But Now Part 2

[0:00] I want you to turn to the book of Hebrews this morning, and we'll be in chapter 8. And we'll be looking at verses 1 through 13 in Hebrews chapter 8.

[0:19] Now the main point in what has been said is this.

[0:31] We have such a high priest who has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens, a minister in sanctuary, and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man.

[0:51] For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. So it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer.

[1:04] Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to the law, who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.

[1:22] Just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle, 4. See, he says that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.

[1:41] But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.

[1:56] For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second.

[2:08] For finding fault with them, he says, Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers.

[2:29] On the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant, and I did not care for them, says the Lord.

[2:44] 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 into their minds, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

[3:06] And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, and everyone his brother, saying, Know the Lord. For all who know me, from the least to the greatest of them.

[3:24] For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. When he said, A new covenant he has made the first obsolete, but whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

[3:45] This has got to be one of the more fascinating passages of Scripture in all of the Word of God, because it sets forth a principle that is very, very important and very often misunderstood.

[4:04] This is all about covenants, and it has to do with the old covenant and the new covenant. Most Christians today do not use that kind of terminology.

[4:17] What we usually use is the old testament and the new testament, but neither of them are testaments.

[4:29] Both of them are covenants. Testament is an inaccurate word, should not even be used, because it does create a great deal of confusion.

[4:40] The old covenant is that which God instituted through Moses. It is sometimes called the Law of Moses. Sometimes it's called the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy, commonly referred to by the Hebrews as the Tanakh.

[5:01] And this constitutes the old covenant. When Jesus was betrayed the night of his betrayal, he made that super significant statement as the apostles were gathered together, not knowing at all that it would be just hours later, just hours later from the time of the Last Supper, that they would see their Lord crucified on a Roman cross.

[5:34] Not one of them had a clue that that's what was going to happen. Jesus took a cup, a common cup, we would call it a chalice, and he said, drink from the cup, all of you, for this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

[5:59] I'm sure as he said that, and they looked at each other, and each took a sip from the cup, they wondered, what is this all about?

[6:15] What does he mean, this cup is the new covenant in my blood? They fully understood the concept of blood in connection with covenants, because the first covenant, the old covenant, was sealed by animal blood when the children of Israel embraced the proposition that God gave them to be his God, and they would be his people, and they said, Moses, you go back up the mount, and you tell God he's got a deal.

[6:53] All that the Lord hath said will we do. And then, Moses took the blood of an animal, sprinkled it on the tablets of the law, and sprinkled it on or towards some of the people.

[7:10] That was the equivalent of ratifying the covenant that sealed the deal, that made it official, and everybody understood that. Then, when Jesus was to say, many years later, that this cup represented, this cup of wine, he's saying, is the new covenant, the new covenant in my blood?

[7:44] Whatever was he talking about? Well, it wouldn't be long until they would know and understand, but they certainly didn't then, nor did they understand. When Judas went out into the night to seal his deal with the chief priests and scribes and lead them to where they could find Jesus at about two or three o'clock in the morning in the Garden of Gethsemane when they would come with their torches and lanterns, they had no clue that this was actually going to transpire.

[8:19] This was all something that was completely new to them. And when he was on that cross dying for the sins of the world, you can be sure that not a one of them there understood.

[8:32] And John, we know John was there because John was charged with the responsibility of caring for Jesus' mother in his absence, and Mary was cared for the responsibility of caring for John.

[8:45] So he and probably the other disciples were there as well. And while Jesus was in agony, hanging on that cross, uttering those seven different sayings that he did, there wasn't a one of them, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, who could reason at all and say, well, it's too bad that Jesus is there on the cross suffering for this pain and everything, and he's completely innocent.

[9:13] But I know it's all going to work out just great because actually what he's doing is paying the sin price, the penalty, for the sins of the whole world. And not only that, but three days later, he's going to come back to life again.

[9:29] Nobody believed that. Nobody imagined that. In fact, when that became a reality, the very first ones to deny that Jesus had risen from the dead were his own apostles.

[9:41] Amazing. And yet, what he did and the blood that he shed, in a way, I wish I could explain better, served as the expiation, served as the satisfaction, served as the propitiation, served as the payment, as the payment in full for all of the sins of the entire human race and everyone who had ever lived or ever would live.

[10:15] Think of that. how could one person do that? It's only because of the identity of that one person.

[10:26] Nobody else could have done it. He was the only one qualified. He was the only one sinless and acceptable. And in his humanity, he represented the whole human race.

[10:40] and in his deity as the theanthropic God-man, he represented his father, the God of heaven. And it was the shedding of his blood that paid the penalty, that balanced the moral scales of the universe.

