The Covenants Fulfilled
Transcript
Good morning. We're in the last week of our Covenant series. We've spent the summer walking through the promises that God made in the Old Testament about what He was going to do and how He was going to redeem His people. There's an old Greek epic called The Odyssey. It was by Homer. And in that story, Odysseus, who's the main character, he goes with the Greeks to attack the Trojans.
They eventually beat the Trojans through the Trojan horse. They defeat Troy. And then he gets stuck for ten years. So his wife's back home. He's stuck. And the whole odyssey is him traveling to try to get back to his wife.
And while he's gone, people just assume he's dead. And all these guys show up and start hitting on his wife. Like they're suitors. They're trying to get her to marry them. And so they just kind of encamp around his house. They're all, you know, talking, you know, mad game and trying to get her to fall in love.
And she's holding out as best she can and kind of remaining faithful. And Odysseus is trying to get back to her. And eventually he goes in disguise and actually wins his wife back. She holds a tournament and he wins his wife back and actually reclaims what was his all along. Because of his love for her, he pursues her and makes her his again. And as we have looked through history into scripture and seen God's big story of history, we actually see a very similar story where God through sin loses his people.
That we actually took part in the rebellion and he loses us and he promises, I'm going to get you back. And so we've looked at all the covenants as he's followed through pursuing to redeem and to reclaim his people. The biggest difference in this story though is that where Odysseus' wife was faithfully waiting for him, humanity and Israel were not faithful to God. We weren't waiting patiently for him to redeem us. We loved every single suitor that came along and hit on us. We listened to every little sweet word they whispered and thoroughly appreciated it and enjoyed it.
That's why the Bible repeatedly refers to Israel as God's wife. Like he says, I'm your husband. But he also says that Israel is a whore because they ran after every single other God that came along. But God is faithful to pursue. And so what we've been doing is walking through, looking at these promises, looking at these covenants and looking at how God has actively pursued his people to redeem them and bring them back to himself. And so we've been following along with this slide.
We've used this the whole time. We drew it up on a whiteboard when we first got started. What we said was we lost everything in the fall. We were in Eden and it was perfect and it was wonderful. And our relationship with God was great. We were his people in his presence, in his place.
And then we rebelled and we fell in sin and death, entered the world. And that God consistently made these promises and these covenants to work us back to the new earth, back to his place as his people in his presence, back to redeem the picture of what was lost in the fall. We said at the very beginning that all of this would help us understand the Old Testament a little better and help us see Jesus more clearly. That as we saw these promises, we would begin to understand more clearly who Jesus is and what he's accomplished for us. And so we lost everything in the fall. And the original covenant with Adam was that he and Eve would be fruitful and multiply.
They'd fill the earth. They'd have dominion over it. And they would worship God. But they don't do that. They rebel. And so then God makes a promise to the serpent that led them astray.
He says, sin's not going to win. Eventually there's going to be a, he says that I will put enmity between you and Eve, between your offspring, her offspring and you. She will bear a son and he will, you'll bruise his heel, but he'll bruise your head or he'll crush your head. So Jesus comes as that promised offspring to Eve. He was born of a virgin. All in the Bible.
When it gives genealogies, it says this guy had this guy, had this guy, had this guy. It's man to man to man to man. Every once in a while, they'll tell you this was the name of their sister. Every once in a while, they'll say, and this was his wife. If they somehow showed up in the story, but mostly they're just going to write down men's names. But at the very beginning, God says there's going to be a woman who's going to have a son.
And he's pointing to the virgin birth of Christ. So Jesus shows up as the fulfillment of that promise. He promises that sin won't win. And then we move forward a little bit. Noah's here and everybody is terrible. So God has wrath towards sin.
And the question we run into is what's God going to do with our sinfulness? And he's going to punish it. But he tells Noah, I'm going to redeem y'all. I'm going to save you. And then when Noah gets off the ark, he makes a covenant with him that he's not going to do this again. That he's still going to have wrath for sin, but he's not going to take it out on earth again.
He's not going to just pour it out on earth. He's actually, what we find out later, is he's going to pour it out on himself. That Jesus is going to take God's wrath towards sin on the cross. It comes to Abraham. He says, I'm going to give you offspring. And through your offspring, all of the world will be blessed.
