Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 1, 2020 | Stand Strong - The New Covenant

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March 1, 2020 | Stand Strong - The New Covenant · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: How are you this morning?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Think I'm supposed to believe that, the anemic way you said that.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Show some heart.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing this morning?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Better.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Better.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've been saving my boy.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I lost my voice 10 days ago.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Been saving it for this morning.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: So haven't gone to ball games, haven't done anything, haven't cheered.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I said a couple words to Judy yesterday, but so I'm very pumped about this message.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Did not want to miss today.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting, we're in a Jeremiah challenge.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is, we're reading the 52 chapters of Jeremiah and the Five of Lamentations by Easter.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're reading four chapters.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: That means four chapters of reading a week this coming week, 33, 34, 35, 36.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm writing a devotional on each one of those four chapters each week.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for those of you who write me emails and so forth and let me know how helpful.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you are raise your hand if you're involved in some way in the Jeremiah Challenge?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's fantastic.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You make me feel like my life is worthwhile.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: So this week is special because we're dealing with the four most famous verses and more important.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: I just should stop.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: The most important verses in all of the book of Jeremiah, and four of the most important verses in the entire Bible.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Just why I did not want to miss today.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: My title is The New Covenant.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: You may have heard of some of the biblical covenants, the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is the third great covenant in the Old Testament, captured in four verses in our book of Jeremiah.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to talk to you about it today, but in case my voice gives way, I'm going to be trying to answer two questions.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: The first is, will Israel survive?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: That question was asked a lot 15 years ago when there were suicide terrorists all, you may strap bombs to the chest and blow themselves up.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And one LSU professor said, uh, it looks to me like Israel may be destroyed one by one as suicide vests go off.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not happening much anymore.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now the attack comes from a couple of different directions.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: There are rockets, hundreds of rockets, in the last several weeks alone, from Gaza and from Palestinian territory.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: 80 this last Monday alone.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: They just fire them indiscriminately at towns in southern Israel, but there's only one large town down there, Ashkelon.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the Israelis brilliantly have something called an iron dome, they call it, which is an automated thing that shoots out rocket interceptors.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: It can figure out where those rockets are heading in a split second.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if they're going to hit open ground, they let them through, because each one of the interceptor missiles costs something like$10 million.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they shoot the rest of them down.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's last Monday, one did get deflected, got through, and uh completely destroyed a food company, but but nobody died.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I go to Israel, it's been every year now.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've been leading Melinda and I've been leading a tour every year because a lot of people want to go, maybe before they stop surviving.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the humor of Jews in Israel is really weird.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's dark, it's just they make fun of the terrorism.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you'll say, um, someone will say, you'll hear one of them say, you know, it just hasn't rained all summer, and someone will say, Well, it's raining rockets anyway.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, or or there's one, there's a guy who got hit by uh, I think terrorist action, and Tel Ababi's lying there and he's bleeding, and so if paramedic comes and he and says, and says, looks at him.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's just lying there and he says, Are you are you comfortable?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy looks up and says, I make a good living.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So there's um so anyway, but the other problem with Israel's survival is primarily the jump in anti-Semitism around the world in America, Europe, especially just in the last couple of years.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's up 60%.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Violent acts against Jews, up 60% in Germany this last year, 75% in France.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thousands of Jews are fleeing those countries right now, moving to Israel to be safer, you know, from Europe, or even in America.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: We've stopped, we've stopped freaking out when, you know, somebody shoots up a synagogue like they did two months ago in California, or last month, you know, this Jewish woman in Brooklyn of all places, walking her little kids, and another woman comes up and just beats her up in front of her children.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've stopped, that's stopped being front page news.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's just become accepted.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Antisemitism is on the rise.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: The United States as a nation is alone pretty much in the world in supporting and protecting Israel.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: The United Nations has become anti-Semitic.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one question that our text will answer today.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Will Israel survive?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: The other question is more interesting and personal for you.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: It goes, have you ever been thrilled with a surprise invitation?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like to the prom or like to join uh a prestigious soccer or basketball team?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was rereading the biography of Kerry Livgren of Kansas and Topeka Bible Church this last week.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: His biography called Seeds of Change.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I got to the place in the late fall 1974, and can this couple years before they had uh come out with, and before Carrie wrote Carrie on Wayward's Sons, so they weren't famous yet, and they were just doing little gigs, and they were in Atlanta at one of their favorite places, which is called Alex Cooley's uh electric ballroom, I think.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they they would go there uh off and on, and they were there for two weeks, and they finished playing their gig.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: The band did, Candace did, and Carrie finished, and he was walking with his guitar across the ballroom, and a girl, a pretty girl, looked up from a table and said to him, Will you marry me?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's a surprise invitation.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, she'd seen, he'd seen her a couple months before there and noticed her beautiful long dark hair, and that she was really pretty and so forth.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she will say, Vicky will say, that she heard him say that teasingly to another girl previously.