[11:00] And this is exactly what Paul was talking about when he said in 2 Corinthians 5 that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

[11:16] Didn't leave out anyone. Do you realize that Jesus died for the sins of Adolf Hitler? That he died for the sins of Hirohito?

[11:33] That he died for the sins of everyone. This does not make everyone saved, but it makes everyone savable.

[11:45] Because if everyone were not savable, that would signify that the penalty and price that Jesus Christ paid wasn't actually sufficient or good enough to pay for the sins of certain people because they were really big sinners.

[12:05] And the grace and the love and the power of God was not adequate enough to overcome their sin penalty. Oh yes it was. The fact that they would not receive it, accept it, and apply it to themselves, that's an entirely different matter.

[12:22] That would have resulted in their personal salvation. So Christ died for you. the question is, what have you done about it?

[12:35] What is your response to it? That makes all the difference in the world. Now let me ask you a question. In connection with the passage that Gary read here in Romans, in Hebrews chapter 8, he says, I will effect a new covenant, and in verse 8 he says, with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

[13:02] Now if you happen to have a New American Standard Bible, you will see that these verses, beginning with verse 8 through verse 12, are in capital letters.

[13:15] And what that actually indicates is that those verses are really a quote from the Old Testament. and if you look at the text, you can see quite easily that it is taken from Jeremiah 31 and verse 31, which by the way, was written by Jeremiah approximately 500 years before Jesus was ever born in Bethlehem.

[13:41] And here is the prediction that there is going to be a new covenant. Why is there going to be a new covenant? What's the basis for the new covenant? Because the old one was fractured.

[13:54] The old covenant was never given, and here is a huge area of misunderstanding. The old covenant, the law of Moses, was never, ever given with the intent that people would keep it, observe it, and as a result, they would earn their salvation by keeping the law.

[14:16] You would be surprised how many Christians even think that way today. I mean, at least they are professing Christians. And yet, the law was never given for the purpose. The law was given for the purpose of revealing sin, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

[14:33] You don't know when you rush through an intersection without stopping, and there's a big stop sign there, big red stop sign in white letters that says, S-T-O-P.

[14:50] If that sign is there, and you don't stop, you've broken the law. But if there's no sign there, then there's no law broken.

[15:02] The law provides the knowledge of sin. The law tells us that we've done wrong, and it is a revealer, but it was never given as a remedy.

[15:15] The law cannot justify. The law cannot excuse. All the law can do is condemn. You say, guilty, guilty, guilty.

[15:28] That's the purpose of the law. And Paul writes to the Galatians, and he says, the law, the law was actually like a school teacher.

[15:38] the law was designed to show us we are grade A flops. We can't make it. We can't produce.

[15:48] We can't hold out. We can't be good enough. We can't be consistent. The law teaches us, woe is me, for I am undone. That's what the law teaches you.

[16:00] But the law is then designed to lead you to Christ. And Paul says, wretched man that I am, who can deliver me from this body of death?

[16:11] I thank God through my Lord Jesus Christ. So, the law's purpose is not to save anyone. The law's purpose is to reveal to you that you are lost.

[16:24] You are undone. You cannot measure up to God's standard, and there's nothing you can do to change that. That's why Jesus came. That's the whole point of his coming.

[16:35] For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh. Whose flesh? Our flesh. God did in the person of Christ. It's just the most amazing thing ever.

[16:46] And we had the opportunity to share this concept with a lot of people at the fair this past week, and these dear souls, they just stood there with this blank look on their face as if to say, really?

[17:00] Is, oh, oh, well, they're completely clueless. And I caught myself, as we were driving away from the fair one day, I caught myself saying, these people don't know anything.

[17:18] These kids, 12, 14 years old, they don't know beans, they don't know anything. These adults that ought to know better, they look at you when you tell them these things, they don't have a clue.

[17:29] And just when I was feeling kind of smug about how much I know, my mind raced back to the time when I was 12 years old.

[17:43] Marv, how stupid were you? Very, very. And as a teenager, what did I know when I was 16 or 17?

[17:54] Well, actually, I knew everything. You know, all teenagers do, don't they? Well, I was just as clueless as what these poor people were at the fair.

[18:06] And it gave me a kind of comeuppance that I needed. And these people, none of them, none of them, are the enemy. They are all captives of the enemy.

[18:20] And we need to keep that perspective in mind. What did you know? What did you understand before you came to faith in Christ? I don't know about you, but I was dumb as a box of rocks.

