Power Of The New Covenant - 2 Corinthians 3

Loves her country and loves serving.

So what do we got here? We got any pictures up here

guys? So this is what happened.

We were at the pastors conference this week.

These guys came down with me to Calvary Chapel, Philadelphia.

There was 17150 of us guys down there being taught and

encouraged in the word and worshipping you.

You actually sang a few of the worship songs the day this

morning that we had sung. So we're all overwhelmed.

Thank you for praying for us. It was an amazing time and a lot

of good stuff happened in all of our hearts spiritually.

So hopefully some of that will bleed out the day and in the

weeks and months and years to come through Pastor Lewis and

myself, the day is Memorial Day. And let me just talk a little

bit about that before I get started this morning.

Originally called Decoration Day from the early tradition of

decorating Grays with flowers, wreaths and flags, Memorial Day

is a day for remembrance of those who have died in service

to our country. It was first widely observed on

May 30th, 1868 to commemorate the sacrifices of Civil War

soldiers by proclamation of General John A Logan of the

Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of former Union

sailors and soldiers. During the first national

commemoration, former Union general and sitting Ohio

Congressman James Garfield made a speech at the Arlington

National Cemetery, after which 5000 participants helped to

decorate the graves of more than 20,000 Union and Confederate

soldiers who were buried there. This national event galvanized

efforts to honor and remember fallen soldiers that began with

local observances of burial grounds in several towns

throughout the US following the end of the Civil War, such as

May 1st gathering in Charleston, SC.

And so this this continues to this day.

And Memorial Day is commemorated at the Arlington National

Cemetery each year with the ceremony in which a small

American flag was placed on each grave.

Traditionally, the president and Vice President Lee, a wreath on

the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. So let's just take a moment of

silence as we think about those who have given their lives for

our country and continually do that even as we speak with the

conflicts in Iran right now. Father, we are humbled by the

grace of you, Father, and watching over this nation since

its inception over 250 years ago this year.

We're grateful, Lord, for all those who have stepped up to the

plate and went to foreign lands and foreign soils to proclaim

the fact that you created us to have freedom and not, Lord,

dictatorships that would destroy the freedom that we've been all

given as citizens of this world. One nation, we are called United

States of America under God, with liberty and justice for

all. Lord, we are humbled today and

we thank many of us here today and listening have lost loved

ones in military service, serving actually in war.

So Lord, we commemorate them today.

We honor them. We pray for the families that

remember their loved ones who gave their lives for their

country. So Lord, today we pray you would

bless this time of study together and the word of God.

And we thank you for your many blessings, your many mercies,

and may may we all be blessed to have this extra day tomorrow to

thank. And at 3 O clock, most people in

the country will take a moment to pray.

And once again, thank you for those who have given their lives

again for this country. And we pray all these things in

Jesus name, Amen. Amen.

Well, we are in the book of first Corinthians chapter 3 of

1 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

second Corinthians chapter 3. Excuse me.

2 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

And before I go there, I wanted to read something from Second

Peter. And I was thinking about this

after being at the conference and then been through some stuff

this week. Our daughter Jessica was in a

serious accident on Monday. So I was at the conference and

my older daughter text me and said that Jessica was in a

accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

A tractor trailer ran into her as a traffic was slowing down.

And thank God she wasn't killed. It could have been a lot worse,

but please pray for her. She's in excruciating pain.

So they had CAT scans, X-rays. They're not sure if a sternum

has been ripped. So she's going to have an MRI on

Tuesday. They were at the ER again, I

think for the third time last night because of pain.

So please hold up Dan and Jess and their family.

But when that happened, I got that news.

I thought, man, you know how quickly life can change, right?

For any of us. And so I was sort of out of it

the first day. I was pacing in the hallway

hearing the message through the loudspeaker, but really not

thinking about it deeply because I was concerned and didn't know

whether I should go home or what.

But, you know, she was stable. So we stayed.

But so that that's been heavy on my heart all week.

You know, when something happens to one of your kids, it gets

your attention quickly. So again, thank you for your

prayers for for her. This Friday, Cindy will be

getting surgery on a disc in her neck.

And so the procedures, they go through the neck and then do the

surgery. It's about two hours and she'll

be there overnight on Friday and come out Saturday.

So pray that it'll accomplish what she needs to have

accomplished for her own health and balance and pain issues and

that kind of stuff. So thank you for for praying One

of the things I was thinking about this morning as I was

tying everything together in regard to the the message today.

