Participants: Ty Gibson, James Rafferty
Series Code: BOTB
Program Code: BOTB00008B
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00:01 Welcome back friends to our study in the book of Hebrews
00:03 We are in Hebrews Chapter 8 and we are focusing on the 00:07 new covenant, the new experience that God wants 00:09 us to have with Him. 00:10 As we pointed out before, the break there are a number 00:13 of facets to the new covenant and each one of them needs to 00:16 be understood as we move through Chapter 8 verses 10-13. 00:22 First of all, we see here James, that the covenant involves a 00:26 promise of God, that He will write His law in our hearts, 00:31 in our minds, God will do this. 00:35 How is it that God is going to bring to pass? 00:38 How is it that God is going to be the One who fulfills the law 00:41 or writes it in us? 00:42 You know this is really powerful Ty, because this is just a 00:45 continuation of the theme that Paul has been building 00:47 The immutable promises of God. 00:49 One of those immutable promises that God has 00:52 made to us is His Word. 00:54 He has established His word as the power and authority 00:57 by which He can realize, or make real in our lives. 01:01 Everything He is giving to us in His promises 01:03 That He has promised to us. 01:04 So the Word is powerful, the oath of God is powerful, 01:07 and it is through His word that He establishes 01:10 His law in our hearts. 01:12 It is through the power, the grace, the goodness of God 01:15 that comes through His word that he establishes the law 01:17 in our hearts and in our minds. 01:19 I will put My law in your mind, I will write it on your heart. 01:24 That's a powerful promise! 01:25 Now it is important that we understand that this promise 01:28 is throughout Scripture. 01:30 It's just not a promise that comes to us in the 01:34 New Testament period. 01:35 Actually this is echoing from Chapter 36 of Ezekiel where 01:41 similar language is used. 01:43 It's says in Chapter 36 of Ezekiel verses 26 and 27. 01:47 "I will give you a new heart and I will put a new Spirit 01:53 within you, I will take away the heart of stone 01:56 out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh. " 02:00 "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in 02:04 My statutes and you will keep My judgments and do them. " 02:07 I love the fact that God says here, I'm going to cause you, 02:12 I'm not going to force you. 02:14 I'm not going to manipulate you, I'm not going to bare 02:18 over you with any kind of dominance, rather I am going 02:23 to work from the inside out. 02:25 I'm going to work on the inside of your being, give you a new 02:29 heart, a new Spirit, a new attitude, Paul says in Chapter 2 02:33 of Philippians, like this mind or this attitude to be in you. 02:36 Which was also in Christ Jesus. 02:39 God is going to work on the inside of our hearts 02:42 as a result of that internal change there is going to be 02:47 an external change, I will cause you to walk in my statutes, 02:52 and in My law. 02:54 God's the cause, but He doing it through us 02:56 with our cooperation. 02:58 Now I like the latter part of this verse, too, verse 10 says, 03:00 "And I will be to them a God and they shall be to Me a people. " 03:04 That is talking about relationship. 03:06 This is the theme we have been building on as we've been 03:08 moving through the book of Hebrews, relationship. 03:11 It began in Chapter 1, God has spoken to us and He speaks to us 03:15 through the Son, and he's continued this theme 03:17 all the way through. Why? 03:19 Cause right here in Hebrews 8, we are kind of coming to a 03:22 Zenith, if you will, a summary ad culmination of the point 03:26 that Paul is trying to make. 03:28 God wants a relationship with His people. 03:31 I want to be your God and I want you to be My people. 03:34 He created us, in the beginning, in His image, and He had that 03:38 relationship with us from day number 1. 03:40 Sin interrupted this relationship. 03:42 God wants to restore the relationship. 03:44 In other words, the new covenant is not just about I am going to 03:47 put the law in their hearts and they are obey Me and they 03:50 are going to keep the Commandments. 03:52 Not that dryness that we see sometimes in religionaity. 03:55 It's about experience, it's about love, because the law 03:59 is based on love. 04:00 It's about God and us coming together in a relationship 04:03 that honors and respects one another, and falls in love 04:06 with one another and thereby we find ourselves having 04:10 His law in our hearts and minds. 04:11 Praise the Lord, AMEN! 04:12 That's why we are told James, in Romans 13:10, that love is 04:17 the fulfillment of the law. 04:18 We're not talking here about a mere code of ethics, 04:21 that we obey with a grudging unwilling heart, 04:25 but rather it's an experience that we see reflected 04:28 in the experience of the Lord Jesus Christ when He said, 04:31 "I do always those things that please God. " 04:34 There is this sense, this tone in Jesus in which He longs 04:41 to please the Father. 