The New Covenant

I've been meditating on the phrase and Jude keep yourself in the love of God.

Keep yourself in the love of God.

That doesn't mean that you have to please God in such a way for him to continue to love you.

He's not a cruel God like that.

Does it mean you keep yourself in God's love?

God loves you nonstop, but we forget.

We forget.

We don't live in that love.

We sometimes don't remember the love of God.

I know some of you are going through some hardships and difficulties.

In fact, who's not?

There's a lot of hurt and pain that we're going through, but I'm convinced you can go through anything.

I could go through anything if I know Jesus loves me.

To know that Jesus loves you, not just loves you generically like he loves the church generically.

That is a precious baby.

You know, it's not that he just loves you generically or just has to love you because you're a part of the church, but if you can remind yourself that he loves you particularly, that he has a unique love for you.

Now, whatever you're going through, you can be sustained.

So let me pray for you this week that the gospel of Mark comes alive to you.

Let's pray.

Dear Lord, we're grateful for the gospel of Matthew.

In it we saw an experienced and glorious truths about your son, Jesus.

Here we're looking forward to opening up another gospel, a shorter gospel, but with the same glorious truths of your son.

Lord let us, let us who've heard the gospel so many times not grow weary to not think it's just dry truth.

I pray dear Lord for the people here, your people, your sheep, pray for them.

I'd ask that Lord that you would speak to them through your word, in your word, by your word to such a special way that they know that you have spoken to them.

Or that they have feasted directly, not just through the mediation of the church or through the sermon or through the fellowship of the saints, but you would speak to them directly without the mediation of people, but directly through your written word, that they know that you love them, that you speak to them, that you encourage them, that they will see how glorious Jesus is and have a greater love for him.

This we pray in your son's name.

Amen.

All right.

We are in Jeremiah 31 and we're going to finish up our series on covenant theology.

I'm going to try to wrap up all the loose ends today and make the old and new Testament make sense because it's strange and that we have two major testaments and it's easy for us to think, why are there two testaments?

Why is the Bible broken up into two divisions?

And there are various ways to understand the relationship between your old Testament and new Testament.

And depending upon how you understand that relationship will determine to a large degree your overall theology.

It'll shape how you understand the scriptures.

And there are those who stress the unity or the newity between the old and new Testament and they stress it in such a way that it gives them warrant to baptize their little children.

So you wonder why our Presbyterian brothers and sisters are so eager to baptize their children when you don't see a new Testament command issuing that.

Well, it's not because there's a command or lacking a command, but it's because they see that the new covenant is just a continuation in basic harmony and unity with all the covenants of the old Testament.

There's basic unity.

And so for the Presbyterians, they look at all the old Testament covenants, not as administrations of the covenant of works as I have been teaching, but they view it as an administration of the covenant of grace.

So at the heart of these old Testament covenants is grace.

It's not do and live and curse.

It is the one who doesn't do, but grace is the heart and soul or the essence of these old Testament covenants and these old Testament covenants all included an earthly prosperity.

It all included your earthly descendants.

We'll see that the old covenant was a theocracy.

You know, you're, you're born into it.

You know, you're a American citizen by birth.

You don't have to be born again.

You don't as if you're born here, you don't have to go through a ceremonial process to become a citizen.

You're just born here.

You're American.

Too bad, Ryan.

I just happened to be looking at them.

But that's the way it was for the covenants of old Testament.

You're Israelite because of birth and thus it made sense that you're circumcised.

You're brought into the covenant community.

You don't need regeneration or faith.

It's just natural generation.

But they see that as a covenant of grace.

And now that the new covenant is just the last and final installment, the fullest manifestation of that covenant, they just automatically assume, hey, this covenant of grace is also going to include our earthly descendants.

That's the way all other covenants were like.

So why would this covenant be different?

So that's why they baptize their children.

So they're, they're overstressing the continuity and the unity of the two covenants, the old and new Testament.