Jesus is that promised offspring. He makes a blood covenant with Abraham. And he says, I will destroy you if you disobey me. That's what the blood covenant should have said. But what God makes the covenant with him, he says, I'll destroy me if you disobey me.
And Jesus fulfills that by being the sacrifice to pay for Abraham and Abraham's lineage's guilt. He comes to Moses, gives him the law, brings him into the promised land. And ultimately we find out that Jesus is the high priest and the sacrifice. The high priest that stands in between us and God and the sacrifice that pays for our sin. Jesus continually fulfills all these promises. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law on our behalf.
He comes to David and says, I promise that there will be a king that comes from your lineage that will sit on the throne forever. Some of y'all, you became a Christian or you're like, all right, I'm finally, maybe you weren't a Christian, you're going to check this out. I'm going to read the Bible. I'm going to sit down. I'm going to start reading in the New Testament. You're like, I'm going to do this for real this time.
You open the New Testament and it was like, this guy had this son who had this son who had this son who had this son who had this son. And you were like, oh my goodness, why does it start like this? And the reason is because Jesus came as the promised son of Abraham and the promised son of David. And the New Testament begins because it was writing to a people who knew these promises. And it's saying, I want to show you something. When Jesus shows up on the scene, he didn't come out of nowhere.
He's a child of these promises. And Jesus ultimately becomes the king who rules and reigns forever. And one of the things you hear about Jesus all the time is that Jesus died for our sin. And what we've said is that Jesus fulfilled these promises. The reason Jesus isn't just a point, but he's two points there, is that Jesus dies on the cross to pay for our sin. And then ultimately he returns to bring his church to himself to exist with him in eternity.
And we're kind of in that middle zone. But here's the question. How? How? Like, I see that he fulfilled some of those promises, but how does he do that? Like, what?
I know he died, but how does his death accomplish anything? Like, how does it fix the problem? Like, I see that he comes in line with these promises. I see that he's going to be the king. I see that he's going to fulfill the law. I see that.
But how does his death actually accomplish this? Let's go to Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah 31. This is in the midst of where we left off last week. Because where we left off last week, the people of Israel had had it all together. They had finally gotten it.
They were God's people back in his place, in his presence. And then they just derail. It is off the tracks. It's not even close anymore. They're held captive in another nation. There is no Israel.
There is no temple. There is no king. We read that Psalm where he says, you threw the crown and the throne in the dirt. Like, you have rejected and cast us off. And so Jeremiah is writing. He's prophesying in the midst of that.
And here's what he says. We're going to start 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 their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. So he's referring to the law.
When he rescued the people from Egypt, he made a covenant with them. He said, if you'll just be good, if you'll just obey me, if you'll just follow these laws, then everything will be great and you'll stay in the land. It'll be wonderful if you'll just keep it together. But he says it's a new covenant. It's not going to be like that one. Which is good because that one didn't work out.
He says, not like the covenant that I gave them 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. So he says, I brought them to myself like a husband takes a wife. And I said, you're going to love me and I'm going to love you and this is going to work out. And they broke that covenant. They did not stay faithful to God.
33. 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. And I will be their God and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his 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 the two main components of the new covenant that he's going to make with Israel is this. He's going to put the law on their heart. I mean, he's actually going to go inside and change their heart. He's going to change their love, their desire, their motivation. And he's going to forgive them their sin because that's the main issue that we have. That's the biggest problem with the old covenant.
The one that he says he's replacing was that God was fine. The people weren't so great. Like he held up his end. It was Israel that had the problem. Like we were the problem. Like is us, humanity that couldn't keep it together.
And so what he says is I'm going to step in and I'm going to fix the issue. You see, the sin was the issue. And so if Jesus is going to save us, redeem us and fix us, he's got to take care of sin. And there's two primary issues when it comes to sin. Our guilt. We've actually broken the covenant.
We've rebelled. We stand before God guilty. Those of you who are familiar with the Ten Commandments, like we can't even keep those together. And then Jesus shows up and he says it's not just adultery but lust. It's not just murder but hate. Like he even says it's worse than you think.