Second Corinthians chapter 3 is a very deep chapter and I don't

2 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

want to roam and go through it too quickly.

It's it's all about the new covenant and the new covenant.

I don't know how many in here are familiar with the new

covenant. If you ever thought about it,

you understand what it is. I want to try to to the best of

my ability, explain it a little bit, but second Peter chapter 2,

2 Peter 2 · chapter mention

it says in verse 2, grace and peace be multiplied to you and

the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord as his divine

power has given us all things that pertain to life and

godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by glory

and virtue by which have been given to us exceeding great and

precious promises that through these you may be partakers of

the divine nature future having escaped the corruption that is

in the world through lust. So my question to you and to me

today is how many of us live life every day in our own

strength. Get up in the morning, you get

your coffee, you got this To Do List work, whatever house,

family, the lifts your wife gives you and you just jump in

and you begin to do what you know you need to get done.

And do we stop and say, Lord, I got a big day ahead of me today

and I can't do this without your strength, without your help,

without your enablement. I need you, Lord, to you live in

me and I want you to work in me and through me to accomplish

what it is you want me to accomplish.

And I tune into that sometimes and sometimes I don't.

And so sometimes I get like really exhausted or burnt out or

tired or frustrated or whatever. And then the Lord reminds me,

Clark, you're doing this without me.

You're trying to get through without my strength, my power.

And so this power is available to everyone of us.

Jesus said, I've come that you might have life and you might

have it more abundantly. So abundant life.

What does that mean? It's Zoe, the Greek word, which

means the God kind of life. So when Jesus came to the earth,

he's fully God, fully man perfect.

And we watched and read and, and learned about how he lived his

life and what he accomplished, what he did.

And, and people say, well, how did, how did Christ do that or

how did he get through all that? Well, he's God #1 he's able to

do anything. Nothing prevents God from

accomplishing his perfect will. But God also knows our

weaknesses. And he didn't just come to save

us from our sin, but he came to give us a new life, a

resurrected kind of life, a life of overcoming sin, a life of

overcoming weaknesses, a life of just being humble and realizing

that we need him for everything. And I, I had a good example that

yesterday. So Cindy, we're trying to get

the house together before this surgery on Friday.

Some things getting done and she's all worried about the

garden and all these weeds out there.

She used to go out there and do them and she hasn't been in the

condition she can do that this year.

And we're waiting for some of the grandkids.

Hire someone, whatever, you know, any kids that want to pull

weeds, tell them to call me. I'll hire them.

You know, can't pay you well, OK, This family down here, the

steals. Cindy, call those boys.

They raised me. You'll get paid well, believe

me. So anyway, so she's in there

doing stuff and I, I went outside, it stopped raining and

I'm looking at these like thorn bushes that come up out of the

ground and there's like hundreds of them, literally 100.

And, and so I, I went to the shed and I got a, a glove and I

forgot how to just pull out a few.

And so I'm out there and I'm, I'm pulling them out and most of

them are coming out easy. And then I'm looking around and

the more I pulled, the more I saw needed to be pulled.

So I was thinking I'd do it for maybe 1/2 an hour and Cindy

would be, well, that's, that's nice.

Clark, thanks for doing that, right.

Next thing I know, I'm out there doing like for hours.

And I was so tired after a while, I couldn't keep bending,

bending down because I don't use those muscles like I used to.

So I'm pretty sorted. I had to take some Advil last

night. So finally I just sat in the

dirt. I didn't care about whether how

dirty my jeans were. I'm laying down, I'm pulling

these things out. And I got these three huge bags

of these Jagger bushes. I mean, it's unbelievable.

And when you pull them out, these roots, they're just not

like that. They're like really, really deep

roots. And then I was thinking the

parallel of sin, right? How we all have issues of sin

and we asked the Lord to forgive us.

And he does. But he says sometimes though,

there's some more roots I want to pull out of your heart here.

You think they're out and I just pulled them out superficially or

so by the time I was done work to do more cultivation of the

soil, to get it completely out. So by the time I was done, yeah,

I was exhausted and all that. But when I was doing it, I was

thinking about this subject the day of the new Covenant.

And I said, Lord, in order to do this and do it with a good

attitude, God bless you and not be like totally burnt out, I

need your strength to do this. And he gave me, believe me, he

gave me strength to pull all these things out.