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: But his answer to her then was, let me put my guitar away and we'll talk about it.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they got married a year later.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's a surprise invitation to a lifelong love affair.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: I remember the surprise invitation I got in this very room.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: It looked a lot different back then when I was 26 years old, and the church had been looking for a pastor for seven months, and then and I was just making plans of where I was gonna go after the new guy came.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they came up to me, head of the search committee, and said, We'd like you to seriously consider being our next pastor.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: That was a surprise invitation, and I confess I might not have said yes, except that I had just got engaged to a cute little blonde named Melody in Dallas the week before, and I thought I should probably bring home some money.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow, that was a great invitation.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's some people in our uh in our church, colonels, who've gotten a surprise invitation to the Army War College recently.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you got invited to go to a prestigious school like the Air Force Academy.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: But these surprise invitations that you don't expect, I mean, aren't they wonderful?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's how you and I should feel this morning, because we're going to get a surprise invitation to something we were never initially invited to.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all going to come to a culmination in the Lord's table.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because the night before he died, Jesus was instructing his disciples about the Last Supper, about the Lord's Supper.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: He told them, After I die, I want you regularly to take the bread, which will be my body.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to drink the cup, which will represent my blood.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you, as he held up the cup, he said, I want you to know this cup is the cup of the new covenant in my blood.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning that a couple of hours later, when he died on the cross and he shed his blood for us, that blood would trigger, it would kick off.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: The new covenant that we're about to look at in Jeremiah 31, it would start it, it would kick it off.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now he was speaking to Jewish men, and this was a covenant to Jewish people, to the Jewish nation, to Israel.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't for us at that point, but when the when it got expanded, when Gentiles started trusting Jesus Christ, looking at him on the cross, then all of a sudden Paul said in Corinthians, he said, You know what?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: You guys need to be taking the Lord's table too.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be eating the bread, celebrating Jesus' death.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be drinking the new covenant in his blood.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because the spiritual blessings of this covenant are now yours, now that you've been grafted into Israel's privileges.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to talk about that this morning.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing passage.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to get through these verses right now.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's Jeremiah 31.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're beautiful words, famous words.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is a promise in 600 BC through the prophet Jeremiah to a bunch of people who are about to get slaughtered, about to get destroyed, about to get taken into captivity by Babylon.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in these four chapters called the Book of Comfort, chapters 30 through 33, God says, I want you to realize I've got wonderful things planned for you, great plans for you.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, the days are coming when I'm going to make a new covenant.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: The only time that's mentioned in the Old Testament, a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Several questions, what's the time of the new covenant?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is this is a technical phrase.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: The days are coming 15 times in this book, always referring to either Christ's first coming, 600 years later, or his second coming, 2,600 years later.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Days are coming.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: So this thing doesn't kick off until later.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so as a result, maybe partly as a result, they didn't pay attention.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Israel was so deaf and they were so blind.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like Max Sharp.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Max Sharp, 90 years old, he founder of the Four Seasons Hotel Chain.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was playing golf a couple years ago, age 90, up in Toronto where he lives, on the third hole, 140 yards.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: He hit a hole in one, but he couldn't see it because he's nearly blind.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when his partner and best friend Sam, 80 years old, said, You just got a hole in one, he couldn't hear it because he had his hearing aid down.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Sam came over and he yelled at his ear, You got a hole in one.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Max said, No, I didn't.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he wouldn't believe it until they walked 140 yards up and he looked in the hole.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happened to the nation of Israel.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't believe it.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: They heard there was some sort of a new covenant.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't used to this new covenant.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: They were used to the covenant of Moses.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't used to this new one.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't believe it, didn't act on it.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even when Jesus came, even today, they don't pay much attention to the new covenant.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Who made it?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is Yahweh or the Lord.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Four times in these four verses it says, declares the Lord.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And throughout this passage, he keeps saying, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Never once does it say, and you have to do this, and you have to do this, and you have to do this, like he said in the Mosaic covenant.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is all God, and it's a blessing that he's going to give us.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: The Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant, those were all about the future kingdom.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is all about the blessings.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: The blessings that come that Yahweh says he's going to give to his people, the nation of Israel one day.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And all Israel will be saved.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Third, what's the name of it?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's called, say it with me.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: New covenant.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Only time it's used in the Old Testament, but quoted in the New Testament, right?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Who received it?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: The nation of Israel.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: The house of Israel, the northern ten tribes, the southern two tribes, the house of Judah.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is it to us?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not to us.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was never given to the Gentiles at the start.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was for his chosen people, Israel.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was not for Gentiles, but something happened.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then we got a surprise invitation in the New Testament.