Your hearts are broken. We're guilty. We don't stand before God innocent. None of you can walk in in front of God, strut into his throne room and be like, Hey, just wanted to let you know I deserve to be here. And I was thinking maybe, not your throne, like I understand you're God, but maybe a little one where I could just sit next to you. And he'd be like, cool, hop on up here.
You're right. Everybody else is terrible but you. I was just actually writing in my diary about you today about how special you are. Like that's not going to happen. We're all guilty. It's not going to go well.
And we're going to continue to mess that up. So like let's say, let's say your fairy godmother shows up. If you don't have a fairy godmother, you should get one. I've watched Disney movies a lot with my son recently and they seem pretty awesome. Fairy godmother shows up right when you're finishing middle school. And about to go into high school.
And here's what she says. I've shown up and I've got a present for you. I've completely fixed your record and your transcript. You remember the chicken nugget incident from second grade? It's off your record. You're like, yeah, remember, I'm going to need counseling.
It's like it's off your record. It doesn't show up anymore. You remember the teacher you made cry in fifth grade? You remember the fist fight you got in in seventh grade? Gone. As far as your record shows, you've never even been to the principal's office except for twice to receive a commendation and a high five.
Like that's it. Like you, as far as your record shows, you're great. And I changed your transcript. Always. Always. You know how you actually are terrible at math?
Not anymore. When you get to high school, everyone's going to think you're a model student and you're really smart. Now, first of all, thanks. That sounds great. I really appreciate that. Secondly, that's actually not going to help me that much.
Because when I get to high school, I'm not going to magically be good at math. So my teacher might think I'm really smart. She'll just be more disappointed. She may even have a conversation with me where she thinks something's happened in my home life where she's like, you used to be really good at math. And now you're terrible. And I'll have to just be like, uh-huh.
And she'll be like, has something happened? And I'll be like, I can't tell the fairy godmother story because she's going to think I'm crazy. So I'm really just going to have to act like I got some other problems going on. Like immediately the issue is, okay, you can get rid of that, but that's not going to help me in the future. So Jesus has to take care of both.
He's got to handle both sides of our sin. He's got to handle our guilt and our rebellion. He's got to handle our future sin. He's got to be at work in future things that are going to happen. Because if Jesus just shows up and gives me a clean slate, that's really nice. For how long?
Day? Week? How long are we keeping that together? How long do we get to go before we can no longer enter into the throne room again? He's got to do both. Jesus has to step in and handle both sides of sin in order for this new covenant to be accomplished.
And here's what happens. This new covenant, God promises he's going to accomplish both sides. So if we fast forward in history, Ezra and Nehemiah and a couple other people come with them. They eventually rebuild the temple. They rebuild the wall. They eventually kind of have their own little kingdom again.
But it's not as strong as it ever was. And at some point, Rome takes over. Greece takes over. And then Rome takes over. And so when we pick up in the New Testament, the time of Jesus' birth, we have a king in Israel. But he's kind of a puppet king.
Like he doesn't have a whole lot of authority because Caesar is king over him. And there's also a Roman governor there. So they don't have the perfect system set up. And Jesus is born fulfilling massive amounts of prophecy. And the night before he's going to go to the cross, here's what he says to his disciples. And this is in Matthew chapter 26.
We'll have it on the screen. He... He... They're celebrating the Passover, which was Jewish people would celebrate the Passover every year. And it was a celebration of when the Israelites were brought out of Egypt. So they were brought out of slavery.
And they had... Right the night before they were about to be brought out, the last plague was coming on Egypt. And the angel of death was going to travel through Egypt and kill the firstborn son of every household unless you took a very pretty, perfect little lamb and killed it and painted your doorpost with its blood. You had to have a perfect lamb die to cover your doorpost. And this is similar to all the covenants God inaugurates with his people where something innocent has to die. If we've gone through this covenant series, if you've been here throughout this whole summer, a whole lot of animals have died.
Maybe it's been traumatizing for you. Like you should not have gotten emotionally attached to any animal that showed up in any of these stories. Oh, there's a goat there. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not going to be there very long. That's how it's worked.