Then there's others that like to stress the discontinuity.

You have some radical ones that said the old covenant needs to be just basically dropped off our Bibles.

Some of the old extreme Kembalites and church of Christ, they basically disregard the old Testament.

And then the old school, I'm not talking about contemporary dispensationalists, but the old, old, old original dispensationalists, they really stress the discontinuity of the old and new covenants.

And as if there are two peoples, two, two plans, plan A, plan B, and that the new covenant is kind of just this side deal going on for a temporary time until God goes back to what He originally was planning to do with the nation of Israel.

So you have two covenants, two people, and some would even say, you know, two laws, two different ethical standards and to, to the extreme, which thankfully there's hardly anybody that I know that would say this today.

But to the extreme would say there's two ways of salvation in which that's heretical.

But that's where you have these, this great discontinuity.

And then you got people today, contemporary evangelists will say we need to unhitch ourselves from the old Testament.

You know, that's just, that's a, that's a God, a different God than the God of the new Testament.

That's extreme form of discontinuity.

So as we got our Bibles, we got this, some that wants to stress the unity and continuity between the two covenants and others that want to stress the discontinuity and the division of the two covenants.

Well, what I want to do is, as we wrap up this series on covenant theology, I want to show the continuity and the discontinuity of the old and new Testament, particularly as we look at Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34.

Let's read with me.

Behold, the days are coming declares the Lord when I'll make a new covenant with the house of Israel in the house of Judah.

Not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke.

Though I was their husband declares the Lord for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord.

I will put my law within them.

I will write it upon their hearts.

I will be their God and they shall be my people and no longer shall each one teaches neighbor and each his brother saying, know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.

So first we will look at the continuity of the old and new Testament.

That way we don't want to chop off the old testaments that we don't need that.

The old Testament is the foundation of the new Testament.

In fact, the new Testament doesn't make sense without the old Testament.

One of the things that unites the two testaments together is that they have the same promises.

It's the same promises.

Now you could go back to the promise of the gospel given to Adam after the fall.

Your seeds going to crush the serpent's head.

That promises the old Testament gospel.

That's the same promise that we have in the new Testament.

It's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now you could go to the covenant that God made with Abraham.

He says in your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

That's a promise.

And it was given not you don't have to wait to the new Testament to see the promise.

You see that promise given to Abraham and Abraham believed that his seed he saw the day of Jesus.

Jesus says Abraham saw my day and he was glad by faith.

Abraham knew that it would be his Messiah that his seed would be the Messiah and in this Messiah in this coming child that would be his descendant all not just his nation or his physical children but all children of the world all nations all ethnicities would be blessed and Abraham believed and was justified by faith.

That's the same promise we have today.

Well throughout the promises depicted in the Abrahamic covenant is not a different promise than the new covenant.

I want you to see that it's not a different gospel.

God promised Abraham a people.

He promised him the world.

He promised him a kingdom.

He promised him that his children would be the children of God.

These are the very same promises of the new covenant.

Now the promises are also in the Mosaic covenant.

We see it typified in the animal sacrifices in the ceremonial laws.

We get all these types and shadows.

These animals that died did not do anything in of themselves but they did point to the one who would take away our sins.

They showed the way of salvation is through death through blood and we can look at the temple and we can look at all the all these things and we can see the gospels everywhere in the Old Testament.

You see believers were saved in the Old Testament by the gospel through faith just like Abraham.

He's the model of how salvation took place.

It wasn't through works.

They looked ahead.

We look back.

See it's the same gospel, the same promises, the same faith and the same Messiah.

You see in these promises of the old covenant what God promised Abraham and when God told Moses I'm going to raise up a prophet like you.

These promises in the Old Testament are the very promises that are fulfilled in the New Testament.

Though the Old Testament covenants were administrations of the covenants of works.

They all promised the gospel.

The Davidic covenant promised a kingdom, a people for God, a blessing to the nations.

