The Superiority of the New Covenant

[0:00] Last week we began our study of the great tenth chapter of the book of Hebrews.

[0:21] In that lesson we examined the reasons that the old covenant along with the sacrificial system was ineffective to do the work that Christ was later required to do on the cross.

[0:51] Now, those reasons are as follows. The old covenant sacrifices could not bring access to God.

[1:05] The old covenant sacrifices could not remove sin. And the old covenant sacrifices were merely external. And if you were unable to be here last time, I would encourage you to get a copy of last week's lesson and go over it.

[1:24] I've got a few copies up here and I can make more. That should make today's lesson a lot more meaningful. For example, the new covenant was infinitely more effective than the old.

[1:47] Under the new covenant, we have the sacrificial atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is why it is of infinite value to those who are being saved.

[2:03] And we are going to examine seven priorities of the new covenant over the old covenant. I know we have got some new guys in here, so I will tell them that I came up with all these seven on my own.

[2:17] But the guys that really know me know that that is an impossibility. So my theory has always been that if you are going to steal, steal from really good men. And I do.

[2:27] Guys like John MacArthur and Willard Lyons and the top people. One, the new covenant was superior because it was in the center of God's will.

[2:45] We read about that in Hebrews 10 verses 5 to 7. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, He said, So Christ's sacrifice was effective because, It was in the center of God's will.

[3:33] This is what the Father wanted. God from before the foundation of the world knew that the old sacrifices would be ineffective to accomplish redemption.

[3:47] The death of Christ was not some backup plan B that God had to be. That God had to come up with after the Jews had rejected His Son as the Messiah.

[4:04] God, of course, knew from all eternity that His Son would come into the world. He would die a propitiary atoning death on the cross.

[4:17] God's will. God's will. God's will. And His body was already prepared to be that sacrifice. When the Lord's earthly parents, Joseph and Mary, presented Him at the temple in what was called the rite of purification, they had a very interesting encounter with a very devout man by the name of Simeon.

[4:48] This is recorded in Luke chapter 2. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel.

[5:02] And the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

[5:19] And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought the child, Jesus, into the temple, and they were following the customs of the law, Simeon took him up in his arms and blessed God and said this, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.

[6:14] And his father and mother, Joseph and Mary, marveled at what was said about him. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel and for a sign that is opposed.

[6:33] And then he looked at Mary and he said, And a sword will pierce through your own soul so that the thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.

[6:48] Now Mary could not have possibly understood the full implications of Simeon's statement, but even then we have an illusion and the Christ child is about eight days old, we have an illusion to the sacrifice of Jesus because he said, You're going to be pierced right through the heart with a sword.

[7:19] God was never satisfied with the sacrifice of animals as a way to Him. It was done as a shadowy expression of the future cross.

[7:37] Even that system, when Jesus was on earth, had become a sham. And the leaders had begun to extort people even in the purchase of the animals that were set apart for sacrifice.

[7:57] The high priest and his father-in-law owned the animals. And it was an extortion racket. It was a Ponzi scheme. By the time of the incarnation, the sacrificial system was merely a religious ritual and had nothing to do with obedience or with faith.

[8:24] Jesus came to earth to do the Father's will. Scripture has made that abundantly clear. His was a perfect sacrifice because it was within the perfect will of the Heavenly Father.

[8:43] And the Lord's death on the cross was an example for time and eternity of perfect obedience. There was never and will never be anything to compare to that sacrifice.

[9:01] And the Lord Jesus was very clear that His mission involved His death in Jerusalem.

[9:13] But Satan and the disciples tried to keep Him from fulfilling that mission. And God kept overruling them on every occasion.

[9:24] You remember foot-in-mouth Peter who said, I'm going to let you go to the cross. And what did Jesus say to him? Get behind me, Satan.

[9:34] What a stinging rebuke. Jesus paid the price demanded by a holy and violated law.

[9:50] He, Christ, never knew sin but became sin for all who would believe. He didn't become a sinner but He took upon Himself our sins.

[10:03] His sacrificial death reflected the perfect eternal will of the Father. Number two, the sacrifice of Christ replaced the old system.

[10:21] Hebrews 10 verses 8 to 9. When He said above, You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings.

[10:35] These are offered according to the law. Then He added, Behold, I have come to do your will. He does away with the first in order to establish the second.