Every time there's going to be one of these covenants, there's blood that has to be shed. And that's the same with Passover. And that's what they're celebrating. But Jesus breaks from the script in the middle of them celebrating this. And here's what he says. Now, as they were eating, Jesus took the bread.
And after blessing it, he broke it and he gave it to his disciples and said, take, eat. This is my body. So this is completely different now. He's not celebrating the Passover correctly anymore. And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of it, all of you. For this is my blood of the covenant.
Which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Luke chapter 22 says that Jesus says this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. So as they're celebrating the Passover, Jesus says, we're celebrating a new Passover. We're celebrating a new covenant. That when God brought the Israelites out of slavery, he's about to bring a whole new group of people out of slavery. And it's not slavery from Egypt.
It's slavery from sin. I'm about to be the perfect Passover lamb that rescues and redeems. To fulfill the new covenant. And when he talks about the new covenant, he's talking about what we just read in Jeremiah chapter 31. Jesus steps in and accomplishes both sides of this promise. So what the biggest issue was that all the people were still sinful.
They couldn't hold it together. It wasn't just that they needed more information. It wasn't just that they needed God's rules or his laws. Recently, I've been watching the Olympics. Matt, our other pastor, said that his wife asked him if he could take three years off and just focus on one event and try to compete in the next Summer Olympics when it showed up, what event would he pick? And he was smarter than me because as soon as he said that, I tried to think about what I would pick.
And then he said he would pick golf just so he could play golf for three years. He probably wouldn't make it to the Olympics. Golf was a good choice. I had chosen badminton in my head because I tried to think, what do I have a shot at possibly winning? And badminton seems like it's the closest one up there. Because here's the thing.
I've been watching the Olympics. I could have the best coach in the world. Like the Mr. Miyagi of diving or track and field. It ain't happening. Like I've been watching diving.
I was watching that the other day. Like they fold completely in half. They spin like 13 times and then they land perfectly in the water. Not happening. I don't care how much you coach me. Like I don't even think they sell Speedos in the size I'd have to put on.
Like these guys are like 115 pounds or something. But like it ain't happening. I'm watching track and field. You could coach me up all you want. Like it's not happening. I saw a tweet that said, I wish they would put an ordinary person in all the events just for reference.
That would be me. Like I'll catch up with you guys at the end. Like it just wouldn't. And that was it. Like it wasn't just that the people of Israel needed more information. It wasn't just that they needed to know what God's laws were.
It's not just that you need rules. We don't show up on Sunday to tell you the rules. Because let me tell you something. The rules aren't going to fix you. You can have the best coaches you want. You can have the most people around you that every time you step out of line would hit you with a stick.
Let me tell you something. You're not going to stop sinning. It's not going to fix the problem. It wasn't just that they needed to be away from the bad people. Because he brings them into the promised land. And he says we're going to kick everybody out and this is going to fix it.
But it doesn't. Some of you, maybe you've homeschooled your children and you figured that out. Keeping them away from the bad people didn't fix them. And maybe you haven't figured that out. And I'm sorry you had to find out just now. Didn't fix them.
They're still sinners. Maybe they had to be more creative or sneakier. But they're still sinners. Like it didn't fix the problem. We needed someone to step in and take care of our guilt and our rebellion. And they needed to take care of both or we were in trouble.
And Jesus steps in and in the new covenant accomplishes both. He fulfills all the old covenant promises. And he brings in the new covenant. Which is better than the old covenant. Because he takes care of the issue which is sin. Let's talk about how he takes care of our guilt.
He actually pays our debt and removes our guilt. So that God remembers your sin no more. If you've placed faith in Jesus, you've been brought into the new covenant. You've been welcomed into his new covenant people. And your sin does not exist anymore. Every so often when there's political campaigns, they kick around the idea of getting rid of all college tuition debt.
All student debt. All student loan debt. Those of you with student loans, just think about that for a second. I've lost you. You're going to think about that for a long time. Isn't that magical?
Like they throw this idea out. And if that happened, somebody gets into office. They sign a little piece of paper. And your debt is gone. If you had student loan debt, it's magic out of existence. Like it's not there anymore.