[18:32] I just didn't know anything about it. So, let's look at this covenant thing now. It's a new covenant. He says, I will effect a new covenant, but notice with whom it is to be made, with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

[18:48] That means that God says he's going to strike a deal, a new deal, with Israel and with Judah. And actually these both comprise the whole nation of Israel.

[18:59] It's just that he's talking about there being two different entities now because there's a northern kingdom and the southern kingdom ever since they divided and the ten tribes seceded from the union. But here he's saying that it's going to be made with the whole house of Israel, all the twelve tribes.

[19:15] Now the question to be asked is this, when was that covenant ever made? We know it was provided for in the death of Christ.

[19:30] When was it ratified? When was it sealed? It never was. It never was. The new covenant is not in force.

[19:43] Not this new covenant that he's talking about. Now notice look at the distinction. He says in verse nine, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers.

[19:55] And actually that's a little bit misleading but what it means is the covenant I made with their forefathers. When the Bible uses the word fathers, we tend to think of the generation of adults that preceded us, the ones that brought you into the world.

[20:08] That's our father. But when the Bible uses the word fathers, it can go all the way back to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That's usually who they mean when they say fathers.

[20:19] They don't mean my immediate dad or my grandfather. And by the way, it never uses the word grandfather or grandson, but it's always the son of so-and-so who is the son of so-and-so.

[20:30] And here, this is going to be made with the house of Judah and the house of Israel, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers. What covenant was that?

[20:42] That was the one with Moses. Moses, on the day when I took them by the hand, lead them out of the land of Egypt, they did not continue in my covenant. What did they do? Well, they continually lapsed into disobedience and idolatry and grumbling and murmuring.

[20:57] In fact, on one occasion, it got so bad, and this is kind of difficult for us to conceive of because these people had a hands-on kind of relationship with God.

[21:12] These people, this original crew that came out of Egypt, they witnessed the manna from heaven. They witnessed the miraculous provision of the fowl that fed their hunger.

[21:31] They witnessed the water out of the rock that made a gushing river that slaked their thirst when they were at the point of being exhausted from no water. They witnessed all of this.

[21:44] And still, despite all of that, they turned their back on the Lord. And when they sent the 12 spies out, 10 of them came back and said, we can't take these guys.

[21:58] They're too big. Their fortresses are too high. They're too well armed. There's too many of them. Only two, Joshua and Caleb said, yeah, they've got big high walls.

[22:10] The guys are big. They've got a lot of fortification and everything, but we've got something they don't have. We've got the Lord. And the 10 said, oh, we still can't do that. And the Lord said, all right, I've had it with you people.

[22:25] You are not going into the land. You are going to wander around here in the wilderness for the next 38 years. God's and I'm going to wait until every last one of your carcasses dies here in the desert and you'll be buried here.

[22:44] And I'm going to bring in Joshua and Caleb, the only ones who had any confidence in me. Now that is pretty crass disobedience.

[22:58] And that's why God says it will not be the kind of covenant I made with their fathers which they broke consistently. But in verse 10, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel.

[23:14] After those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws into their minds. Do you think the laws of God are into the Jewish minds today?

[23:28] Now, there are those of the Christian persuasion, and these people are believers just as much as we are. They undoubtedly love the Lord just as much as we do, and when they get to heaven, we're going to be there with them.

[23:44] But we have a serious disagreement regarding this. And they believe that this new covenant that God said he would establish with Israel and with Judah has been withdrawn from Israel and Judah and has been placed on the Christian church.

[24:09] And we are the fulfillment of this. And on the surface, you know what? That sounds kind of logical. After all, Israel did blow it, didn't they? They sure did.

[24:21] But what are we going to do with the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? And Jeremiah 31, 31, and the promises were so concrete and so solid that the prophet Jeremiah says under inspiration of God, how secure are these promises?

[24:49] promises. What kind of assurance does Israel have that I will follow through on this? Well, I'll tell you what kind of assurance it is.

[25:01] When the time comes that you can reach up there in the heavens and pull down the sun and pull down the moon, then my words and my promise to Israel will fail.

[25:13] How likely is that? How much of a guarantee can God give? This is a rock-solid unconditional thing that is not dependent upon the faithfulness and the obedience of Israel.

[25:26] And by the way, the salvation that you have in Jesus Christ is not dependent upon your faithfulness and obedience either. Don't ever forget it.

[25:40] We stand in grace. We don't stand in desert, reward, earned, God. It is all of grace. Now, he says, they did not continue in my covenant.

[25:54] I did not care for them. But then in this new covenant, I will put my laws into their minds and I will write them upon their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people and they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizens and everyone his brother saying, know the Lord for all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest.