The Boseaic covenant foreshadowed the gospel through its types and shadows.

The Davidic covenant promised a king who established perfect righteousness and peace on the earth.

Though they demanded perfect obedience to their physical offspring.

Now it promised these glorious truths but these promises place the physical offspring, these earthly children, natural generation.

It placed all of them under this legal demands and law.

But these very promises are the very realities that the New Covenant brings about.

You see there's basic continuity between the Old and New Testament because it's the same promises.

Secondly, the Old Covenant and New Covenant are united by the same law.

Now I've already talked about over and over how there's a difference between positive law and moral law and the positive law like don't eat of this particular tree or you have to be circumcised or the positive laws of not eating pork or not having diverse fabrics.

All these positive laws these things can be abrogated and changed because they're restricted to the various administrations of the covenant in which they're given.

And once those covenants are nullified or abrogated those positive laws go to non-existence.

They no longer apply.

We don't have to worry about not eating of a particular tree.

That command is not given to us.

But all those positive laws are rooted in the moral law and that moral law undergirds all those old covenants and that moral law, the law of God is the very fabric foundation of the New Covenant.

This is why our passage says I'm going to make a new covenant.

He says I'm not going to make a new law.

He says I'm going to write the law not on tablets of stone but I'm going to write that law upon fleshly tablets of the heart.

It's a new covenant in that it's no longer external but internal.

But it's the same law.

It's not a new morality or new standard of ethics.

In other words the commands of the old covenant are the same standard of the new covenant and the commands of the old covenant however have been satisfied or fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

This is why Jesus is in Matthew 5 17 do not think that I've come to do away with the law.

I've not come here to say hey I'm pushing it off the rug let's forget about that.

That was too demanding too hard too strict too severe.

You can't keep that.

Let me make a easier one for you.

No thankfully he didn't do away with it.

He fulfilled it.

He satisfied its demands.

And this is why Romans 3 31 talks about salvation by faith.

Faith doesn't nullify the law.

You know just because you're saved by grace through faith it doesn't mean the law is active like it doesn't exist.

Your faith doesn't nullify the law but Paul says your faith establishes the law.

And what does that mean?

Your faith is in Jesus Christ and he is the fulfillment of the law.

He becomes your righteousness.

He comes your satisfaction of the law.

You need righteousness right but you can't do it.

Your faith doesn't say hey there's another way of salvation that doesn't require obedience.

No your faith takes their obedience of Christ and applies it to you.

This is why faith is not against the law.

You see this is the continuity between the Old and New Testament.

Same promises the same law.

The third element of continuity between your Old and New Testaments is the fact the greatest of all things, Jesus Christ.

You know some have suggested that the church unhitch itself from the Old Testament.

But we must understand that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah of the Old Testament.

Christ is the central theme of the Old Testament.

He's the central character of the Old Testament.

Jesus said in John 5 39 you search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life.

It is they talking about the Old Testament scriptures which bear witness of me.

If you miss Christ in the Old Testament you haven't yet begun to understand the Old Testament.

Jesus says in John 5 46 you have believed Moses.

If you would have believed Moses you would have believed me for he wrote about me.

Luke 24 27 this is Jesus explaining to his disciples beginning with Moses and the prophets.

He explained to them what was written in all the scriptures about himself.

So the heart of the Old Testament is Jesus Christ and the heart of the New Testament is Jesus Christ.

It's the same gospel.

It's the same Christ.

He's the central theme of the Old and New Testament.

You see Jesus Christ is the hitch.

He's the hitch.

With his left hand he holds the Old Testament.

With his right hand he holds the New Testament.

He's the one who holding the Bible together.

And if you're going to cut the Old Testament off the New Testament you're going to have to split Christ in half.

He's the unity of the Bible.

Jesus is everything.

And I know we can we can get caught up in theology.

I love systematic theology in particular.

I've given my life studying the various branches of systematic theology.