04:42 He's not merely obeying as a legalistic requirement in 04:45 order to get on the good side of an angry God, but rather 04:49 what Jesus is bringing to us in the new covenant is a 04:53 a change of heart, a change of motive, a change of attitude, 04:56 a change of perception of God's character such that we begin 04:59 to get inclined toward God. 05:01 to love what God loves, to hate what God hates, 05:04 our tastes literally. 05:07 Our spiritual tastes, our moral tastes is changed 05:10 by this internal transformation. 05:12 So this idea that there is a difference between love and law. 05:16 That law is Old Testament legalism and what we need 05:19 today is love, is not Biblical. 05:21 It's a false dichotomy. 05:22 Yeah, all through the New Testament we find that the 05:25 essence, the basis of love, is the law, 05:28 or law of love, it's the same. 05:29 In other words, not just in Romans but in Galatians Paul 05:32 says love is the fulfilling of the law. 05:33 Jesus was asked once about which commandment was most important. 05:37 And Jesus said, the first commandment, the most important 05:40 commandment is to love God. 05:42 The commandment, the law, is to love God with all your heart, 05:45 mind and soul, and the second is just like it, 05:47 love your neighbor, law, love your neighbor as yourself. 05:51 When you look at the commandments you see 05:53 essence of love. 05:55 Love and law go together. 05:57 This is the Biblical idea of love and law James. 06:00 Our popular culture, if you listen to the radio on any given 06:03 day, or you pick up a popular music CD you are definitely 06:06 going to get to hear the word love a lot. 06:07 In fact I saw one magazine article that said that they did 06:12 a search on all the modern popular music, and they found 06:15 that the most frequently used word, in popular music, is love. 06:20 And they said the second most frequently used word, is baby. 06:25 As in baby I love you. 06:27 And the third most frequently used word, in popular music, 06:30 is yeah, as in Oh Yeah! 06:32 So baby I love you Oh Yeah! 06:34 But that's track one on any given CD, but track two or three 06:39 I don't love you baby anymore, because I've moved onto another 06:42 baby, but, that has been more, you know, attractive than you 06:46 that I love more now. 06:47 And so it looks like modern the modern perception of love 06:50 is that love really is self-satisfaction. 06:54 But! The Biblical idea of love, is that love is self-sacrifice. 06:59 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 verses 5-7 says that love is 07:05 not self-seeking, or as King James version renders it, that 07:09 "Love seeketh not it's own. " 07:12 And if love is not seeking it's own, if love is not self-seeking 07:16 stated in a positive sense, that means that 07:19 love is other-centered, it is self-giving. 07:22 That is the Biblical idea of love. 07:25 That's the essence of love. 07:26 Now we've got law in the new covenant experience. 07:28 We've got gospel in the new covenant experience. 07:31 We've got power in the new covenant experience. 07:33 We've got relationship in the new covenant experience. 07:35 We've got anointing in the new covenant experience. 07:37 Let's look at this aspect of the gospel, I think it is found here 07:41 in verse 12 of Hebrews Chapter 8 it says, "For I will be merciful 07:45 to their unrighteousness and their sins and iniquities 07:48 I will remember no more. " 07:50 What is that talking about? 07:52 Well these two things need to be joined together James. 07:54 The law of God being written in our hearts and in our minds. 07:57 And the mercy and forgiveness that God bestows upon us. 08:01 Whenever I think about the new covenant, I think of the women 08:05 caught in adultery in Chapter 8 of the gospel of John, 08:08 and her experience because she personifies a living experience 08:12 of what the new covenant is all about. 08:14 Because Jesus said to her " I don't condemn you", that's 08:18 forgiveness, that's the mercy aspect of the plan of salvation 08:21 in the gospel, then He said, now, "go and sin no more. " 08:25 It's futile for us to think in terms of going to sin no more, 08:30 unless we are living in the light of God's non-condemning 08:35 love for us, that's were the power is. 08:37 I don't condemn you, now go in the light of that love 08:41 that I have for you and sin no more. 08:42 So a vital aspect of this new covenant experience is the 08:47 mercy of God, the empowering mercy of God. 08:50 The grace of God that empowers us to live a different life. 08:53 We cannot have any kind of law put into our hearts into 08:57 our minds without recognizing first, that God is going 09:00 to take care of our guilt. 09:02 That God has taken care of our sins, 09:03 that He's purged them by Himself and that the essence 09:06 of what God is offering us is mercy and acceptance 09:09 in spite of ourselves. 