[10:51] And I've said this before in our study of the epistle to the Hebrews. Hebrews is a commentary on various Old Testament books.

[11:03] The passage I just read to you is a commentary on Psalm 40. Verse 6, Sacrifice and meal offering you have not desired.

[11:16] My ears you have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. God took away the old covenant with all its weaknesses and replaced it with the perfection of the new covenant.

[11:36] And the writer of Hebrews is again revealing to his congregation, you can tell from the title, made up of mostly Jews, probably all Jews, converted now, most of them to Christianity, that the old covenant never permanently took away sins.

[11:58] Can you imagine the shock? These people's ancestors have been under the old covenant for 1600 years. And he says they never took away sins. It wasn't intended to do so.

[12:13] God's focus was always on the second and perfect covenant that was ushered in by Christ Jesus. When the new came, the old was set aside for all time.

[12:29] True salvation is found in no other but the Lord Jesus Christ of the new covenant. I recently heard it expressed this way.

[12:44] When the Lord Jesus Christ died upon the cross, he rendered the Old Testament sacrificial system moot. Wasn't needed anymore.

[12:57] Even the temple was no longer necessary and in fact, just a few years later in 70 AD, the armies of general and later emperor Titus Vespasian would totally destroy it.

[13:16] Has anyone here been to Israel or to Jerusalem? We'll go during the millennial reign. My wife keeps wanting to go, let's wait until the millennial reign to be a lot safer.

[13:28] You can go there though and stand on the mount and look down in the Kidron Valley and all the stones from the old temple that was destroyed by the Romans was thrown down into the valley and they're just stretched for hundreds of yards.

[13:46] They're still there. Number three, the new covenant sacrifice sanctifies the believer. Hebrews 10.10 By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

[14:10] The old system could never make a man holy. The new system sanctifies the believer and makes him positionally holy before God.

[14:27] that word sanctify means to set apart. Believers are set apart by God for himself.

[14:39] We are set apart positionally but it is also God's will that we would be set apart practically. Paul told us in 1 Thessalonians 4.3 that our sanctification being made holy is the will of God.

[15:01] That's what he wants for his children. In the verse in Hebrews it says we have been sanctified using past tense.

[15:13] And that's strong language in the Greek. It kind of gets lost in the English translation. In the original language it expresses the believers continuing and permanent salvation.

[15:29] In effect it is saying that we have been permanently made holy by the sacrifice of Christ. That is a fulfillment of 1 Peter 1.16 which says you shall be holy for I am holy.

[15:48] All who put their trust in Christ were permanently sanctified not because of our conduct but because of Christ's one act in one moment in space time history.

[16:07] Now positional and practical standing before God are two different things. Positionally in the mind of God we are perfectly holy and living in his presence.

[16:22] The position of the redeemed will not change for all eternity. That's already occurred. Practically speaking though we still live in unredeemed flesh.

[16:34] If some of you didn't know that come see me privately. I can assure you that I do. We still live in unredeemed flesh. we do the very things we do not want to do and we leave undone the things we know that we should be doing.

[16:52] It's the things that we want to do but we don't do them. If that sounds familiar go back and review Paul in Romans chapter 7 and there you find a man that we would say the greatest Christian probably that ever lived among mortal men agonizing over his sins and failures.

[17:16] It was agony for him. One verse in Hebrews 10.10 has positional holiness in mind.

[17:27] The verse I already read. Because of Christ and his perfect sacrifice it has already been accomplished.

[17:39] That is why the Spirit speaks in the past tense when he says that we have been sanctified. And we know that our walk is not always holy.

[17:52] We live with that every day don't we guys? But our standing before God is one of complete sanctification. Doesn't mean we don't confess sin.

[18:03] Doesn't mean that we don't seek cleansing. 1 John 1.9 Great example. Memorize that verse. But our standing before God is one of complete sanctification.

[18:18] God makes us holy through the offering of one body that being Jesus Christ wants for all those who are being saved.

[18:30] All of them. Number four, the new covenant sacrifice removes sin. Hebrews 10 verses 11 and 12.

[18:42] And every priest stands daily at his service offering repeatedly the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.

[18:59] But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins the Lord Jesus sat down at the right hand of God.

[19:14] That's amazing. And I've said this many times. The tabernacle and later the earthly temple didn't have any chairs. The priest never sat down.

