Well, today we are beginning a thorough examination of the New Covenant. I think it could be accurately said that the New Covenant is the heart of the book of Hebrews.
It covers most of chapters 8, 9, and 10, and it's even referred to prior to that. In fact, many of the things that are said that don't specifically identify what is being said is part of the New Covenant nevertheless are. And so when you look at it that way, you realize that an understanding of the New Covenant really is essential to an understanding of the book of Hebrews.
In fact, it's essential to a proper understanding of the Christian religion. And so we're dealing with a very important topic as we move into the last half of chapter 8 of Hebrews today. Now you remember Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians who were apparently being tempted to return to the Old Covenant.
Persecution by unbelieving Jews, that is those who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, was causing a great deal of difficulty, distress, inconvenience, and hardship for the Christian Jews who believed in Jesus. And some of them were saying, well, why don't we just go ahead and worship the way our forefathers did and forget about this New Covenant business? And the writer of Hebrews says, no, no, no, you can't do that. That would be a serious and tragic mistake.
Why? Because, as we will learn in our passage today if we haven't already learned it, because the inauguration of the New Covenant canceled the Old Covenant. It's not that we have two options.
We can choose either this one or that one. And even though we might be intellectually persuaded that the New Covenant is better, at least we can be satisfied that the Old Covenant is adequate, and in some ways, for them at least, would seem to be more preferable. But the writer of Hebrews says, no, you can't do that. The Old Covenant is gone. It's gone.
It's gone. It was given to your forefathers, but now it's gone with the coming of Jesus Christ. The Old Covenant served its God-intended purpose, but it has now been replaced. It can no longer provide access to God for anyone.
It is null and void. Now, the term New Covenant has been mentioned in two verses prior to our text for today. In chapter 7, verse 22, we read, by so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant. And in chapter 8, verse 6, the verse that immediately precedes our text beginning in verse 7 today, but in Hebrews 8, 6 we read, and now he, that is Jesus, obtained a more excellent ministry inasmuch as he is also mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises, a better covenant. And so now we are learning more about the nature of these two covenants, something about the old, and even more about the new, and why it is better, indeed why it is essential.
And so we will address this in three parts today. Number one, the reason for a new covenant, verse 7. Number two, the prediction of a new covenant, verses 8 through 12. And then third, the replacement of the old covenant, verse 13. The reason for a new covenant, verse 7 says, for if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. There is a reason for a new covenant rather than the old one.
And I think maybe if I ask four questions of the text in verse 7, it may clarify what I think the writer is saying to us. So we begin even before we get into the material of verse 7, but we begin answering a basic question, and that is, what is a covenant? We are talking about the old covenant, the new covenant, the first covenant, the second covenant. What is a covenant? In simple terms, a covenant is a formal agreement between two or more parties.
That's what it is. Now, we could add to that some other elements that would fill out that definition, but in simplicity, that's what it is. A covenant is a formal agreement between two or more parties. It usually involves expectations or what we might call requirements and often also involves penalties if the requirements are not carried out. There are a lot of illustrations of this, but perhaps the most common one is the marriage covenant. And unfortunately, in our day, we don't even often think of the vows of marriage and the legality of entering into marriage in terms of a covenant, but we really should because that's what it is. What is a covenant? A formal agreement between two or more parties.
What does a man and the woman do when they are married? They speak the vows of their covenant. They promise that they will do this. He promises what he will do on behalf or in regard to his wife or the one that he's taking at his wife.
She promises what she will do in regard to the one she is taking as her husband. This is heard by witnesses. This is certified by the official who is leading them through the vows of the covenant. Then it is registered in the courthouse. It is a legal matter. It is a covenant.
It is a legal agreement between two parties, in this case, the bride and the groom. In the Bible, a covenant is a formal agreement between God and man, and usually that's the way that it is used, although sometimes it is used as, for example, a covenant between the members of the triune Godhead and various other ways. But generally, when we're talking about a covenant in the Bible, we're talking about a formal agreement between God and man. And you will notice, if you pay close attention to the various covenants in the Bible, that they are always inaugurated by God. God says, this is the agreement.
This is what I will do. Sometimes he says, this is what you must do. In some cases, he doesn't even stipulate any requirements on the part of those that he's making the agreement with. But he just says, I promise to do this in this relationship between myself and whoever is designated as the recipient or the other party of the covenant. But moving from the question, what is a covenant? We come to a second question, which is, what is the first covenant? Because that's the word or the term that is used in verse seven. For if that first covenant had been faultless, the first covenant, as it is called in verse seven, is what I have generally been calling the old covenant.