09:10 And that empowers us, as it did with this women, 09:14 caught in the act of adultery. 09:15 It empowers to go forth and sin no more. 09:18 Sin being friends, the transgression of the law, 09:21 according to 1 John 3, verse 4. 09:23 But before we get to a revelation of the law of God, 09:27 we have, as you pointed out in Exodus, we have a revelation 09:30 of the delivering power of God. 09:32 Of the blood of Jesus Christ. 09:34 Written on the door posts, along the lentils, the blood 09:37 of Jesus Christ that covers us, forgives us, 09:40 that is merciful toward us. 09:42 This is new covenant theme. 09:43 The next aspect of the new covenant that Paul brings to 09:46 our attention here that we want to focus on, 09:47 is in verse 11, where he says, "None of them shall teach 09:51 his neighbor, and none his brothers, saying no the Lord 09:55 For all shall know Me from 09:57 the least of them to the greatest. " 09:59 So here is a personal intimate relationship with God that each 10:02 individual has, so that evangelistic witness, 10:06 so to speak, at some point becomes unnecessary because 10:10 your already in a personal relationship with God. 10:13 That doesn't mean we don't testify and share with one 10:15 another after we have come to Christ 10:17 and accepted the gospel. 10:19 But now we are in a personal one on one relationship with God. 10:23 We have the anointing of God's Spirit upon us and God is 10:27 speaking in our own hearts. 10:29 You know this is so powerful because this was 10:31 a failure in the old covenant. 10:32 When the Old covenant was given at Sinai, the people were 10:35 confronted with Moses whose face was bright and shiny, 10:38 and when they saw Moses come down from that mountain it was 10:41 filled with thunder and lightening, and they pulled 10:44 back and they were scared. 10:45 They said, they said, Moses you talk to us, you tell us what God 10:50 said but don't have God talk to us anymore. 10:52 In other words they weren't willing to engage in that 10:55 personal relationship with God. 10:56 They wanted a mediator, they wanted someone to stand between 10:59 them and God, a human being to stand between them and God 11:02 and we can do the same today friends, with Pastors, with 11:05 preachers, we can follow people instead of following God. 11:08 That is not God's purpose for the new covenant. 11:11 God wants us personally to engage with Him so that He can 11:15 teach us personally. 11:16 So they promised to obey God's law, but they did not enter into 11:21 a vital living relationship with God that would empower 11:25 them to actually be able to do it. 11:26 They were not willing to be personally taught of God. 11:29 Now this is so powerful, in the New Testament you find this 11:32 especially in 1 John Chapter 2. 11:34 In 1 John Chapter 2, Paul here excuse me, John here is speaking 11:39 about the anointing we are to have from the Holy One. 11:42 1 John Chapter 2 and verse 20. 11:44 Listen to these verses, it says, "But Ye have an unction from 11:47 the Holy One and you know all things. " 11:50 Now what is so powerful here s that the truth of the matter is 11:53 none of us know all things. 11:55 But the Holy Spirit knows all things. 11:56 And the Holy Spirit is promised to teach us all things. 12:00 The Holy Spirit wants us not to become man dependant. 12:02 That doesn't mean there is not a place for teachers, and 12:05 and preachers and Pastors. 12:06 There's place for them. 12:07 But we are not to be of a Paul or Cephas, of Cephas or Paul. 12:10 We are to be of Christ, we are to follow Christ. 12:13 He is the great teacher. 12:14 And God is promising each of us we can have this anointing. 12:17 We can know Him personally. 12:19 He can teach us personally. 12:20 I really like this word in verse 11 of Hebrews Chapter 8. 12:25 Know, everyone will know the Lord, it shows up in a number 12:29 of places in Scripture. 12:30 And the first time we see it in Genesis 4 where Adam knew Eve. 12:34 She gave birth to a son. 12:35 It's a word of intimacy. 12:36 Jesus used the word when He said that eternal life 12:39 is to know God. 12:40 And now Paul uses it and tells us it is a 12:43 part of the new covenant. 12:44 To enter into personal intimate relationship with God. 12:47 The law of God written in our hearts and minds. 12:50 The gospel forgiveness. 12:51 The power of God to empower this relationship. 12:54 The relationship we have with God so we don't rely on man 12:58 But we rely on the anointing of the Holy Spirit. 13:00 This is the essence, this is principles of the new covenant 13:04 experience of what God is calling us to. 13:07 Of what Paul is pointing us to in Hebrews Chapter 8. 13:10 This is to be the experience that God wants us 13:14 to have with Him. 13:15 That God wants you to have with Him. 13:16 And He is calling you to that experience right now. 13:19 Don't neglect it! |
Revised 2014-12-17