I mean, I look back at the ground, I'm thinking, how in the

world did I actually do that? And then the Lord's reminded me

it was me and you doing it through you.

And so I need to be in tune with this subject of, of God's

enablement and his power and everything I do in my life every

day. And you do too.

And so just to give you a little bit of background on the new

covenant before I get into this section of Second Corinthians

2 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3, Jesus Christ is the mediator of the new covenant.

Every week we take the Lord's Supper, and it tells us in Luke

2220 when I say this cup is a new covenant in my blood, which

is shed for the forgiveness of sins of many.

We celebrate this promise of this new life that's given to us

in Christ, a new covenant, a new way to live.

And this was also spoken by the prophets Moses, Jeremiah, and

Ezekiel throughout the Old Testament.

They alluded to this new covenant that would eventually

come when Christ came. The old covenant that God had

established with His people required strict obedience to the

Mosaic Law. The real law required Israel to

perform daily sacrifices in order to atone for sin.

So you think about the impossibility of the Old

covenant to accomplish what the new covenant supernaturally does

in our lives. The Old covenant was an external

way of trying to please God by following the 10 commandments in

the in the Jewish law. And no matter how hard people

tried to do that, they failed all the time.

And that's why they had to have the daily sacrifices to cover

the sins, not completely eradicate them, but to cover

them until the time of the perfect sacrifice, Jesus Christ

would come. And so you think about the

intensity of what it must have been like to never really have

that deep sense of forgiveness inside, knowing you had to bring

animals to the temple to be to be sacrificed in order to

appease God temporarily. And so Moses, he said in

Deuteronomy 29, four, he was looking forward to the time when

Israel will be given a heart to understand.

In Deuteronomy 30 verses one through 5, the Lord said, your

Lord, your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of

your descendants so that you may love him with all your heart,

with all your soul, with all your life.

The new covenant involves a total heart change of heart so

that God's people are naturally pleasing to Him.

The Jeremiah the prophet predicted in the new covenant.

The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new

covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of

Judah. This is a covenant I will make

with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord.

I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God and they will be my people.

Jeremiah 3131 through 33. So Jesus Christ came and

fulfilled the law of Moses perfectly.

The old covenant was written in tablets of stone, but the new

covenant is written in your heart and mine.

If you're born again, save blood, believer.

Entering the new covenant is made only possible by complete

total faith in what Jesus Christ did is shed blood and taking

away our sins at the cross. And Jesus relates us as I said

in the Last Supper, when he said this cup is poured out for you

as the new covenant in my blood. Ezekiel said in verses chapter

3626 through 27. I will give you a new heart, put

a new spirit in you. I'll remove from your heart the

heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees

and be careful to keep my laws. A new heart, a new spirit, the

indwelling Spirit, the Holy Spirit is true holiness.

And so this is really important because if we try to live this

life in our own strength as a Christian, we'll have no joy.

We'll have nothing but guilt should have would have could

have kind of stuff regret, remembrance of past sins and

this living in a a circular motion of of despondency and

depression. So many churches a day can be

Bible churches that if, if the leaders of the church, the

teachers are putting you under guilt trips and under law, you

got to have a conversation with them and say, you're not telling

me the truth in the new covenant.

You're trying to make me feel inadequate and I never do

enough. I can never be good enough.

And you're, you're really depressing me, pastor.

So I pray that I don't do that. I pray that when we come up

here, the message in the power of God's grace is very clear and

evident. And that you are being empowered

in your life through the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome

and to do whatever it is that God's calling you to do in in

your life through the power of the Holy Spirit.

That couldn't have been overemphasized enough at the

pastors conference because a lot of guys go there weary,

discouraged. Some are thinking of quitting or

whatever because it's an impossible calling.

But whenever you get enlightened by the word of God and he begins

to speak to you about the power that we have in Jesus Christ,

that He lives in US, and whatever you are facing in your

life, no matter how challenging or difficult it is because of

Christ being in you, you will get through it because His power

is not going to ever let you down.

If you're relying and depending on His power, if you're

depending on yourself and your own abilities, you'll be let

down because you will fail. That Jesus never fails, right?