It's the same thing. And it has other names as well. Some call this covenant the Sinaitic covenant. It was the one made with the people of God at Mount Sinai in the wilderness. Some call this the Mosaic covenant because it was made with Moses as the leader of God's people when they were taken out of the land of Egypt. But in the light of the introduction of a new covenant, we therefore can probably most readily entitle the Sinaitic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the first covenant, as it is called here, the old covenant. And what it is called here, the first covenant, that does not mean the first covenant ever mentioned in the Bible. Theologians may discuss various covenants. Some are happy to call the agreement between the members of the Godhead before the world was ever created in regard to salvation, to call that the covenant of redemption. I have no quarrel with that designation, even though it's not found in the Bible. I think it's a very useful way to describe what the Bible does describe as an agreement between the members of the triune Godhead before the world was created, in which they agreed that they were going to save a people.
And this is how they were going to do it. The Father administrates, the Son becomes the Redeemer, the Holy Spirit applies the work of the Son, and so forth, the covenant of redemption. Some theologians talk about a covenant of works in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve sinned, that they had a covenant with God to obey Him. And really, a very simple requirement, just one rule, one law, one commandment, don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And even that one simple requirement was not kept, and Adam sinned, and Eve, of course, enticed him into sin.
And so the whole human family was plunged into a state of sinfulness, a whole different, a great change took place in the human nature as it had been originally created by God. And sometimes that sin, that failure to obey God is called the covenant of works. Again, that term is not found in the Bible, some will want to argue with that, but there are a couple of other covenants that I think nobody will dispute. We know, for example, that God made a covenant with Noah, the Noahic covenant, when he came off the ark. Basically, God just made certain stipulations.
He said, this is what I'm going to do. I am never going to destroy the world again by flood. That's my promise, that's my agreement, that's my covenant with mankind.
And there are some other things there. That covenant required that murderers be put to death by capital punishment. Whosoever shedth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed. Prior to that, that was not true, but with the inauguration of the Noahic covenant, now capital punishment becomes the appropriate punishment for murder. And after that, we have the Abrahamic covenant.
That one is a biggie, isn't it? That's the one that promises that God will not only bring a Messiah into the world through the physical line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but that he will also bless the whole world through this one that he brings in as the Messiah, that in Abraham shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Now, as far as I can tell, the Noahic covenant has never been abrogated. It's still in effect. The Abrahamic covenant has never been abrogated.
It's still in effect. Nothing has been abrogated or changed about that covenant. But when it comes to the Mosaic covenant, it's gone. God says so.
Right here, God says so. That covenant, which had a purpose, had its purpose fulfilled many years ago, and now it has been set aside. So I'm talking about the first covenant in verse seven. It's not talking about the first covenant ever. It's talking about the first of the two that are under consideration in this passage. One that's under consideration is the covenant that Christ inaugurated by the shedding of his blood and that he announced as being inaugurated on the night before his betrayal and death, when he took the cup from off the table and said, this is the new covenant in my blood.
This do as oft as you drink it, do so in remembrance of me. The new covenant inaugurated by Christ. And in the comparison, the contrast between that covenant is the Mosaic covenant. And therefore, when you're thinking about these two covenants, one is first, one is second, one is old, one is new, one is abrogated, one continues. And that's what we're talking about when we talk in this passage, in this context, about the first covenant. We're talking about the Mosaic covenant, the first of the two which are under consideration here. Now we come to a third question and that is, why did the first covenant need to be replaced? And that also is told us briefly in verse seven. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.
Why did the first covenant need to be replaced? Answer, because it was faulty. Which is another way of saying, it was not faultless.
That's the way it's put here. If it had been found faultless, there wouldn't have needed to be a new one. But, the contrary is true. It was not faultless, it is faulty. And because it is faulty, it needs to be replaced. Though it served its divinely intended purpose, its purpose has now been fulfilled. And the fault, in essence, is that it was not designed to secure salvation. It had another purpose altogether. But the covenant itself was not designed to secure salvation. And in that respect, it was faulty. It's not that there was anything wrong with it. It was a divinely given covenant. There were no flaws in it.
There were no errors in it. But for the purpose that some people were trying to utilize it as a way of salvation, it was faulty because it couldn't do that because it wasn't designed to do that. So back to the original question for these Christian Jews who are thinking about returning to the old covenant.