You'd pick up the phone. You would call and ask, hey, I wanted to find out about my student loan debt. And they'd be like, hold on one second. And they'd be like, click, click. I'm showing that you have a zero balance. You no longer have debt.
I don't know why this call center still exists. If it was completely wiped out, but just go with me here. You'd call once a week just to hear them say that. It's me again. Look it up. Tell me about that zero one more time.
Like that's what he does with our sin. If you are a Christian, when God goes to look up your sin, he doesn't find it. Because Jesus paid for it. It's gone. Now, immediately, whenever anybody brings up paying off college tuition, like forgiving all student loan debt. Because they use that word, we're going to forgive it.
There's someone in the room who goes, um, you can't just get rid of student loan debt. Someone paid for it. Just so you know how money works. Like, you know this person? Maybe you're sitting next to him. Don't look at him.
But just like, you know what I'm talking about. Like you were on your, I'm not going to have any student loan debt. Hi, like you're bouncing around in clouds. And they jumped up and tackled you. And we're like, let me explain to you about taxes. Like, that's what they jumped in to say.
Like, someone's got to pay for it because the school got paid. The government paid them. But then if the government just says, like the money doesn't just disappear. Somebody paid for that. And they're going to argue that taxes pay for that. Like, that's what they're going to tell you.
Some of you are going, okay, hold on a second. Jesus, like God just does some, some financial maneuvering. And suddenly I've got a zero balance on my sin. No. Jesus says, this is the covenant in my blood. The payment for our sin was death.
Some of you are in here and you're going, there's no way I can be forgiven for the stuff I've done. No way I stand before the God of the universe and I'm made okay. Because no way. Like some of you may even think the only way out of this is death. And I will tell you, your instincts are correct. You are right.
But Jesus died on our behalf. And the payment of the blood of the Son of God covers us. So it wasn't just some fancy footwork. The debt was paid. And we're no longer guilty anymore. Now that's enough to take a praise lap over and be excited about.
But if he doesn't take care of the other half, we're in trouble. Because if he just pays for what I've done so far, that's great. But I've met me and that's not going to last very long. If I need a cosigner, I'll get my wife up here. It's not going to last very long. So we need him to take care of our rebellion as well.
And that's what he promises. He says, I'm going to write my law on their heart. It's not going to be out there that you're going to have to follow. It's going to be in here. He's going to write it on our heart. He's actually going to help us follow.
He continually pays for our guilt once and for all. And helps change us so that we can actually follow. So if you love something, you don't need a rule. Like if you stepped in right now and said, I'm going to be your life coach. And I'm going to give you a couple of rules you have to follow. This fall, you're going to need to enjoy that it's cooler than it was in the summer.
And when it feels nice outside, you're going to need to go outside. I'd be like, I don't need a rule for that. Like I got that. Like I have a fire pit. I already have wood in it. It may at some point just spontaneously combust from the sun.
But if it doesn't, as soon as the first cool day exists, I'm setting that thing on fire and sitting out in my backyard for like hours. Just celebrating the fact that I'm not sweating unless I get too close to the fire. Like this is going to be magical. I don't need a rule to tell me to enjoy cool weather. I don't need you to say I've got to watch football this fall. I'm going to.
Don't need a rule. I may need you to help me with like grief counseling because I'm not so sure the Gamecock is going to be that great. But I don't need a rule. You don't have to tell me to eat meat. I understand that little cute animals should die for me to exist. I'm okay with that.
You don't have to give me a rule. I love it. I'm going to use two different types of animals and wrap one in the other one. Like I'm going to do that. I'm okay. I don't need a rule.
I love it. The reason Jesus steps in and begins to change our hearts is because when he starts changing our hearts and he changes what we love, we don't need the rules. The God's laws aren't burdensome to us anymore because they're in our heart. They're not overwhelming or crushing anymore because he's changing us from the inside out. We have one of our group leaders. He was telling me the other day.
He was like, you know, I used to just kind of hate people. I was like, that's fair. People are the worst. Which was funny to me though because they've got people in their house all the time. I mean, they've got like their houses open to the public basically. And he said, I used to just, I didn't.