He never fails. So we have to continually come

to him and be empowered and be filled so that we might be able

to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So when we look at the chapter 3 of of Second Corinthians, Paul's

writing some some things in here and he says that we are they the

Corinthian believers or the epistle of Christ ministered by

us, written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God,

not untabled tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh that is

of the heart. So when the Holy Spirit lives in

you, God by your response shouldn't be looking at the law

and trying to impress God by your ability to think you're

fulfilling the law by your own righteousness, your own ability.

It's it's ludicrous. You're reminded that what gives

you the compulsion to follow Jesus and to love him and to

love others as he loved us is coming completely from the power

of the New Covenant. It's coming from Christ in you.

He's the one that gives you the desire not to want to sin.

But if you're looking at the law and trying to make promises of

God that you're going to be better and you're going to send

less, you're externally trying to communicate with him that

you're going to do something that he's already accomplished

through his death, burial and resurrection.

That's that's not real cool, is it?

Like, Lord, I know what you did for me, but it isn't really good

enough. So let me let me show you what I

can do. And the Lord is like, come on,

you know, get in the word. You don't you don't even know

what you're talking about. And so the Old Testament

prophets, as I read earlier, they were looking forward to the

day that the new covenant would come.

And so Paul then continues in verses 4 through 6, he says, and

we have such trust through Christ toward God, not that we

are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from

ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.

So that's Amen, all powerful, 100% the God-given truth that

you and me are not sufficient in ourselves to do anything on

behalf of God. That's in marriage, that's in

raising kids, that's in being a, an employee or an employer or,

or looking at the world system and, and, and not judging

people, but praying for people to get saved by God's grace.

All this comes as a result of this recognition that I'm

insufficient in and of myself, but my sufficiency is of Christ.

Each Sunday when I come up here and the pastors, the teachers,

we come up, we're not like thinking.

We got it all together and we got it all figured out.

We're in process too, like you guys.

But we realized when we come here that everything we have to

give you is from the truth of the Word of God.

And it always points to Jesus Christ as being the one who does

this right. All glory to him.

There's no glory to us. We just get an opportunity to be

part of what it is He does through the power of His Word

and changing hearts. He works inside to transform

you, to make him to make you and me more like Jesus Christ.

It's not like the promises. It's not how many more times can

I repent? How many more older calls do I

have to go to to get right with God?

How many, you know, whatever this, this treadmill of, of

inadequacy and trying to somehow make myself feel adequate by

what I do versus what He's done. And that's a big difference,

isn't it? Do we focus on what Christ has

done, or do we focus on our failures?

You and I have a list of failures, right?

We all do Thank God. He chooses to not judge us and

accept us based upon our failures.

He He accepts us based upon Christ's perfect righteousness.

That should give us like a sense of this major relief.

Like that's awesome that I can't be good enough ever to inherit

that righteousness by something I've done.

It's been given to me as a gift of God, right?

For by grace you've been saved through faith.

And this is not yourselves. It's a gift of God, not of

works. So no one can boast about it.

It's completely the tremendous grace of God.

And so Paul talks about this truth in this section of chapter

3, that he's made us sufficient as ministers of the New

Covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit.

For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

The law is good, it's perfect. But what it does, it shows us

why we need a Savior. It's not given to us to judge

ourselves and have this graft. Well, I'm pretty good because I,

I didn't do eight of these things.

I need two of them, right? That doesn't work that way.

I've broken them all. Whether you did it physically or

in your mind or whatever, you're guilty of sin.

We've broken the law of God. And that's why there's

judgement. And that's why the judgement had

to be poured out upon Jesus Christ.

And so God enables us to be servants of the new covenant.

We want to give you guys the truth of the work of the Spirit

in the Christian life, not the letter of the law, which would

be killing and diminishing the work and the power of the Holy

Spirit in your life. So it's a big deal to realize

that we're not sufficient of ourselves.

OK, if you think you have something to give or to offer,

you're going to be seriously disillusioned because you're

going to find out in time that this this won't work.

That's why some people stop going to church.

They fall on Jesus is too hard. I keep making mistakes, I fail.

The pastor makes me feel guilty all the time.

I don't need, you know, I don't need condemnation.

I don't need guilt. Well, the enemy is the accuser

of the brother and the Lord isn't.

Jesus doesn't accuse you, the Holy Spirit convicts you to

continually surrender and allow him to change in your life what

needs to be changed. And so we have to understand

that this new covenant is a glorious, glorious thing that

the Lord has given us to be able to experience.