[19:26] Why? There was always another sin to atone for. They didn't have time to sit down. they didn't have time to sit down. But the fact is that no one can enter into the presence of God in heaven today and that person is bearing the slightest sin in his or her account.

[19:54] God is absolutely holy. He will not permit sin in his presence. the Old Testament animal sacrifices could never take away sin.

[20:07] They served as examples of what was to come during the incarnation of Christ. But they were never able to bring a person eternally into God's presence.

[20:20] The effectiveness of Christ's sacrifice was granted in the fact that he was and is able to take away a person's sins or sin which the old system could never do.

[20:37] There was always another sin to atone for. I guarantee you I wouldn't have left the temple mountain but I needed to go back and buy another sheep or a ram or a turtle dove.

[20:52] We have in these two verses a series of contrasts. We see in them many priests and there were thousands and we see the one true priest.

[21:04] We see the earthly priest standing because their work was never done. We see the eternal high priest sitting down at the right hand of God because his sacrifice because of that sacrifice his redemption was totally complete.

[21:26] it was complete. We see under the old covenant a covering of sin on a temporary basis. In the new covenant Christ was able to remove sin and cast it so far away that God says I'll remember him no more.

[21:46] I have a lot of wish I could forget. Under the Lord Jesus Christ every sin of everyone who would believe unto salvation was removed for all time.

[22:00] Now from the above we can readily see why the sacrifice of Christ was infinitely more effective than the sacrifice of bulls and goats and turtle doves.

[22:15] It just stands to reason. And number five the sacrifice of Christ literally destroyed his enemies. Hebrews 10 13 waiting for that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet.

[22:36] And that day is still future. But it's going to happen. The Spirit of God said it was going to happen. We know that the sacrifice of Christ is the sole basis of our salvation and of our reconciliation to God.

[22:57] But the sacrifice accomplished something else which neither Satan nor the enemies of God foresaw. The sacrifice of Christ conquered his enemies.

[23:10] He was a conquering Savior. Under the old covenant millions of animals were sacrificed over a period of 1600 years.

[23:24] Some died in the tabernacle. Most were killed in the temple which came later. None of these sacrifices individually nor all of them collectively were able to defeat Satan.

[23:40] The sacrifices had no effect on the devil. His legions of godless demons, those humans who had thrown in with the evil one. But when Christ died on the cross, He delivered a death blow to all of His enemies.

[24:00] And you know, we read about that in the Old Testament. Early. The very first promise of a Messiah and it's found all the way back in Genesis chapter 3.

[24:14] and in verse 15 of Genesis 3 it says this, I will put enmity between you and the woman. And he's talking to Satan.

[24:28] Satan and the woman is Eve. I will put enmity between you two and between her offspring, your offspring, and her offspring. He shall bruise your head.

[24:43] And you, speaking to Satan, shall bruise his heel. And there we learn that Satan will bruise the heel of Christ.

[24:56] And that could be painful. That could be painful. But Christ will crush the head of Satan.

[25:08] Thus delivering a fatal blow. And that fatal blow happened at the cross. So at the cross, the Lord conquered him who had the power of death.

[25:22] That is the devil. That's Hebrews 2.14. At the cross, Christ also triumphed over all fallen angels, which we now refer to as demons.

[25:35] Colossians 2.15 says this, when he had disarmed the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through him.

[25:51] Presently, Christ is waiting until all his enemies will be made a footstool. and that will occur in the future, already predicted by the Apostle Paul in the great book of Philippians chapter 2 verse 8 to 11.

[26:09] being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

[26:26] For this reason also, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name. So at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.

[26:37] of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth and that every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

[26:51] At the cross the enemies of God tried to inflict permanent damage on the precious Son of God. They all gave him their worst which was death.

[27:05] But in this they were unsuccessful because his death freed those held captive by sin and by Satan. By his death Jesus conquered death for all who would believe.

[27:25] And that includes those of us in here. And he conquered his enemies. The Lord Jesus Christ took the very worst Satan could deliver and turned it into eternal good for the Father and for us.

[27:46] Number six, the sacrifice of Christ perfects the saints forever. Hebrews 10 14 At the cross the enemies of God tried to inflict permanent damage on the precious Son of God and they gave him their worst which was death but in this they were unsuccessful because his death he freed those being held captive by sin.