[26:12] Is this true of Israel today? No, absolutely not. Some say, aha, that proves that this belongs to the church because it isn't true of Israel but it is true of the church.

[26:23] Yeah, right. As if we are walking as Christians in this kind of obedience, listen, if we were behaving like this text says, we would have already turned the world right side up.

[26:37] We aren't coming close. the typical Christian life has little more to commend it than did the life of the Israelite under the Old Testament law.

[26:49] We ought not to be patting ourselves on the back for our great fidelity and faithfulness. It doesn't pass the smell test. So, are these things true of Israel?

[27:04] No. Are they true of the church? No. They aren't true of anybody yet. Why not? Because it's never yet come to pass. The new covenant has never yet been instituted.

[27:18] The basis for it has been laid down. And we get the benefit of that just by virtue of putting our trust in Jesus Christ.

[27:32] Now, what has happened to Israel in the interim? Israel in Jerusalem. This is a bitter pill for Jewish people to swallow.

[27:43] In fact, it is so bitter, most of them will not swallow it. The truth be told, Judaism is a defunct religion.

[27:57] It has no badge of authenticity or authority behind it. it has no legitimate standing before God.

[28:13] Now, that may sound like a very unkind thing, and I do not mean it to be unkind because I dearly love the Jewish people. But they do not have anything that smacks of an active kind of faith or religion.

[28:33] And do you know when it ended? Some of you do. When the veil in the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom, God was saying, the way of access is thrown open.

[28:45] you may come to God through the new and living veil that is Jesus Christ.

[28:57] No longer does the Jew, the law of Moses, the Old Testament, have a corner, as it were, on God. Now, what God has done is completely eliminate the barrier that existed between Jews and non-Jews by breaking down the middle wall of partition that separated them.

[29:22] And now, Jew and Gentile are on the same footing and the same plane. This does not mean that because Judaism is defunct, that there is no hope or help for the Jew.

[29:36] Oh, there is. And it is the very same as it is for non-Jews. You come to Yeshua ha-Mashiach, Jesus the Messiah. You receive him as your Savior and Lord, and if you are a Jew, you become a completed Jew.

[29:54] You are in the body of Christ. Outside of that, you have nothing but a defunct religion. You cannot find any group that is more divided, more, what shall I say, more separated, more divisive than there is in Israel.

[30:17] Well, maybe, yeah, maybe Christianity could qualify. We've got divisions of our own, you know, with all of our denominations and sects and groups and councils and synods and all the rest of it.

[30:29] We fare no better than they, really. But Judaism ranges all the way from the orthodox, the ultra-orthodox on one hand, these are the Jews with the black garb and the long curls, the Hasidim that dwell in Mea Shurim in Jerusalem and they're supported by Jews in Brooklyn, New York, and their sole purpose in life is to study the Torah because they believe that when enough Jews are studying the Torah, the Messiah will return.

[31:01] So they are studying the Torah. They are the ultra-orthodox, they still keep the Sabbath, they still observe the feast days, they still observe the kosher diet, they still observe circumcision and all the rest of it.

[31:17] And then to the other extreme, you've got most Jews here in the middle and they're referred to as Reformed Jews. We have a Reformed Jewish synagogue here in Springfield, Bethel Temple, that is Reformed Jews.

[31:31] And to just show you how disparate they are among the Jews, the rabbi there is a lady, which is utterly unthinkable for an Orthodox Jew to have a rabbi who is a lady.

[31:47] But if you are a Reformed Jew, it doesn't make any difference. And they are the more modern type thing. And on the other extreme with the ultra-Orthodox over here, and what do you have over here, the ultra-extreme to the other end?

[32:02] They're atheists. They are full-bred Jews who do not believe that the God of Israel or any other God even exists.

[32:14] And one of the reasons they take that position is because they cannot correlate the existence of a loving, sovereign God who would permit millions and millions of his own people supposedly chosen to perish in Hitler's gas ovens and concentration camps.

[32:41] So they write off that possibility. And do you know, this is also part of the basis for the thinking about replacement theology, how the belief is that the church has taken the place of Israel and that Israel is done, finished, kaput, over with permanently.

[32:59] God has no future for the Jew. That's replacement theology. And one of the things upon which they base that is 70 A.D. temple was destroyed, Jerusalem was leveled.

[33:11] That proved in their thinking God's disfavor in allowing the city to be destroyed. and over one million Jews were killed by the Romans in 70 A.D.

[33:29] And now we have Jews that are persecuted worldwide. A new spate of anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head in different places.

[33:41] And these people are acting strictly out of ignorance. and the Jew, the Jew has been referred to for centuries as the wandering Jew because they go here and locate and pretty soon the heat's on and persecution begins.