And we have this indwelling spirit in our heart that he

tells me and you how to live. He tells us the wisdom that we

need to have in order to live a life that is honorable and

pleasing to God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

He tells us how to treat one another.

He tells us how to respond to issues in life and a godly and a

Christ honoring way. It's all the Spirit of God.

God the Holy Spirit, third person of Trinity, lives in you.

Christ knew that you and I could not do this without help.

And that's why he said when he was leaving, he was going to

send another helper, the Holy Spirit, who, who would not any,

you know, come to you, but live in you and be in you and live

through you. And, and I think the enemy, he

loves the fact that if we don't understand the work of the Holy

Spirit and we're not depending on the Holy Spirit and we're not

walking in the Holy Spirit and we're not overcoming in the Holy

Spirit, we're trying to do it ourselves.

And he's smiling because we will have no impact, no power are the

change anything, let alone see us change and anybody else

change. It's got to be the the work of

the indwelling Holy Spirit in all of our lives.

So then he continues, if this ministry in verse 7, the the if

the ministry of death written and engraved on stones was

glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look

steadfastly at the face of Moses because of the glory of his

countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the

ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?

For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the

ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory.

For even when what was made glorious had no glory in this

respect, because of the glory that excels.

For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much

more glorious. So you guys know the, the story

Moses went up on the mountain. He's, he spoke with God.

The reflection of God's glory was all over Moses face.

And whenever he came off the mountain, people were freaking

out because of the, the, the Shekinah glory of God was being

reflected off of Moses. And so he had to put a veil on.

And and this, this glory that Moses had because he was

speaking with God was a diminishing glory.

It wasn't a glory that would stay because it was rooted in

the teachings of what Christ initially started with the

requirements of the Old Covenant and the sacrifices of animals

and the responsibility for them to follow the traditions and the

law and all that kind of stuff. And so nonetheless, it was

glorious because God was speaking.

He was speaking to the servant Moses.

And his law is perfect and holy, but the whole human race is

imperfect and unholy. And he knew when he gave it to

Moses, his servant Moses learned real quickly that this is an

impossible situation. These people can't do this.

And he was so frustrated when he cracked the rock with the, the,

the rod because of frustration, the rebellion of the people that

God had to say, well, you're not going to, you know, have the

opportunity to go into the promised land and we send Joshua

and those other ones in there. And he, you know, he departed.

He was with the Lord. But because of his

misunderstanding of trying to dictate self righteousness

through obedience to the law, everyone failed.

Someone said to me this morning, I visited churches here and

there and, and they were nice churches and they taught the

Bible, Bible churches, but it was too much religion and not

enough grace. We need 100% grace and 0%

religion, right? And it's not my job or anybody

else's job to make you like Jesus or or more in love with

Jesus or more follower of that's up to the Holy Spirit in you.

You responding to what the Spirit wants you to do what I

think is inconsequential. It's what what the Spirit needs

to do in your life and mine. And so you have loved ones,

family, people rebelling, doing whatever you get frustrated.

They should do this, they should do that.

Why are they doing this? Why aren't they doing, you know,

we got all these like ideas of how people should live their

lives. That's the wrong way to approach

relationships with people. We need to pray for them, and we

need to ask the Holy Spirit to do in them what needs to be done

in order for their lives to be changed.

You can't change them. You can't Guild them.

You can't do anything but love them and share the word of God

with them. Share your own story of what

you're learning. Maybe share your own

embarrassing sins and how you did stupid things.

And you realize it wasn't until Jesus came and saved you that

you began to understand that you needed to be saved from yourself

so that Christ can live his life in you fully and you can have an

overcoming life and you can become more Christ like because

Christ is doing the job, not you anymore.

So Moses went through that process of, of with these

people, the, the glory was passing, but the glory of Jesus

Christ lasts forever. And it doesn't have to be this

reflective light or glowing on our face.

It's it's the salt and the light that you and I have become as we

live our lives, People get a fragrance that there's something

beautiful is something significant in US and, and

through US. It's different than what they

experience with with other people that don't have the Lord

in their lives. And that's, that's really what

my prayer is. And and, and, and, and hopefully

yours too, that when you're out and about, people recognize

something different in you because you, you're acting

different, not because you're some holy role or self-righteous

person. You're just like full of the

Lord and full of his joy. And you bless people when

they're around you and they begin to notice that there's

this, this God you say you follow must be real and must

have power because you're not normal.