If you go to the old covenant and base your relationship with God on that, you have no salvation because it doesn't save. It wasn't designed to. It wasn't able to.
That was its fault. And we could say accurately, and this would reflect some of the statements that Paul makes along these lines. We could say, really, there was no fault with the covenant. The fault was with the people who were sinful. And their sins were unable to be dealt with by this covenant. They were unable to be removed, might be a better term, by this covenant.
And so in that respect, it was faulty. It wasn't able to remove sin. It was not designed to secure salvation. It was given as a temporary measure to point to Christ. For the Old Testament people, it was pointing forward to a promised Messiah to the day when he would come, when he would effect salvation, for only he can do that. And he does that in terms of a new covenant that he makes. The terms of that covenant do bring about salvation.
The terms of the old covenant merely point to the need. It highlights man's sinfulness with the continual bringing of sacrifices. It highlights man's sinfulness in that he cannot come close to God. He can only be represented by a priest as a mediator between himself and God. And even that priest can't get very close to God.
The high priest once a year comes into the Holy of Holies and he gets out quickly. All of these things and many more I could mention are pointing to man's sinfulness, man's need of salvation, the requirement of a sacrifice in order for men and women to be saved, the shedding of blood that is necessary for that, a sacrifice that is sufficient to cleanse men and women from their sins. And yet the very unending repetition of the sacrifices of the old covenant and the unending service of the priest of the old covenant were pointing to the fact that the old covenant could never accomplish this. It could never actually cleanse from sin because if it ever did, then it wouldn't have to keep being repeated. So what was it doing?
It was covering sin until Christ came to remove sin. So why did the first covenant need to be replaced? Because it was faulty. And then question number four, what rendered it faulty?
And I've pretty much already covered this. It was unable to remove sin. It was unable to reconcile sinners to God.
It was unable to change hearts. Old Testament salvation and people certainly were saved in the Old Testament and who were living under the terms of the old covenant. But Old Testament salvation was obtained on the basis of the new covenant, the promises of the new covenant partially revealed in the Old Testament scriptures with the promise of a coming Messiah. Why would there need to be a savior? Why do we have prophecies about a coming savior?
Like, for unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given, and so forth. And other prophecies about the coming of a savior. What's that all about if the old covenant is sufficient to take care of this? No, the old covenant wasn't designed to, but it was designed to impress upon men's hearts their need of a savior and then point them to the future savior, the promised Messiah that would come and in the terms of the new covenant would render blameless those who trusted him for the salvation of their souls. So that's number one, the reason for a new covenant. Number two, the prediction of a new covenant in verses 8 through 12.
And now the writer of Hebrews quotes almost exactly word for word. A prophecy in the book of Jeremiah chapter 31 verses 31 through 34. So the prediction of a new covenant in verses 8 through 12 goes something like this. A new covenant declared verse 8, the old covenant described verse 9, the new covenant described verses 10, 11, and 12. First of all, the new covenant declared verse 8 because finding fault with them, that is the children of Israel and their sinfulness, finding fault with them, he, that is God says, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Here's where the new covenant is declared, a future covenant, the days are coming. If I quoted this from Jeremiah, you would think you were hearing the same thing I just read in Hebrews.
Here's what we read in Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant, which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord, I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people.
No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother saying, no, the Lord, for they all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more. There I've read it from the New King James translation of Jeremiah 31. And here we have it before us in Hebrews chapter eight. And in verse eight, we have a new covenant declared. It is a future covenant to the days of Jeremiah when he says the days are coming. It is a divinely inaugurated covenant for God says I will make. It is a Jewish covenant and I put in my notes that term Jewish in quotation marks because we are told that this covenant, this new covenant will be made with the house of Judah and the house of Israel. That, of course, is speaking to the nation as it existed in the days of Jeremiah, that divided kingdom, the southern kingdom, Judah and the tribe of Benjamin, the northern kingdom, the 10 northern tribes. It was divided after the days of Solomon, as you know, and existed as two separate kingdoms until finally both north and south were destroyed at different times and in different ways, the south by the Babylonian captivity.
And then when they returned to the land, it became one nation again, not a divided nation, but it didn't become a kingdom because they never were independent, self-ruled, never had a king after the Babylonian captivity. But it is a Jewish covenant in the terms of what is told to us in Jeremiah 31 in that it was made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. But here's what we need to understand that we won't see this as clearly in this passage today. It'll become more clear in the days to come.