But sometimes we can forget when we study theology we make theology into just these dogmas and their definitions and it ceases to be personal.

We forget that it's theology is about a person.

Do you realize Jesus displays the wrath of God on the cross?

So you want to see the wrath of God?

Look at the cross.

He displays the justice of God.

Jesus is the righteousness of God.

Jesus is the wisdom of God.

Jesus is the power of God.

Jesus is the love of God.

Jesus is the fullest revelation of God.

If you want to know who God is you need to know Jesus.

If you see me Jesus says you've seen God.

So he's the he's the greatest manifestation of God is the person of Jesus Christ.

That's why I want to say when we read Mark this week we're not just trying to fill our minds with theology or with doctrine with knowledge.

We want to know the living person of Jesus Christ.

We want to experience him.

We want to relate to him.

We want to deal with him.

If we have sinned we want to not just confess it to the unknown entity in heaven.

We want to confess it to our Savior.

I'm sorry.

And know that we have offended him and know that his grace covers us and live and abide in his love and in his truth and his knowledge.

This is a very personal thing.

You see him in the Old Testament.

You see him in the New Testament.

You see Jesus is the one that was under all the demands of the covenants of the Old Testament.

Jesus was the child of Abraham who had to be circumcised not just in the flesh but in the heart.

Jesus was born in Israel that had to obey the law of Moses.

Jesus was the son of David who was obligated to be the federal head of his people and establish righteousness in the land by his life and his death.

So as we bring my first point to a conclusion here we see that the unity or the continuity between the Old and New Testament is that it's one basic story.

It's not one story.

Let's interrupt that story with a part B or some secondary side endeavor.

No, this is one gospel story from Genesis to Revelation.

It's a unified message.

It's the story of redemption.

Thus there's unity between the Old and New Testament.

The Old Covenant is the foundation of the New Covenant and the New Covenant is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant.

The Old Testament is incomplete without the New Testament and the New Testament doesn't make sense without the Old Testament or of as the church brother Augustine says the new is in the old concealed and the old is in the new revealed.

So that's the continuity.

However, just because we hold to a continuity in unity between the Old and New Testaments, the Bible is one unified story.

We still think there is some great contrast between the Old and New Testament.

There are some things that are quite different between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace and that's what Jeremiah 31 is telling us.

Like I need to make a new covenant.

He says in verse 31, behold the days are coming declares the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah not like the covenant I made with her fathers on the day that when I took them by the hand and to bring them out of the land of Egypt.

So unlike our Presbyterian brothers that want to look at the New Covenant, that's just a new version, an improved version.

You know every year they come up with a new iPhone and it's essentially the same thing.

I hope you understand that by now.

It's essentially the same thing, but with some new improvements, you know, a better camera, you know, and other little things that make you want to go out and get it.

But it's essentially the same and that's the way they essentially view that the New Testament is essentially the same as the Old Testament.

I mean the New Covenant is essentially the same as the Mosaic Covenant.

It's just got some more revelation, a little bit improved.

But that's not the way Jeremiah explains it.

He says I need to make a not an improvement.

I need to make a different covenant because the Old Covenant, there's something faulty with it.

And we're going to see that it's faulty not because the law is faulty is that the participants can't do it.

It brought death rather than life.

So there are some major contrasts or differences or discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments.

One unlike the Old, the New Covenant is based on grace.

This is huge.

Look at verse 32.

My covenant that I that they broke though I was their husband declares the Lord.

Now you cannot break.

I'll say this very clearly.

You cannot break the covenant of grace.

That's glorious news for us who are in it.

If we could break it, we would be out.

If you had to maintain your salvation by your performance or your faithfulness, you and I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

It's grace from start to finish.

But this covenant placed these demands.

You will be my people and I will be your God if you keep my commandments.

And then it says cursed be you if you do not do all, not most, but it is written in the law to do them.

That is a scary covenant for sinners.

That's the way is I need a new covenant and it can't be based upon works.

