last forever. Right? I mean, isn't that what the climate scientists are trying to do, is to make it last? As if they had some power over what God has decreed, if there was any value to that pretend stuff anyway? What do we see? We see people doing their best to make themselves feel more powerful than they are. But what does the word tell us about this world in which we live? It's going away, right? Turn to Psalm 102. Psalm 102, and we'll just read verses 25 and 26. Of old, you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hand. They will perish, but you will endure. Yes, they will all grow old like a garment, like a cloak. You will change them, and they will be changed. Verse 27, we'll read it too. It says, you are the same. And your ears, years, your ears too, your years will have no end. What is the life of a man worth? Well, Psalm 90 verses nine and 10 says, all our days have passed away in wrath. We finish our years like a sigh, and the days of our lives are 70 years, and if by reason of strength, they're 80. Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Hebrews 9.27 says, it's appointed unto man but once to die, and after this, the judgment. Nations rule by the power and the will of God, by His hand, and they live their lives and spend their days according to His purpose. Psalm 2 verses 1 to 5 says, why do the nations rage? and the people plot a vain thing. The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens shall laugh and the Lord shall hold them in derision and he shall speak to them in his wrath and distress them in his deep displeasure. Or Jeremiah chapter 18, verses six and following. Jeremiah 18 beginning at verse six says this, and to pull down and to destroy it. If that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring on it. In the instant that I speak of a nation and concerning a kingdom so as to build and plant it, if it does evil in my sight so that it does not obey my voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said that I would benefit it." What's God saying? He's saying, look, these days are mine. They're in my hand. I judge, I rule, I end, I begin. I'm the one who has the authority to raise up a land and to destroy a land. I'm the one who has the authority to give mercy or not. Which means, beloved, that our job as Christians in a pagan nation is to be crying for mercy, to be pleading with God, to be living in obedience, and to be asking Him to change the land around us. Our responsibility is to seek the face of the one who can change hearts. Our responsibility is to live righteously, to live faithfully, to live in submission to the will of God, but to be asking and asking and asking that God would be merciful to us and turn from the destruction that we have so richly deserved. So God has the right to end, he has the right to begin, and everything that he has created to end will end. But it's also true that there are things that he has established which will stand forever. There are things which God has created and established which will endure for his eternal purposes. That which God establishes to endure eternally will endure. Chief among them, the reality of his word. Isaiah 48 says, Now this is the word by which the gospel was preached to you. In Jesus' own statement on it, in Matthew 24, heaven and earth will pass away. but my words will by no means pass away." So God's Word stands eternally. The truth of God's Word will overcome all opposition. He will be proven true. He will be proven right. He will be proven to be faithful to everything that He has decreed. So if you want something to build your life on, something that can be trusted, something that can be relied upon to be there when you need it, let me suggest to you that a a faithful obedience to the Word of God is a pretty good place to start. Let me suggest to you that knowing what God has said and letting that be the guide and measure of your life is a pretty good place to start. Now, I'm not suggesting works righteousness. I am suggesting that you can't know what you don't know. Right? So you need to be in the Word. You need to understand that God's Word is always going to be true. It is always going to be the thing that will give light and insight into whatever you need. His judgments abide forever. Psalm 119, 160 says, The entirety of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous judgments endure forever. His righteousness endures forever. 2 Corinthians 9, beginning at verse 8, says, It's also true that God reveals his will and that he is certain that when he reveals it, it is ours forever. Deuteronomy 29.29 says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of this law. What about his mercy? Does his mercy endure forever? Yes, it does. Over and over in Scripture, we're told. Psalm 106.1 says, And if we took the time to read Psalm 136, you will find that in every verse in Psalm 136, there is this call and response. 18 verses and 18 times in that Psalm, the congregation is to reply, Now, why would it be so important that we understand that? Because above all, what we need from God is mercy. So often people will complain, well, God's just not fair. And I'm perfectly willing to concede that. You're right. God does not treat fairly with us. Thank you. Amen and amen. I do not want God to treat fairly with us. If God were to treat fairly with us, we would all be in hell. Because we all deserve hell. Remember the whole question of the law, can you keep it? Did you ever tell a lie, that whole thing? Well, the scripture reminds us that the consequence of sin is death. The wage that sin earns by its disobedience is death. And if we are all guilty of even the least of sins, what we all deserve is an eternity in hell. So if we want God to deal with us fairly, we need to understand what's in the offing here. I personally do not want fairness from my God. I will take mercy. Thank you very much. And I will take mercy and I will take mercy and I will take mercy and I will take mercy. And when I'm done taking mercy, I will take mercy because I need it. I need his mercy. I need his grace. I need those things which I cannot ever deserve. Thankfully, he gives them. His truth endures forever. Psalm 117 says, Now this may be one that we don't think about too often, but it's good for us to remember that what he says now is true is