But when I say that, I say it with this in mind. The old covenant was made with the physical Jewish people, the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was a covenant made with a particular people, a particular nation, a particular physical nation that God inaugurated by first calling Abraham out of the Ur of the Chaldees and then actually constituting his family into a nation with the exodus from Egypt. So it was a covenant made with the Jewish people. The new covenant, according to the terms that we read here, is also a covenant made with Jewish people. But the old covenant was made with the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The new covenant is made with the spiritual descendants of Abraham, the spiritual seed of Abraham. Those who are sons of Abraham, not by physical descent, but by faith, having the same believing faith that Abraham had, which makes all who believe in Christ sons of Abraham. As the New Testament states so clearly and emphatically, I don't see how anyone can argue against that.
It's a fool's errand to argue against that. So there are some differences, and pretty significant differences as we can see here. Now we wouldn't have known that just reading Jeremiah, that this covenant made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah isn't with simply the physical descendants of Abraham, it will include many of them, but it is with spiritual descendants of Abraham, all believing Jews who are physical descendants of Abraham, plus all believing Gentiles who are not physical descendants of Abraham, but by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ are just as much the seed that is a spiritual seed of Abraham, and have just as much Abraham as their father as those who are physical descendants from Abraham. So it's a new covenant, future, divinely inaugurated, and with a Jewish cast, a Jewish flavor, but there are some nuances about that Jewish flavor that need to be clarified. But we move from a new covenant declared in verse 8 to the old covenant described in verse 9.
Now the rite of Hebrews quoting Jeremiah, same language from Jeremiah 31, says about this new covenant, I will make it with them in these words not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, out of the land of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. What does this tell us about the old covenant as it describes it in brief terms? Well, number one, that it is significantly different from the old covenant. The new covenant is significantly different from the old covenant, or we could say the old covenant is significantly different from the new covenant.
And I just told you in one way that that's obvious. The old covenant was made with a physical people. The new covenant is made with a spiritual people, both identified in the same language, similar language, house of Israel, sons of Abraham, but there is a significant difference between the old and the new. Now when we read in verse 9, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, that obviously indicates a significant difference, but the exact details of that difference are not found in this particular statement.
You have to ferret them out from other parts of the New Testament, and primarily from the book of Hebrews, which has more to say about this than any other. But let's just agree at the beginning that this new covenant, by the statement of God, details yet to be determined, but by the statement of God is not almost like the old covenant, just a little bit different. It's much different from the old covenant, a lot different. This covenant is not, according to, is not like the covenant that I made with your fathers. And so the old covenant is described as significantly different from the new covenant. It is described as having been made with Israel's fathers when God brought them out of Egypt.
And I think I will take the time, I do have my eye on the clock as I try to always do, and I think I have the time to read from Exodus 24, eight verses that tell us about the inauguration of the old covenant. We're talking about the first covenant, the old covenant, the Sinaitic covenant, the Mosaic covenant. Well, where do we learn about that in the Old Testament? Well, there are chapters and chapters and chapters, but let's just read these eight verses.
I think that'll suffice. Exodus 24, Now he, that is, God said to Moses, Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar. And Moses alone shall come near the Lord, but they shall not come near, nor shall the people go up with him.
We're talking about going up on Mount Sinai. So Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the judgments. And all the people answered with one voice and said, Listen, all the words which the Lord has said we will do. This is the covenant. This is the agreement.
God says, This is what I require of you as those included in my covenant. And they said, We will do it. We agree to it. We accept this covenant. We accept the terms.
We'll do what you are requiring of us. All of the Lord, all the words which the Lord has said we will do. And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord. And he rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. Then he sent young men of the children of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins, and half the blood he sprinkled on the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read in the hearing of all the people. And they said, All that the Lord has said we will do and be obedient. Here's their second pledge, to be obedient to the words of the covenant. And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you according to all these words. There is the inauguration of the acceptance of the agreement to live under the terms of this covenant, this formal agreement that is made between God and men. I didn't say man because it wasn't made between God and all mankind.
It was made between God and a certain designated group of people, namely the nation of Israel that came out of the land of Egypt, who were all physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God said, This is the covenant. This is what I want you to do, what I'm commanding you to do. And they all said, We agree.
We'll do it. We'll be obedient. Covenant ratified with blood. Moses sprinkled blood on the altar. He sprinkled blood on the people who had agreed to keep the terms of the covenant.