He said, but I don't know. It's different now. Like I enjoy being around people. I like it. And I feel like that makes me weird. But that's okay.
Like God's changing my heart here. We've got a guy in our church family who got into business and was promoted. He's kind of overseas. He's a manager overseas, multiple people. And he was talking to one of our group leaders and he was just saying that he was like, when I first got into business, I got in it for a couple of things. I wanted to be a manager because you make more money.
Money was like a huge goal for me because it gave me prominence. It let people look up to me. He said, also when I was being a manager, I wanted to be a really good manager. But just because I wanted to be a really good manager, like I wanted it to be about me. So I was really good to my employees, but that was because that would make me a good manager and they would like me more.
I wanted to have the status and I wanted to have the finances and I wanted, he said, and it's just changed. He says, it's not about the money anymore. And I actually care about my employees. I don't just fake it so that they'll think I'm a good manager. Like I actually care about them and it doesn't have anything to do with whether or not they think I'm a good manager. And he's like, God's just changing my heart here.
And that's what happens. Jesus begins to change us from the inside out and it's slow and it's messy, but he goes to work on making us more like him so that he pays for our guilt and steps in and begins to work in our rebellion. And that's what we needed. Go to Hebrews chapter eight. See, Jesus died and rose again to redeem us, to make us his, and to invite us into the new covenant. It's on page 650, if your Bible looks like this.
Hebrews chapter eight. We're going to start in verse six, read through the end of the chapter. But as it is, Christ, that's Jesus, has obtained a ministry that is much more excellent than the old. As the covenant he mediates is better. She's saying the new covenant is better than the old covenant. As the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises.
Can we just pause for a second? The first covenant, what was the promise? Follow these rules and everything will be good. Is that a good promise? It seems like a good promise. We go into those kind of deals on a regular basis.
You make those. You hold up your end of the bargain. I'll hold up my end of the bargain and it'll be good. That sounds fair. Okay. That's the old covenant.
Here's the new covenant. I'm going to pay for your sin and I'm going to help you follow me. And at the end of the day, you'll be okay because I died for you. That's a better promise. Hands down. That's a better promise because it actually fixes us and takes care of our biggest issue, which is our inability to hold up the other side.
Since it is enacted on better promises. For if the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says, and now he's going to quote in the book of Hebrews, Jeremiah chapter 31, what we just read. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant.
So I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. The new covenant makes us into a new covenant people. And they shall not teach each other, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful towards their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.
And speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. So if we believe that, if we've been brought in as a new covenant people through faith in Jesus, there's a couple of things that change about us, that go to work on us. One is we love and trust Jesus. There's a reason why we gather together on Sundays and we sing songs to Jesus. We talk about Jesus.
We point to Jesus. We pray in the name of Jesus because Jesus is the mediator of our covenant. He's the one who's rescued us and redeemed us and paid for us by his blood. We love Jesus. I love it whenever I get to see you. You read these news articles every once in a while.
And there was a couple of shows every once in a while show this. But it'll be like an EMT or a police officer. Sometimes it's an organ donor and they meet with a person they've rescued. Organ donor they've given their organs for or the EMT rescued somebody or a fireman rescued somebody. And they just, they build a friendship based off of the fact that they were, saved them. They showed up and rescued this kid or they showed up.
And so this cop will show up to birthdays every year because they rescued this kid. They saved them from something. And that's the church's relationship to Jesus. We've been redeemed. We've been rescued. We've been invited into his family.
And we love him and trust him. And in the midst of trial, we trust him because we know ultimately he's for our good. He's gone to work on our behalf. He's paid for our sin. Secondly, as Christians, as those who've been invited in this new covenant, we confess sin. Because it's Jesus that makes us okay.
So I can talk openly about what's broken about me because it highlights how Jesus has redeemed and forgiven and gone to work. I realize that when I confess sin, it's not because I need God to, I need to get on God's good side. But I realize that the reason I'm sinning is because I've begun to love something more than Jesus. So that I'm willing to run from him for it. I'm willing to sin to get it. I'm willing to avoid him to chase after it.