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, to our utter shock and joy and surprise, we got invited to the Queen's Garden Party.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: We got invited to.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I had a guy preach here for me a couple times last year named Warwick Cooper from Canada.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Warwick and his wife, Annette, got a wonderful surprise two months ago.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: They got an invitation from a significant politician in Washington, D.C., inviting them to come to the presidential prayer breakfast and to the three days of events that surround it, which include meeting with congressmen, meeting with the president, meeting with other people.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were blown out of the water.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: They couldn't believe they got invited to something like this.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: They went, and when I saw work in the net 10 days ago in California, they said it was a highlight of their entire lives.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they kept pinching themselves.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: How in the world are we getting to go spend time with all these people at the presidential prayer breakfast?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we got an amazing surprise, which we'll get to in the New Testament.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now he continues, not like the covenant, this new covenant is 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.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: My covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: What covenant is he talking about that they broke?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Answer.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was the one they made at Mount Sinai after he brought them across the Red Sea out of the land of Egypt.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that covenant called the Mosaic covenant?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know it best for the beginning of that covenant, which is the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, Moses, this is Rembrandt, which Moses brought down.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: They were etched in stone by God's finger on stone tablets.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: He broke them because even though God's people Israel at that time said, What you said, we'll do everything you say.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: They started disobeying it the moment it was issued.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that covenant different, different than the new covenant.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mosaic covenant's like getting married.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: The groom says, I'll do this, I'll do this, I vow to do this.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the bride also says, I'll do this, I'll do this, I'll do this.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bilateral covenant, conditional covenant, in a way.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way the Mosaic covenant was.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: God said, as the groom, I'll do this and this and this, but you must obey.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, We'll obey.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And of course they didn't.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why he says, My covenant, which you broke.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing wrong with the covenant.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: But when one party to a two-party covenant refuses to abide by the rules of the covenant, and that covenant can break.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Israel broke the covenant from the very start, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a beautiful covenant.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote my master's thesis on that old covenant.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great covenant and so forth.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Read it, it's part of the Bible, but they couldn't keep the covenant.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's the predecessor of the new covenant.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: The contrast, it's the old covenant.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, folks, so many people in our world want to live by the old covenant.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Orthodox Jews have never moved on to the new covenant.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're still into the food laws, they're still into the commandments, they're still into the do's and the don'ts and so forth.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're a type of most of the rest of the world who wants to live by rules and do's and don'ts.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow they think that they can get to heaven or please God by acting obedient, by doing this and doing that.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: God says, you can't.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can't.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Israel never could.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work that way.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: You need to move on to a new paradigm.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the Swiss used to have a corner on the world market of time pieces, watches and clocks.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Someone came to them 25 years ago and said, Hey, I got a watch here.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Got it to work.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't use gears.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't use springs at all.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Brand new, it's digital.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at it.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, we don't want anything to do with that.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: We know gears and springs.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So they walked away.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: A company named Seiko came.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Seiko said, Hey, we're gonna make those things.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So today Switzerland has 10% of the world market of time pieces.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Seiko has more than 10%.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just because they were willing to move on to a new paradigm.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not willing to move on from the old covenant way of doing things, in fact, the Bible's really clear about this.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: It says what you're tied into, whether it's the new covenant or old covenant, what you're tied to determines your safety and security.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're a little like the guy who's working on that steep, shedded house he had, steep roofed house.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: He realized he was on the backside of the roof, there was a danger that he was slipping and sort of slick, so he tied a rope around his waist, leaned over the top, and he threw the he threw the other end of the rope to his son who was playing the front yard, to his little boy, and he said, Would you please tie this to that tree?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Boy went over and tied it to the tree and he kept working.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Then the boy thought, Wow, that tree, that's a little tree, that's a weak tree.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: I need to tie it to something stronger.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: So Ann wrapped it.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: He went over and he tied it to the bumper of the car.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because the car was a lot bigger, a lot stronger.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know what happened?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Mom's inside the house, she's worked making a cake, she goes, Whoa, I've run out of eggs.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: She runs out to the car to go to the store and pick up eggs, puts that thing in reverse, and the guy goes to the moon.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, he goes down.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the point of the Bible, point of the New Testament is what you're tied to.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's the old covenant or new covenant will make all the difference in the world between whether you go up or you go down.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the predecessor is the old covenant.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 8 addresses this whole thing, speaking to you and to me now, to Gentiles as well as Jews, especially Jews, but it says, you know what?