[28:14] By his death he conquered death. The Old Testament sacrifices never saved but the sacrifice of Christ gives all who believe eternal perfection.

[28:34] There is another word for eternal salvation. That is right there. The death of Christ removes for all time the sins of those who believe.

[28:46] And that is why we can stand holy and pure before God. It's not my purity it's Christ's. Our sins have been removed and thus we've been made perfect by being in the perfect Christ.

[29:04] Now I have a lot of good friends who believe they can lose their salvation although it was once secured for them. But if we have been perfected made perfect for all time how can we lose our salvation that has been stowed upon us by Christ Jesus.

[29:26] This verse speaks of eternal security to the true believer. We are totally secure in our Savior. And we do need our feet washed from time to time don't we?

[29:38] We pick up dust on the road. The dust of sin. But we've been delivered from the penalty of sin. And one day we'll be delivered from the very presence of sin.

[29:56] We have no fear of God condemning judgment upon us Christ stood in our place at the judgment seat of God.

[30:09] And Christ sprinkled his blood on the judgment seat. And it became in heaven the mercy seat.

[30:22] That's what we call a hallelujah revelation. salvation. Because of his one sacrifice we've already been sanctified and made perfect positionally.

[30:36] Practically we still battle sin in a sinful world in unredeemed flesh. But the war has been won by Christ for our sakes.

[30:49] our forgiveness is permanent because his sacrifice is permanent. Hebrews 10.18 Now where there is forgiveness of these things there's no longer any offering for sin.

[31:09] When God forgives you you have no further need of an additional offering. And then seven the sacrifice of Christ fulfills the promise of a new covenant.

[31:23] And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us for after saying this is the covenant I will make with them after those days says the Lord I will put my laws upon their heart and upon their minds will write them!

[31:37] He then says all their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more. Hebrews 10 15 to 17 God promised throughout the ages a new and better covenant and that new covenant was fulfilled in Christ.

[32:01] Central to the new covenant was a new and better sacrifice. But it could only occur with the death of his son on the cross. By his death the promise of God was fulfilled.

[32:18] And that promise was verified by the way by the resurrection. God's stamp of approval this is what I wanted. This promise was prophesied by God way back long ago in the book of Jeremiah.

[32:36] Verse 31 33 to 34 for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord.

[32:49] I will put my law within them and I'll 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 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.

[33:16] When how many times he has to say that before we buy into it? The work of sacrifice was accomplished and there is now no more sacrifice for sin.

[33:30] Salvation comes to those who believe in the one true sacrifice of Christ. All who reject his sacrifice have no hope of forgiveness or eternal life with God.

[33:48] The salvation promised under the old covenant was purchased under the new. And now we can truly say where there is forgiveness of these things there is no longer any offering for sin for by his one sacrifice we are made perfect in the sight of God.

[34:13] That one eternal magnificent sacrifice. I'm hesitant to even say this, not in my notes, but I've seen it.

[34:25] Most of you have probably seen it. I'm going to use it now just as a closing. I saw Alistair Begg talk about this.

[34:37] He said one of his goals in life when he gets to heaven is to talk to the thief on the cross. And he said, can you imagine what that scene must have been like?

[34:50] This guy never prayed, never led a Sunday school class, never attended a Sunday school class, never heard a Sunday school, never saw a Bible, certainly didn't own one.

[35:03] And he shows up in heaven. And an angel, according to Alistair, comes up to him and says, I was just kind of reading here and would you mind if I got my supervisor angel to talk with you?

[35:20] He says, no, that's okay. So the supervisor angel comes and he says, now, and angels were gathering and he said, now we all assume that you know about justification by faith.

[35:36] And he said, no, I never heard of that. Never heard of that. Well, you know that the word of God is inerrant, It's inerrant, authoritative, with no mixture of error, right? You know that? He said, I don't know what that means.

[35:51] So the supervisor angel is getting a little frustrated. He says, what are you doing here? Why are you here?

[36:07] And the thief on the cross looks at him and he says, the man on the middle cross said I could come. He'd been reconciled.

[36:22] There was no sin in his account. Because Jesus said you can come. That's our salvation by the way. Don't make it complicated. The man on the middle cross said we could come.

[36:34] That's our salvation. We should always remember that. Always.

[36:54]