And I begin to confess because I need more Jesus. I need to remember the covenant. And I can tell anybody anything. Some of you have been hiding in your community groups because you're going, I can't tell people this. They can't know this about me. It'll change everything.
They'll treat me differently. Not if they're new covenant people. They won't. Because new covenant people realize the only thing that makes me okay is Jesus and his work on my behalf. Not my behavior. My behavior because of Jesus doesn't show up in front of him.
And that's a really good thing. My sin is remembered no more. I'm free. You've been hiding. You don't have to. Some of you, maybe you've been treating people differently because of something they confessed.
Something you know about them. And the reason you're doing that is because you don't believe this. You don't believe the new covenant. You've begun to think that somehow something you did stands in front of the cross. And it doesn't. Jesus has made you okay and that's it.
And that's why we have freedom to gather together as a bunch of sinful people. And we're okay because Jesus is good. Not because we are. Third thing we do is we fight sin. We go to war because we believe that Jesus is at work in our hearts changing us to help us obey. So if I see you sinning, I'm going to talk to you about it.
Not because I need to bring the hammer down or I've got to fix you or I'm better than you. But I'm going to come talk to you about it because I believe Jesus is at work in your heart. And one of the things he's doing is leading you away from sin. So we're going to walk away from sin together. We're going to change together. I'm going to fight sin in myself because I believe that Jesus is at work.
He's on my team so I actually can win. And ultimately, we've walked through this series so that we can see how the old covenants point us to a new and better covenant. That Jesus on our behalf has rescued us, redeemed us, and paid for our guilt. And he's at work in us to make us different. And for every person in this room and for every person on earth, the new covenant is offered to you. That Jesus would pay for your sin and that he would come in and begin to work in you to make you different.
It's offered to all of us. We can covenant with God based on the new covenant offered to us through the blood of Jesus. And if you've never done that, you can today. You can place your faith in Jesus that he paid for your sin and that he'll come in and begin to work in you to help you in the future. Because for most of us, if you've been hanging around for a while and you're kind of on the edge, it's one of those two issues that's holding you back. God can't forgive me for this.
Yes, he can. Because you sin like a person and he saves like a God. And some of you are saying, okay, okay, okay. I get that he can forgive me for that stuff, but I'm just going to mess it up. But the new covenant is that he's going to go to work on your heart so that no, you won't.
Because he, throughout history, has been aggressively chasing after his people to make them his. And he's not going to lose you. He's died for you to redeem you so that he can come to work in your heart and he's going to keep you. That's how it works. That's the hope we have today. Matt and Bianca are going to come back up here.
We're going to sing together as a church family. And as a church family, if you're a Christian, we take communion to celebrate this new covenant. We do what the disciples did, what we read in Matthew chapter 26, where Jesus broke the bread and said, this is my body. Where he took the cup and he said, this is my blood in a new covenant. And we, as a church, gather together and remind ourselves of this new covenant that's paid for our sin. And goes to work in our hearts to make us different.
And if you're in here and you have some sin you need to confess, maybe you need to grab somebody from your community group. Maybe you need to spend some time talking to Jesus that you've ceased to believe the new covenant. That you've begun to live as if it weren't true. But you need him at work in you. And if you've never placed your faith in Jesus, this covenant is offered to you. You can place your faith in Jesus.
You can take communion today, reminding yourself that it was his body broken for you. It was his blood shed out for you to cover your sin. And in a couple weeks, you can get baptized as a new covenant member of the family. There's nothing standing in the way of you becoming a Christian because Jesus has already paid for all of it. Your sin can't hold you back. Your future failure can't hold you back.
Because Jesus has gone to work on the two major issues we had. Our guilt and our rebellion. He redeems us from both. Let's pray. God, we thank you that you make such good promises. God, we thank you that we were born in this time of history where we get the new covenant promises.
God, we thank you that you died for us. That your sin covers us. That you remember our sin no more. For all those who place faith in you. God, we ask that through your Holy Spirit you would draw people to yourself today. That you would bring more people into your covenant.
Into your love. Into your redemption. Into your family. God, we pray that as a church family we would always live fully walking as if the new covenant is true. That our sin is paid for. That we're free and redeemed.
That you're good. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Aug 21