The way you live is not normal the way everybody else lives.

Some people say to you, how can you forgive or how can you do be

gracious to this person who did this to to you.

You tell them, well, this is what Jesus did for me and he

wants me obviously to let him do that for other people too and do

it through me and for me. So it's, it's exciting and and

it's something you got. I have to meditate on more.

I have to think about it more in my in regard to my own life.

How do I live this this out and listening to the Lord whenever I

I let my wife down once in a while, more than once in a

while, we'd be honest with you. It's because I'm living in my

own strength. But if I'm living in the power

of the Holy Spirit, she's blessed when I pulled those

weeds out. That's not Clark.

That was the Lord yesterday. Believe me, that was definitely

the Lord. And then when I went in, she had

this glow about her. She had that.

She said I wanted to be out there but I couldn't, you know,

she said what you did for me was nicer than roses.

I don't know how many times I brought roses home to try to get

on her good side and bless her, but doing that was like a self

sacrifice thing. So Lord's patting me on the

back. You're listening, Clark.

That's good, you know. But anyway, so this, this power

of this new covenant is, is, is really, really exciting to begin

to, I guess, begin to comprehend at a different dimension.

Maybe if I noticed at the conference this year, maybe it's

because I'm getting older. I've been been there many times,

but there was so much love there and grace and, and this joy of

being around the brothers, you know, meeting new brothers,

seeing guys you've known for years.

Joe and I sort of look a lot alike.

We're the same age and Gray hair and glasses.

I'm walking on a hallway and this guy comes up to me.

He goes, did you start this church from nothing?

And it became this church, this huge church.

I said, no, my name's Clark. That's Joe.

I have a small church back in Greensburg, PA.

But he's a what? Can I get a picture with you?

I don't know why he thought it was some kind of famous person

or something. But anyway, it was his first

time to be there and he was excited to be at the conference.

So, so when Paul had this understanding of this new

covenant, the Judaizers at the time would come into a church as

I spoke last week, trying to say they were sent by Paul and they

would begin to tell these Gentile Christians and even the

Jewish Christians that they had to live and fulfill the law

along with having faith in Jesus Christ.

And that's another gospel. That's a distortion of the

gospel. And so Paul said, if I, or an

Angel from God, an Angel from heaven, bring unto you any other

gospel than that which you've received, let it be accursed.

Never let anybody any teacher you're listening to reading

about, if they're putting the law on you and they're putting

guilt on you and they're putting pride and self-righteous on you,

self righteousness on you and not grace and thankfulness and

gratitude for who Jesus is and what he's done for you.

Shut, shut it, turn it off, run away from it.

It's it's poison to your freedom in Christ.

So, so therefore in verse 12, Paul says, since we have such

hope now this guy is is preaching in places that don't

want them. People are saying bad stuff

about him. They're slandering him.

If it wasn't for Christ in him, he would have just quit.

He would have gone back to this making tents, which he did to

help his livelihood. He says because of this hope in

Christ, we use great boldness of speech.

In other words, he can come and speak to anybody with a glorious

gospel, knowing it's going to have power and lies for those

who believe, he said. Unlike Moses, who put a veil

over his face so that the children of Israel could not

look steadfastly at the end of what was passing away, but their

minds were blinded. But until this day, that same

veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament

because the veil is taken away in Christ.

So all these Jewish folks that are still going to synagogue and

they're listening to the Torah and they're being told about

kosher and this and that, all these rules and regulations

they're trying to do not most Jews don't even go anymore, But

the ones that are trying to be faithful to their heritage, they

got to be exhausted because what they're doing doesn't bring life

at this brings death. This brings a sense of like this

is impossible to them if they really understand.

But underneath the Holy Spirit can take the veil away not only

of the Jewish person, but of the Gentile to make us see our need

of Christ. I can't do that for you.

You can't do it for me. It's a mystery.

It's a work of the Holy Spirit, how He moves in people's lives.

Why did He move in mine? And a lot of people that I grew

up with, they still can't see what the Lord has given me grace

to see. That's a mystery.

But God, that's God's sovereign. He, he does things according to

counsel, His own will, not my will.

But you never give up on giving the gospel to people, no matter

how many times the veil was over their eyes.

One day that veil may be lifted. The thief on the cross, the last

seconds of his life, he realized Jesus is the Messiah.