always going to be true. He does not change his mind about what is true. He is not a God who is fickle in His understanding. He is not a God who is fickle in His imagination. He declares truth, and when He declares that truth, it is absolutely always going to be true. Now, this is also helpful for us to understand that He can say, these things are true because I have declared them to be true, because He's always going to be God. Right? If you've been paying attention to the newsfeed and the things that are going on in the government around us, the Democrats have already been saying in their objection to the South African refugees who came in, if we're elected in 2028, we're gonna deport them all, right? That doesn't leave you settled in much comfort. It doesn't leave you going, oh boy, I have a solid hope here. If God dealt with us with that kind of fickle change, we would have no confidence. But God is always going to be God. Right? He's not running for God. He's not up for election. Nobody's opinion has any difference in the matter. He is always going to be God. So what he says now he is always going to do, we can have absolute confidence that he is always going to do it. Does that follow? You tracking with me? His dominion is forever. Psalm 10, verse 16 says, the Lord is king forever and ever. The nations have perished out of the land, and He has established the throne of Messiah forever. Isaiah 9, verses 6 and following says, Unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder. And his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. And just so we make sure that we don't miss the point, he says, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. Beloved, this means that the salvation that he brings is also forever. Isaiah 51, starting at verse six. Isaiah writes, Lift up your eyes to the heavens and look upon the earth beneath. For the heavens will vanish away like smoke and the earth will grow old like a garment. And those who dwell in it will die in like manner. But my salvation will be forever. My righteousness will not be abolished. Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people in whose heart is my law. Do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults, for the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool. But my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation from generation to generation." This is because his love endures forever. God loves us beyond all reckoning. He loves us before we deserved it, well, we don't deserve it. He loved us before we knew him, before we obeyed him. He loved us while we still hated him, the scripture tells us. Listen to how he describes it in the book of Hosea. Hosea chapter two, turn there if you would. Hosea chapter two, starting at verse 16. It shall be in that day, says the Lord, that you will call me my husband and no longer call me my master. For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals and they shall be remembered by their name no more. And in that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and with the birds of the air and with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth and make them lie down safely. I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice In loving kindness and mercy, I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. It shall come to pass in that day that I will answer, says the Lord. I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth. And the earth shall answer with grain, and with new wine, and with oil. They shall answer Jezreel. And I will sow her for myself in the earth. And I will have mercy on her who have not obtained mercy. And I will say to those who were not my people, You are my people and they shall say you are my God. Jeremiah 31 3 says the Lord has appeared of old to me saying yes I have loved you with an everlasting love and therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you. In all that everlasting love we are safe beyond all understanding and terror. We rest comfortably and quietly in the arms of the beloved. Romans chapter 8 verses 37 and following says, Or the words of Paul, to the Church of Thessalonica, 2 Thessalonians chapter two. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and our God and Father who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your heart and establish you in every good word and work. Beloved, this is the love that God bears for his people. It is a love that is designed to draw us into him. It is a love that is designed to give us a vision of him that will never fail. It is a love that is designed to teach us that we can trust him, that we can rest in his love, that we can rest in his strength and rest in his grace. It is a love that says, no matter what comes in your life, I am there and I am your supply. And I am the one who has loved you beyond death itself. Beloved, this is our God, and there is absolutely nothing that you are capable of ever doing that will add one micron to what He has done. It's His work, and it's His salvation, and it's His glory, and it's His grace. And all we can do when we see it is love Him for it. All we can do when he shows us who he is is cry out in thanks and awe because this God is that good. Yes, the old covenant has passed away and the new has come. Let's pray. Father, I ask that you give to us grace in this day. And I pray God that you would help us to see your truth, that you would help us to understand your majesty. I pray, God, that you would remind us in all that we do, that you are the God who has loved us, that you are the God who has shown us mercy, that you are the God who has transformed all things, and that you have done it by your grace, and that you have done it for your glory. And I pray, God, that you would help us to understand the implications of all that this means. God, there's so much here. There is so much richness in this, and I pray that you would open our eyes and our hearts and our understanding and help us to break loose from any hold and obligation that we might feel towards the law and our own righteousness and cling with all that we are to the truth that Christ has saved us by his blood. God, remind us of the gracious and beautiful simplicity of the gospel. Give us faith to believe. and change us. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.