And so the old covenant was significantly different from the new. The old covenant was made with Israel's fathers that God dealt with in tender love when he says, I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. That, of course, is the poetic language.
It's symbolic language, but it's tender language, like a father taking a little child lovingly by the hand and helping him get through a difficult place, cross the street safely or something like that. Like, I took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt. That's the relationship which God had with these people. But this old covenant, as we know, was broken by Israel. That's what this says in verse 9. They did not continue in my covenant. They did not continue in my covenant.
Within less than 40 days of the time when the people of Israel actually heard the thunderous voice of God from Mount Sinai, they had fashioned a golden calf and were worshiping a false god, an idol, contrary to the requirements of the covenant, one of which were, You shall make no graven images. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make unto yourself any graven image. You shall not bow down to them. You shall not worship them. Less than 40 days after they promised to obey that, they already broke it.
And the next several hundred years history of the nation of Israel is just one record, one continuous record of their disobedience. They're breaking the terms of the covenant which they had entered into with God at Mount Sinai. And therefore, God says, basically, I have therefore abandoned them. They did not continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. I abandoned them, left them in their sins.
Now, how much we are to read into that phrase, I disregarded them, I abandoned them, is also going to be a matter of dispute. Some say God has nothing more to do with the physical nation of Israel today than he has to do with any other nation in the world. I don't accept that in light of the language in Romans chapter 9 and 11. But other people say the promises that God made to Abraham's physical descendants can never be disregarded. And it seems to me God says some of those were based upon the condition of their obedience, which they clearly did not do, and therefore I have abandoned them. It seems to me that God says I am not obligated to keep the promises I made in the covenant because they failed to keep the promises they made in the covenant. This covenant is based upon promises by both parties, and if those promises are broken, the covenant is broken. You say, now where are you going to go with that? Just keep coming back over the next several Sundays and we'll talk about where we may be going with that. But I'm just pointing it out to you now. I think there's something to be said here to temper more than one category of systematic theology as it is often followed in our day.
There are some things that need to be considered. So the old covenant significantly differed from the new covenant made with Israel's fathers, broken by Israel and abandoned by God, and therefore the new covenant described in verses 10 through 12. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. None of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother saying, no, the Lord, for all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds.
I will remember no more. All right, the new covenant described here, it is ascribed as being made with the house of Israel. The house of Judah got dropped out probably because now he's viewing it more from a broader scope, broader perspective, not at the time of the divided kingdom, but I think also because he's viewing it in more spiritual terms, the house of Israel as understood by the illumination of the New Testament, which talks about terms of the spiritual sons of Abraham and of a spiritual Israel. But at any rate, here are the terms of the new covenant, what God is going to do under the new covenant, and there are four of them. Number one, inward illumination. Number two, spiritual identification. Number three, universal transformation. And number four, complete reconciliation.
Let's take them up one by one. First of all, inward illumination, verse 10, first part. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel.
After those days, says the Lord, I will put my law in their mind and write them on their hearts. That was never said in regard to the old covenant. God's word in the old covenant was written on tablets of stone, external to the people. And depending on how many of the words you include in the terms of the old covenant, it was written in scrolls, but never any promise to write it in the hearts of the people. It was always external to them. They had it. They knew what it said. They agreed to do it, but it wasn't written in their hearts, but in the new covenant.
There will not just be outward illumination. God's revealing what his will is and making it plain and giving them a record of it. But now it's going to be written inwardly. I'm going to write my law in their mind.
I'm going to write my law in their hearts. The old covenant was written upon tables of stone. The new covenant is written on the heart, which indicates, therefore, under the terms of the new covenant, there's a new understanding of the word of God. It's an inward illumination, a better understanding of God's word. There's a new disposition towards God's word, a favorable disposition toward it instead of a, what should I say, an adversarial relationship toward it, as is so obviously true among the old covenant people of God. There is an ability, a new ability, attendant upon this law of God in the new covenant. It's not just written out here where you can see it and you are required to obey it, but it's written inwardly in a way that apparently you now have an ability to be more obedient than the members of the old covenant did in their day.
That's pretty significant, isn't it? Inward illumination for the members of the new covenant, only outward information for the members of the old covenant. So there's inward illumination, verse 10. There's spiritual identification, also verse 10. The last part of verse 10 says, I will put my laws in their mind and write them in their hearts. And then this, I will be their God and they shall be my people. You say, well, that sounds just like God's relationship with the old covenant people.