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the mediator of a better covenant, speaking of the new covenant, which has been enacted on better promises, which we're going to see in just a minute.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next five verses quote the entire Jeremiah 31 New Covenant, which we're going through right now.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's the longest quotation in the New Testament of any Old Testament passage.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's how important today's mountaintop watershed passage is, right?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then the chapter ends in speaking of a new covenant.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: He makes the first one obsolete.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Don't hang on to that old religion, to the old works, covenant.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jeremiah continues.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: God says, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord, right?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's with the house of Israel, not yet with us.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: We get an invitation later.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: He says, first promise.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I will put my law within them, and I'll write it on their hearts.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's different than at Mount Sinai, right?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Where the law was written, what?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Tablets of stone?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was external.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Promise number one, a transformed heart.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you can live from the inside out.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you trusted Jesus as your savior, by the way, you sense that this has happened.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because until you've trusted Christ as your Savior, before you have a transformed heart, it's rules you're trying hard.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're going to church, maybe you're tithing, maybe you're doing something else.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: But then when you get a transformed heart and God injects you with his standards and rules and morality and so forth, then after that, everything you see people, all of their beliefs about things, oftentimes about things like abortion, things about life and death and other stuff, all of that changes because it's injected into us now.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a transformed heart that we have.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's an astounding difference.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel uses similar but different words, bringing in the word spirit.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: It says, I'll give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'll remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's a before and an after.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: You have a brand new heart now.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 11 puts it this way: I'll give them integrity of heart, put a new spirit in them.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll remove their heart of stone from their bodies and give them a heart of flesh.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll follow my statutes and practice them.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: You live from the inside out.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: You live with a heart now.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that promise, by the way, will fall upon all the nation Israel, says Paul in Romans 11.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: One day when Christ returns, every Israelite will have a brand new heart.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 3, a wonderful chapter.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Don't have time to read it.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll summarize it here with the contrast it makes between the old covenant of Moses, who initiated that one, and the new covenant of Christ.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: The type of covenant the old covenant was was a covenant of the letter, it said, like letters on a page or letters chiseled into stone.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: The new covenant, however, is written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Location on stone tablets as versus human hearts.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: The result of one is condemnation.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Of the other, we live a righteous life.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: And one day in the kingdom in the millennium, we'll all live perfectly righteous lives because it'll come out from the inside.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Duration, temporary, as versus permanent.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Outcome of one covenant is death and the other is life.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: This movie, there's a movie that absolutely beautifully illustrates this and has wonderful lessons for parents and for school teachers as well.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: A movie that won all kinds of awards 25 years ago this year called Mr.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Holland's Opus.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I won't ask you if you saw it because some of you it's been so long ago you wouldn't even remember whether you saw it.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the young people certainly have it, though you can watch it on YouTube at 10-minute segments, and it's worth it.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: It started Alex, it started Richard Dreyfus.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: It took place in Portland, Oregon, my hometown.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the school where he taught, two miles from my home, so school I went to every Saturday night for Youth for Christ meetings, Grant High School.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful story.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Story of Mr.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Holland and Gene Holland.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: In this story was a musician.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: He was a composer and he was a traveling musician.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't making all kinds of money.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: He had a wife and he had a little deaf child.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so he needed to get a job to pay the rent.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so he got a job at the local high school there in Portland, Oregon.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: But his heart wasn't in it.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, principal came up to him after a couple of months and said, You know what?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I am amazed how fast you can run to your car at 3:30 the moment the day is over.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: She said, You ought to be our track coach.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I'm getting my job done.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going through the music.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember Music Capriche?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can tell how bad that is in music history.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he taught.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they hated it.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: He also taught the band.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: But he didn't have his heart into it, right?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was all tablets of stone, it was all external, and that's what it was to them.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was just memorizing facts.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't in their heart, right?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, one of the girls in the band, her name was Gertrude, Gertrude Lang.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she was her squeaking, and for those of us I played clarinet, wow, I know all about that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, isn't that horrible?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: So she would squeak and it would just ruin every band number they had.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So he had her come in at half an hour early and he started tutoring her, and there it is, and he's saying, Stop, no, it's a half-knop.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's oh, that's a quarter note, that's a flat.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you understand that?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so forth.