And Hebrews eight picks up this theme and you could read the whole chapter of eight and I encourage you to do that.

But it's basically saying the same thing.

If the first covenant would have been faultless, there wouldn't have been a need for a new covenant, but finding that the covenant was unable to do what it promised.

It could tell you how to live, but it couldn't help you live.

The law in itself is good.

It's holy, but it can't make you live.

Holy.

It can only expose your unholyness.

And this is a huge problem.

It could command the heart, but it cannot change the heart.

And thus all the earthly participants of the mosaic covenant, all the natural children, Abraham, unless like Abraham, they believed and many of them did and was justified by the blood of Jesus Christ of the new covenant where the new covenant retroactively is saving people in the Old Testament through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Those who are just naturally born, they're under these legal demands of the law.

And it says over and over and over again, as in Psalm 78 10, they did not keep the covenant of God and they refused to walk in his law.

Or as Jeremiah 11 10 says, the house of Israel in the house of Judah have broken my covenant, which I made with her fathers.

Therefore this says the Lord, behold, I'll bring evil upon them, which they're not able to escape.

Jesus says your house is left unto you desolate.

I would have gathered you together like a hen would gather her chicks, but you would not.

And therefore the curses of the law rest upon you.

What is a covenant that you and I need out of?

And this is why the new covenant is based upon grace.

The old covenant brought death.

The new covenant brings life.

And this is why Paul in second Corinthians three says, if the old covenant, which was administration unto death was glorious, how much more glorious is the new covenant, which is administration of life?

So this is one of the great contrast between the mosaic covenant and the new covenant.

Secondly, unlock the old covenant.

The new covenant regenerates its membership.

Look at verse 33 with me.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord.

I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts.

Now this is just a old Testament way of saying, I'm going to give them life.

I'm going to regenerate them.

There's no difference between the law and love.

What is the law?

Love God with all your heart, mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself.

The essence of the law is love.

And the old Testament also speaks about the love of God being poured out in your heart.

The heart of stone being broken and taken away and a heart of flesh being put in its place.

What is this?

It's the love of God being poured into you.

It's not just a command on the outside of you.

He says, Hey, you need to love God with all your heart, mind and soul.

And you're going, Oh, I can't do that.

I've tried.

I fell.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

I can't.

I haven't done that.

And the law outside of you condemns you.

But the law inside of you changes you from the inside out.

See the new covenant makes you a new creation.

This is what we call being born again.

The old covenant, you're, you come into it by natural generation.

You know, you're a Jew just because of birthright.

Hey, I'm a Jew.

I've been circumcised, but the Bible says that it's not the circumcision of the flesh that makes you a true Jew.

It's not the matter that you can say, I have Abraham as my father.

John the Baptist says, don't make that boast that Abraham is your father.

I can raise up these stones.

In fact, I can take the stones of your heart, your heart, my heart, and put the love of God there and raise up children for Abraham.

This is the glory of the new covenant.

It surpasses the glory of the old covenant because the old covenant condemns the new covenant changes.

It regenerates us.

It turns us into new creations.

Now I don't have to go through.

I got in my notes here, like all these verses about how the nation of Israel and the physical children of Abraham, the Israelites as a whole.

Now there was a remnant according to election saved by grace.

And we can look at the heroes of the faith, the Old Testament, but as a whole, we could see how as a nation, they fell.

They disobeyed.

Isaiah 11 says, for earnestly, I exhorted your fathers in the day that I brought them out of the, out of the land of Egypt and to this day, raising early and exhorting and saying, obey my voice.

Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but everyone followed the dictates of their evil heart.

Therefore I will bring upon them the word of this covenant, which I will come to, which I commanded them to do, which they have not done.

Jeremiah 11, Jeremiah is like from the days of old, from the days I brought you out of Egypt until now, you have disobeyed God.

You have failed to obey his commands and his covenant.