[34:02] They pull up stakes, they move someplace else. Here they won't let them in, here they won't let them in. Do you realize how many people applied for asylum at the end of World War II by the Jewish people applied for asylum and how many nations turned them away?

[34:18] One of which was Uncle Sam at one juncture. That's the wandering Jew. So the replacement theologians look at this and they say, that proves God is finished with the Jew.

[34:34] He's written them off entirely and God has transferred all of the promises that he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's transferred them all to the Christian church. And we are the new Israel.

[34:49] Let me tell you, among those who call themselves Christians, that is the majority view.

[35:01] By far and away. That is the majority view. It's the majority view of the Roman Catholic Church. church. It's the view of the Reformed Church, which includes Presbyterians and Church of England.

[35:18] They all embrace this replacement theology thing. And this is one reason why so many of them are down on the modern state of Israel, even today. They see Israel as out of favor with God and man.

[35:33] Well, let me tell you something. when Jesus said to the woman at the well, salvation is of the Jew.

[35:44] He wasn't whistling Dixie. Salvation is of the Jew. Jesus was a Jew. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are Jews. And listen, the Jewish people are a strategic necessity to the plan and program of God being ultimately realized.

[36:08] But most Gentiles don't know that or believe that and the irony of it all is that neither do most Jews.

[36:22] Isn't that something? I mean, the Jewish nation, the Jewish people are the very catalyst, the very point of the spear that God is going to use to realize his ultimate final program and it will be through the return of Jesus Christ.

[36:44] And when he returns, those to whom he will return will be they who look upon him whom they pierced and they will mourn for him, Zechariah 12, 10, and they will be Jews.

[36:59] And the Antichrist will have the Jewish people right at the edge of the precipice ready to push the last ones over. And that will be the end permanently for the Jew.

[37:15] And then the heavens will open and the sign of the Son of Man will appear and every eye will see him and he will come and redeem his people.

[37:31] And that verse in Romans that says, and so all Israel will be saved, that's all of that faithful remnant who by that time will have come to an appreciation and understanding of Jesus as their Messiah.

[37:48] They will embrace him, they will be holed up there, the Antichrist will be unable to get to them, God will protect them in the same way that he did when the children of Israel came out of Egypt.

[38:01] He will miraculously provide for them, protect them, feed them, and provide them with water. And they will be the ones of whom Jesus was speaking when he said, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

[38:24] and Yeshua HaMashiach will come in the darkness of this world and he will bring with him his own light.

[38:36] And the enemies of Israel will be completely eliminated because there will be the sharp sword that goes out of his mouth, which is nothing more than the same voice of the one who said, let there be light.

[38:53] light and there was light. Wow. All of this stuff is all amalgamated, it's all part and parcel of the same picture.

[39:04] It is glorious beyond my ability to express it. And what we are going to see is how for the present Israel, as Paul said, and by the way, Paul is speaking as a Jew who loves his Jewish people, says, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved.

[39:27] I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my countrymen who are Israelites according to the flesh. Paul knew that the time was coming when he as a representative of Israel would be subjected to terrible persecution from his fellow Jewish people.

[39:49] And these will still be those of whom he will be saying that Israel is set aside in unbelief until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in.

[40:02] And then, you see, here, these Gentiles, that's the world government. That's the USA, that's Russia, that's England, that's Germany, that's China. We are all in the center of the stage now.

[40:14] We are the stuff. We are what this world is all about. We are the shakers and movers. And off here in the wings, virtually out of sight, is little, old, tiny, seemingly insignificant Israel.

[40:30] Off the stage, back here in the wings. But the time is coming when the shout of the archangel will be heard, the dead in Christ shall rise, and we who are alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

[40:50] And Israel, with the Gentiles, time gone, church is gone, raptured, Israel moves from out in the wings, right back up to smack dab center.

[41:07] And they also have a big bullseye on their back. And the Antichrist will be gunning for them all over the world, and there will be open season on the Jew.

[41:23] The time of persecution that will ensue will be far greater than anything World War II and the Holocaust ever saw. And yet, out of that, there will come that remnant.

[41:37] This is all part and parcel of the plan and program of God, and it is so involved and so exhaustive and so glorious and so, well, to me, it is so comforting.

[41:48] And I don't know why I have these notes. Next week, I plan to use them.

[42:01] But today, we just kind of got astray a little bit. I tell you, these things just stir my heart. I just, I get so excited about this.

[42:18] Would you stand, please? I've got to let you go. Come on. Now, the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.

[42:53] Amen. Amen.