And it does. But again, in the light of the fuller development of what we learn, not just in our passage for today, but throughout other passages in Hebrews and elsewhere, I think it would be fair to say this. This spiritual identification, I will be their God and they shall be my people, under the old covenant was true in a physical sense. God made the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob a special nation identified with Yahweh. This physical people, this physical nation were identified with Yahweh. God was their God. They were his people.
But under the terms of the new covenant, though the language is similar, we realize that this statement is true in a spiritual sense, a higher sense. When God says, I will be their God, he's going to draw the members of this covenant into a closer personal relationship with himself. They will be my people.
He's going to make them his people in a spiritual way. They become the bride of Christ. They are joined in vital union with Christ. They have the life of God within them. They have experienced a new birth, which makes them the people of God in a special way. And so the new covenant is ascribed, number one is inward illumination.
Number two, spiritual identification. And then number three, and this is vitally important, universal transformation, verse 11. None of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother saying, know the Lord, for all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them. The old covenant, listen to me now, the old covenant required diligent evangelization of the covenant community, of people who belonged to the old covenant, people who were legitimate members of the old covenant, but were unregenerate, they were unsaved. All of these children were born to the Israelites.
The sons circumcised on the eighth day and all of them added to the covenant community. Now they are members of the covenant community. This is a covenant child.
Well, now what? Teach him God's ways, evangelize him. And pray that he will come to know the Lord inwardly because being a member of the covenant community doesn't save anybody, does it? Not in the terms of the old covenant.
The old covenant didn't save. And so the old covenant required diligent evangelism of the members of the covenant community. People did have to say to their Jewish brother, know the Lord, because it's clear that some of them didn't. People did have to say to their sons and daughters, know the Lord, because they didn't know the Lord by virtue of having been born into the nation of Israel and having received the sign of circumcision. And therefore, in the covenant community, people who belonged to the community that we rightfully call the covenant community, the members of the Mosaic covenant, many of them were unbelievers. In fact, as we read the Old Testament scriptures, we come to the conclusion that in some cases the vast majority of them were unbelievers.
In Elijah's day, Elijah said, I'm the only one left. God said, no, I've got 7,000 that haven't bowed the knee to Baal. But 7,000 out of how many hundreds of thousands of members of the covenant community wasn't very many.
Most of them were lost. They all needed to be evangelized. But in terms of the new covenant, there will not be a single member of the new covenant community who needs to be evangelized because they all know the Lord.
That's what it says. None of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother, saying, know the Lord, for all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them. This text is not saying that there's no need to evangelize the unconverted. We know that's not true. The Bible commands us to do that.
That's what we do. But what it's telling us is that there is no evangelization of the members of the new covenant community like there had to be in the old covenant, the Old Testament. Because every member of the new covenant community is already converted.
In fact, conversion is the qualification for membership in the new covenant community. You're not a member of the new covenant until you've been born again. And when you're born again, you don't need to be evangelized.
Your neighbor doesn't need to say to his brother, know the Lord. Parents don't need to say to their children, know the Lord, once they've been born again. That's the way people become members of the new covenant community is through the new birth. And therefore, not a single member of the new covenant community needs to be evangelized.
Not a single member of the new covenant community can be evangelized. They're all saved. That's how they got into the new covenant community. And then finally, verse 20, complete reconciliation, verse 12 rather. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds.
I will remember no more. In the new covenant, in the terms of the new covenant, God is going to be more merciful to the members of the covenant than he was under the old covenant. He's going to be merciful to the unrighteous. His sins will be remembered against them. Their sins will be remembered against them no more. Because the new covenant, under its design and according to its terms and promises, has a way to remove sins, not merely to cover them until the Messiah comes. Under the terms of the new covenant, the Messiah has come, and all who trust in him have their sins completely cleansed away.
Well, I do have my eye on the clock, and now I have run out of time before I have run out of notes. So I'm going to stop. I'm not going to deal with the last one, the replacement of the old covenant, verse 13.
Nor am I going to take up any of the applications that I otherwise would have done. Let's bow in prayer. Father, we long to rightly understand your word. Help us to do so, for we need the illuminating power of your spirit to be able to. Oh, Lord, teach us thy ways and show us thy paths. And Father, I pray that by the work of your spirit, you will make everyone in this building today a member of the new covenant community by virtue of your regenerating power, by the work of your Holy Spirit in directing men and women and boys and girls to place their faith completely in Jesus Christ and in him alone. I ask in Jesus' name, amen.