And then he wanted him to be his Savior.

And Jesus said truly this day he shall be with me in paradise.

So therefore he has his boldness and he's able to preach the

gospel with power. For until this day, the same

veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament

because a veil is taken away in Christ.

But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies in their

hearts. Nevertheless, when one turns to

the Lord, the veil is taken away.

So if you're here today and you can't see or understand

anything, I'm saying, ask Jesus to take the veil away so you can

see the truth, so you can believe, and He will take that

away. And when He takes that away, you

pass from death unto life. You realize you were a Sinner

and you need a Savior and he's the only one that can change

your life. It says if anyone's in Christ,

he's a new creation. Old things are passed away.

All things have become new. The new covenant, Amen.

All things have become new Now. The Lord is the Spirit in verse

17. And where the Spirit of the Lord

is, there is liberty, not bondage, not guilt, not

condemnation, but freedom in Christ.

But we all with unveiled face beholding in a mirror as in a

mirror the glory of the Lord. And back in those days those

mirrors were not real clear like ours today.

So it was sort of a distorted view, but they knew that they

were being changed by the glory of the Lord.

They were being transformed into the same image from glory to

glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

And that's what's happening in your life when you come to to

Calvary or any Bible church or you're, you're reading a good

commentary that's based on truth and the Bible and you're

listening to Grace FM or whatever.

You're hearing this word over and over again of the grace of

God, the new covenant, the freedom we have in Christ.

It's just awesome, isn't it? We don't have to walk around

with her back bent down and, and oh, look at things are terrible.

Look at those going on here and there.

Look what they're doing here. Look what?

Don't look at that stuff. Look at what Christ has done,

what he continues to do as he saves one person at a time

throughout the whole earth, right?

We have good news, right? We have the best news ever.

And when people get a hold of hearing this good news, it

changes their life. They're never the same again,

and you can go deeper the more you want to experience the power

of the new Covenant. You send time with Jesus, read

his Word, praise him, thank him for who he is, what he's done.

You know, allow the Lord to help you fall deeper in love with

him. As you fall deeper in love with

him, you're not going to be doing the stupid stuff that you

normally would do when you have an intimate relationship with

the Lord. You care about honoring him

because it comes from him in you that new covenant giving you

that desire to go deeper with him and to praise him so that

the worship team can come forward.

And this allow the Lord to open your hearts and your minds to

this. I I trust that this is something

that will enable you to experience your faith in the

Lord in a much more glorious and wondrous way, to be excited

about all that the Lord has done for you and how much he loves

you and how much he continually forgives you and continually

cleanses you from all unrighteousness and.

There's nothing like this. There's no other message like

this in the face of the planet. No other quote religion out

there can give us and do for us what Jesus Christ has done for

us. Amen.

Amen. Well, let's pray and allow the

Holy Spirit to get our eyes on the Lord as we remember what

he's done for us. It's Memorial Day remembering

all these men and women have given their lives for Jesus, for

the for the USAI mean, but the one that we really memorialize

today more than anyone is Jesus. Every Sunday we remember his

death and his sacrifice on behalf of us, not only saving us

from hell and giving us eternal life and forgiveness, a sin, but

living in us to help us. And every situation of our

lives, every relationship, every conversation, every temptation,

anything that's coming against us, He's with us to show us the

way through it. Lord Jesus, we're so grateful

for you giving us this new covenant.

We're so thankful that we can walk out of here today with our

heads held high, looking at you, looking unto Jesus.

You're the author and finisher of our faith.

The good work you've begun on us, the Word says you will

perform it and fulfill it in the day of Your coming or the day

that we enter into Your presence.

Lord, we pray if there's any here today and the veil is on

their eyes, that Lord, by Your sovereign decree and grace she

would lift that veil and cause them today for the first time

ever to see who You are and recognize what You've done and

come to You for forgiveness of sin and to be given new life.

On the night that Jesus is betrayed, He took the bread in

his hands and he broke it and He gave thanks.

He said, this is my body which is given for you.

Eat this in remembrance of me. The same manner in that cup and

same manner in that night He took the cup.

He said, This cup is a new covenant in my blood, which was

shed for the forgiveness of sins of many.

Drink this in remembrance of me. For as often as we eat this

bread and we drink this cup, we show forth the Lord's death till

he comes again. Amen.

Good news, right? Amen.

Be blessed.