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was all details, it was all letters on a white page and so forth.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And she couldn't get it.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: She couldn't get it.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And one day he's frustrated and she starts crying.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: She puts a clarinet down, starts to leave the room.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Just give that clarinet.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Do whatever you want.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he says to her, Has it ever been fun?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she cries, she says, I wanted it to be.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: My mother has her own business.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's famous.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's famous here in town.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a nobody.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I took up the clarinet years ago, just trying to do something so I could be worthy in my own home.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I can't.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I can't as much as I try.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he's really touched.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he says to her, um, you know what?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Come back in here.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: She's about to leave.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Miss Lang, I think we've been doing this all wrong.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: We've been playing notes on a page.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, Well, what else is there to play?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, background of this, really quickly, he gets so disgusted at his class that he starts making fun of them.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: He gives them a test and he starts reading out their answers.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Name one American poser, composer.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's Johann Sebastian Bach.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Gives most of them Fs and D's.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: They hate the class.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: He hates the class.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: But he's supported because the tablets of Stone Guy, the vice principal right there, Mr.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Flat Top right there, Mr.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Walters, he says, hey, that it takes discipline.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Keep at it, discipline.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And stop going to some of this modern music.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens is he starts, his heart starts to change.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: He realizes he's not doing it right.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as she's walking out, he says, Please come back here and pick up your clarinet.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: She picks it up.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, No more notes.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he pulls the book away.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Whoa, hold it.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You know the notes.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: You've been practicing this thing for a whole year.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just play it in your heart.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she tries and she squeaks again.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Whoa, whoa.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hold it.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: He said, um playing music is supposed to be fun.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: He says.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's about heart.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more to music than notes upon a page.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's about feelings and it's about, it's about, it's about reactions.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's about something beautiful.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not about notes on a page.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I can teach you notes on a page, he said.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: I can't teach you that other stuff.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: So she tries again and she overblows her instrument again and she squeaks again.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, I'd like to pose a personal question, if I may, to you.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, Okay, go ahead.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: He said, When you look in the mirror, what do you see there that you like best about yourself?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, um, after hesitating, she said, My hair.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: My long red hair.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Why?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, because my father says it always reminds him of the sunset.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he said to her, I want you to close your eyes.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to play the sunset.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And she closes her eyes.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And she plays quieter.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she plays without screeching.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And something about that has moved it into her heart.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And at the main concert at the end of the year, when she plays that solo as part of the band in front of a thousand people, she plays it perfectly.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, later in life, she becomes the governor of the state.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And says she comes back to the school to speak.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: This was the turning point in her life.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Mr.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Holland has learned his lesson.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: He realizes that teaching is not about written notes on a page, it's what's in the heart.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: She'll eventually move to New York and become a singer.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she's singing a soul, she's singing a song, but she's singing without life.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, he says, What song is that?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, Well, you know what it is?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's someone to watch over me.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, What do you think that girl's really feeling?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, I have no idea.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Listen, that song is wistful, Miss Morgan.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's about a woman who's alone in a very, very cold world, and all she wants, more than anything else, is to have someone hold her close, to tell her that everything's going to be alright.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the need for love in your gut.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Rowena tries it again, and it's magic.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a decision he has to make between tablets of stone and what's on the heart.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that I've spent this much time on it because it's worth asking, isn't it?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want to draw in life?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to draw the letters of your life on tablets of stone as a parent?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do's and don'ts in discipline where you may end up with right behavior, but not out of the heart?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or as a teacher?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you want to somehow inject it into hearts?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because didn't Aristotle himself define education not as learning facts?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: But he said becoming the kind of person on the inside who automatically knows what books are the right books to read, what movies are the right movies to read, to see, and wants to be a lifelong learner.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: So you see, there are lessons here for us as parents and grandparents and school teachers.