One of the last words of the Old Testament is Malachi three seven from the days of your fathers.

You have turned aside from my statutes and you have not kept them.

You see, Israel says you will be my people if you obey.

They just didn't obey.

They made a golden calf at the beginning and they never was able to get their act together.

But all who are in the new covenant because of the work of Christ and the law being given to us inside, all know the Lord as we'll see.

We're all members of the new covenant who are saved by faith and we all have the law written in our hearts.

Thirdly, unlike the old, the new covenant establishes memberships as the people of God.

Look at the end of verse 33.

Not only will he write the law in our hearts, he says, I will be their God and they shall be my people.

Again, here is the message of the Old Testament.

You want to be the people of God, then obey.

Now he stretches out his hands all day long to Israelites and they continue to stone the prophets and refuse.

And even Jesus weeps over Jerusalem because here's the day of the visitation of God and they don't perceive it.

But to you, the Bible says, I was found by those who did not even seek me to you.

This is what it was prophesied according to Paul in Romans nine.

He's quoting Hosea and he says this is fulfilling the prophecy as indeed he says in Hosea, those who are not my people, I will call my people and her who was not beloved, I will call beloved.

And in the very place where it was said to them, you are not my people there.

They will be called the sons of the living God.

Do you understand how privileged you are?

How did you become the children of God?

Not because you're born to Christian parents.

It's not because your mom and dad.

Not because you're born in the right race, ethnicity.

It's because you've been born again by grace.

The fourth major distinction between the Old and New Testament, unlike the old, all the members of the new covenant know the Lord.

This is very important.

Look at verse three, four and no longer shall each one teaches neighbor and each one his brother saying, know the Lord for they also know me from the least of them to the greatest of them declares the Lord.

Now in the Old Testament, it was a theocracy.

It was literally, I don't, I can't use the word Christian because that's a New Testament term, but it was, if you could use Christian, you could call it was Christian nationalism.

It was a theocracy.

It was based upon carnal generation, physical offspring.

This is why you had to take the Old Testament memberships.

Now some of them didn't know the Lord.

Moses knew the Lord.

David knew the Lord.

A lot of them knew the Lord, but not all of them.

And this is why you had to go to the Old Testament membership and say, Hey, let me teach you about the Lord.

Know the Lord.

Let me tell you about the Lord because it's built on the assumption that just because they're in the Mosaic covenant doesn't mean they know.

Sophistically, does it mean that they know Christ, that they know the Lord?

In fact, we learned that many of them, or not most of them did not know the Lord.

And now here's the beauty of the new covenant.

Now hear me really clearly on this.

There's not one single member of the new covenant that doesn't know the Lord.

Not a single one.

Now there may be church members that don't know the Lord.

The wheat and the tare do grow together, but God knows who's in the new covenant.

It's by grace, not by works.

In years not by carnal generation, but by regeneration.

This is why Jesus says you must be born again.

To be in the kingdom of God, you have to be born again.

And listen, this kingdom is not a physical national kingdom.

We looked at that last week.

As an American, just tip my hat on my politics, I'm a nationalist.

I don't want globalism as a citizen of this world.

But as the church, we're globalist.

The church is every tribe, every tongue, every people, every nation.

He says out of every nation, after every kingdom, God is pulling out of himself a people for himself out of this world.

This is why the church is not American.

My kingdom is not of this world.

In this kingdom, Jesus says you cannot even see unless you're born again.

You come through it not by natural generation, but by regeneration.

See, this is a key distinction between what I call Baptist Catholic theology and the other positions.

The other positions have a mixed kingdom or mixed covenant.

You have believers and unbelievers.

You have those who are regenerated with those ungenerated mixing together in one covenant community where the new covenant has just exclusively only those who know the Lord.

This is important because the federal head of the new covenant is Jesus Christ.

He's the federal head.

He's the one that kept the covenant.

He's the one who obeyed it.

He's the one that established it by his blood.