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, the most important lesson in Jeremiah is for us as Christians or spiritual people who want to be Christians to realize that it's not about tablets of stone.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: And God says he wants to change us from the inside out.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the moment you trust him as Savior, he gives you a brand new heart.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the second thing he gives you, he says, I'll be their God, they'll be my people.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And no longer will each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, Know the Lord, meaning really know the Lord, not know about the Lord, but know the Lord.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: For they'll all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, yes, he's talking about the future, the kingdom where we'll all know him intimately, and all Israel will be saved.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a promise that is then comes into you and to me the moment we trust Jesus as our Savior.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: This amazing intimate relationship with God, where he whispers to us, I'm your shepherd, you're my sheep, I'm your father, you're my child, I'm your husband, you're my wife.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah put it this way: that on that day, this one will say, I'm the Lord's, and another one will use the name of Jacob, and another will write on his hand, the Lord's, and take the name Israel.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: An intimate relationship that can come to you whenever you're ready.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, third, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Forever forgiveness, up till now with the old covenant, you bring you that animal, you sacrifice it, and that gets you through to the next Shabbat.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a temporary, overlooking, a temporary forgiveness.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: But now there's this promise of a forgiveness that's forever, that's past, that's present, that's future.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that the moment you trust Jesus as your Savior, from that moment you know your sins are erased in heaven, never again will they be held against you.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Never again will they send you to hell.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're gone, gone, gone, gone.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, my sins are gone.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm free and in my heart's a song.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yes, daily you and I, like disobedient children, can sin against God and need to ask his forgiveness to get back in that daily fellowship.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: But as far as sin separating you from God, never again, never again.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you say, well, this sounds like we're getting all the promises to ourselves.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: The church does.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe Israel isn't needed anymore.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they were disobedient, maybe God's moved away from them.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden you get shocking statement in the next six verses.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Stirs up the sea so that its waters roar.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh of hosts is his name.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: If this fixed order, sun, moon, stars, sea, departs from before me, declares the Lord, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Never will Israel go away, he says.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you for a moment think that somehow you've kicked them out of the olive tree, dear church, and suddenly it's a Gentile.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Gentiles.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, the future for Israel in the new covenant is irrevocable.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's permanent, it's eternal, because God's making this promise.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, despite all that they have done.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have closed eyes, he says.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: I can see they've been rebelling against me, and even today, the majority of the Jewish people are rebelling against me, but I have guaranteed that I am going to bring my chosen people back and I'm going to save them.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And behold, the days are coming, he concludes the passage when the city will rebuild.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, I won't go into this, no time.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: But basically, what he's saying, it's going to happen, and it's going to happen in the eternal city of Jerusalem.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be amazing.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you ever go over there with me, you'll go, and they call it the eternal city of Jerusalem.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: You go, oh, this is the most beautiful city I've ever seen.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is amazing, but one day it's going to be bigger than it is today.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: The walls will stretch much farther because he actually gives the dimensions here, and it's never happened.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You're going to live in the land I gave your fathers.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Charles Spurgeon, 1855, before Israel had ever started returning to the land.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: 1855.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: They started returning in the 1880s, 1890s.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he preached a sermon to 10,000 people on the Jewish return to the land in London.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: The hour is approaching when the tribes shall go up to their own country, when Judea, so long a balling wilderness, shall once more blossom like the rose.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: We do not attach sufficient importance to the restoration of the Jews.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: We don't even think enough about it.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: But certainly, if there's anything promised in the Bible, it's this.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot read the Bible without seeing clearly that there's to be an actual restoration of the children of Israel.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: For when the Jews are restored, the fullness of the Gentiles shall be gathered in.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as they return, then Jesus will come on Mount Zion, and the Halcyon days of the millennium shall then dawn.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: We shall then know every man to be a brother and a friend, and Christ shall rule with universal sway.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the answer to the two questions of the morning.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Will Israel survive?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can bet they will.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: No matter how bad it gets, they are going to be eternally existing.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Question number two have you ever been invited to something wonderful that you never expected?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is yes, because you're invited right now to the table of the Lord.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: The new covenant in my blood, Jesus said, which was given to the house of Israel and the house of Judah, given to the Jews, but by God's grace, through the blood of Jesus Christ, you and I this morning get invited to a table that was never ours initially.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: We get to participate in the blessings of the Jews.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, listen, this morning, if you're not certain that you have these three blessings, do you realize you can step into this garden party this morning?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can get a transformed heart, an intimate relationship with the God of the universe, and a forever forgiveness that locks you in to being clean before your Lord forever.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray and then let's break the bread and drink the cup of the new covenant.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you so much for inviting us to this party.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, the joy of being included in an invitation that was initially never extended to us.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: But now we've been brought in.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: We foreigners, we aliens, we strangers, we enemies.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: All by your grace.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.