If there's one member of Jesus Christ that he legally represents that does not make it, then Jesus Christ is a poor federal head.

But just as much as Christ cannot lose any of those that God has given them, I've kept them all, then that means the new covenant cannot be otherwise than exclusively restricted to believers.

This is so important as we think about all the issues of our day and the purpose of the church.

It's not to, now I do believe the church and the gospel brings a lot of restraining grace upon our culture and our nations and we pray for that.

And we, as we would do, we need to vote.

We need to do what we can and the kingdom God does improve the world around us.

But our goal and our mission is to redeem God's people out of this world from every tribe and tongue and people.

This world will be destroyed, but the kingdom of God will last and is the only thing that will last forever.

Five, and this is the most glorious truth.

I left it, I would say I left it at the end because I'm smart, but no, it's the last phrase.

Unlike the old, the new covenant brings the forgiveness of sins.

It says, for I will forgive in verse 34, I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sins no more.

The old covenant could point out sin and even in the types and shadows, it could show, hey, the way of forgiveness is the gospel.

It could point us to Christ, but it couldn't bring us to Christ.

It could point us, it can point out, but it couldn't forgive us.

Member Moses, he represents the Mosaic covenant.

He could take Israel all the way to the point of looking into the glory land, looking in, but he himself could not cross.

The law can keep you from thinking I can do it.

In fact, it's meant, and the Mosaic covenant and this law, it wasn't meant just to say, hey, you need to try better and you can work your way into it.

No, it wasn't meant to try to get you to work your way into it.

It was meant to close your mouth and show that you couldn't.

It was meant to say, don't look to self.

And then also in the law, you have these promises and you've got the tops and shadows and it was meant to look to the Messiah, look to the Messiah.

So the old time is pointing to Christ, pointing to Christ, and it can take you to look to Christ, but the law can't bring you over into Christ.

It leaves you powerless.

Sometimes even as Christians, we get thinking that we have to re-earn God's favor.

We have to go back to the law in order to please God.

And we, we under this condemnation and this unbearable weight that we can't bear.

And we forget to look to Christ and as he that brings forgiveness, the weight is removed in Christ, not in the law, but in Christ because Christ obeyed the law on our behalf and took the curses of the law for us.

And so let me make this closing appeal to you who do not know the Lord, because I know there are many here that do not know the Lord.

Many of your children and older people and some of you who may be pretending deep down you're afraid to confess your sins and you're afraid to admit that you're lost because your spouse thinks you're a Christian and you're, and it's your pride.

It doesn't want to, you know what that is.

I'd hate to be in that position where you got this pretense going on and you're scared for that pretense to be exposed, but you don't want that pretense to take you to destruction.

So you who don't know the Lord and you have the weight of the law upon your head, there's only one way of salvation.

There is only one way of forgiveness of sins, all your sins, every one of them, the big ones, the small ones, all of them.

But this is what it says.

I will forgive their iniquity.

And I love this last phrase.

I will remember their sin no more.

You see in conclusion, there's no two gods.

There's one gospel.

This gospel comes from the law being satisfied in Christ.

There's no grace without law.

There's no new covenant without the old covenant.

Life comes from death.

Grace comes from fulfillment of the law and the new covenant is the old covenant fulfilled.

Let's pray.

Lord, we don't know of a better book in the world than the Bible.

It has life.

It has truth.

It has your son.

How beautiful is your son?

Lord, the Old Testament is filled with them.

The New Testament is filled with them.

Help us to be filled with Christ.

Help us to be a living epistle to the world.

Lord, we marvel at the beauty of the unity of the testaments and also the great contrast between grace and law between Moses and Christ and the old covenant and the new covenant.

They work together, but in one way they couldn't be any more opposite.

How you bring these two opposite things together perfectly in the gospel.

I pray, Lord, that the gospel would be powerful to our souls who are already saved and powerful to the souls that are yet to be saved.

In your son's name, amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you.

You