The Mediator of a New Covenant - 39

Is there any news like the Gospel?

What an amazing, amazing truth. Well today we take Hebrews 9.15 as our sermon text. For in many ways it is a pivotal verse in our exposition through the book of Hebrews. First of all, it strikes me that it is a bridge text because it brings together elements from the section that precedes it as well as the section that follows it and helps explain what we have already looked at and helps prepare us for what is to come. It is also in many ways a summary text because in succinct language it summarizes and clarifies a number of the things that we have been looking at in our study in the book of Hebrews and most recently in chapter 9 and even back into chapter 8. And so this text deserves careful examination. Originally I had planned to include verse 15 in my text for last week but as I studied throughout the week I realized that that really is not doing it justice. In fact, I hope I can get everything into my sermon today that I think we need to say from this marvelous text.

Which says in Hebrews 9.15, and for this reason, He is the mediator of the new covenant by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions unto the first covenant that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. We'll examine four things in Hebrews 9.15. Number one, the connection. Number two, the solution. Number three, the requirement.

And number four, the result. We start by noticing the connection for the verse opens calling our attention to its connection with what has gone before. It says, and for this reason. And for this reason, He is the mediator of the new covenant. And that causes every thoughtful Bible student to ask the question, what reason?

For what reason is He the mediator of the new covenant? And the answer lies in the inadequacy of the old covenant that has been explained to us in the previous context as well as the need for something better because of the inadequacy of the old covenant. And so you remember that we have learned in previous verses that the old covenant could not reconcile sinners to God. Verse eight says, and the Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest while the first tabernacle was still standing.

The holiest of all, that is the Holy of Holies, the very presence of God where He manifested His presence, His glory to His old covenant people. That sacred place, we are told, did not admit people into that place, into the presence of God. And the elements of old covenant worship were not able to bring people into the presence of God as long as that tabernacle, that system, that way of worship, that old covenant system was still in operation. The old covenant could not reconcile sinners to God. The old covenant could not, it goes on to tell us, cleanse away sinful guilt. Verse nine, it was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience.

Concerned only with foods and drinks, various washings and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation. This is saying that old covenant worship was not able to deal with inward guilt, the sins of the conscience, the sins of the heart. It could deal with outward guilt, that is ceremonial defilement, such as a person touching a dead body and therefore for being disqualified for corporate worship, for worship by coming into the tabernacle or the temple and bringing a sacrifice.

That person could not do that until that defilement of touching the dead body was cleansed away. And the old covenant offered a remedy for that kind of cleansing, ceremonial cleansing, external cleansing, but not inward cleansing. It could not really deal with the sins of the heart that weigh upon the conscience. The old covenant could not cleanse away guilt, it could not cleanse the conscience, it could deal only with externals.

The inadequacy of the old covenant is shown in that we are told the old covenant could not continue indefinitely because it was inadequate. Verse 10 again, concerned only with foods and drinks, various washings and fleshly ordinances imposed when? Until the time of reformation.

It had an expiration date on it. It was only serving a temporary purpose until the time of reformation, the time of a new system, a new way of worship, a new way of being reconciled to God, a new way of dealing with defilement that could deal with inward defilement, not just external and ceremonial defilement. The old covenant was only intended, we learn here, as a temporary measure. I'm sure the old covenant people of God for the most part didn't understand that, though some I think did. Those who were more astute, those who were more careful students of their own Old Testament scriptures I think had to know that if they looked at the text that is dealt with in the book of Hebrews extensively in Jeremiah chapter 31. They must have known that this covenant, what we call the old covenant, in their day it was just the covenant because until there is a new one you don't know to call the old one old. But they must have known that the old covenant was going to be discontinued because Jeremiah prophesied that. But I'm sure most of the old covenant people of God just caught up in the requirements of their regulations and ceremonies and worship didn't understand that this was going to come to an end because it was not doing the job. It was not meeting the need of reconciling sinners to God. The old covenant was, I say, intended as a temporary measure, but that of course raises the question, well then exactly what was the purpose of the old covenant if it wasn't there to cleanse away men's guilt and to reconcile them to God? And I think I can offer three answers to that question.

This is outside the text, but it corresponds to it. What was the purpose of the old covenant? Number one, to protect and preserve the bloodline of Christ. If you'll think about the stipulations of the old covenant, you'll realize how many of them were designed to separate Israel from the nations around them, to keep them from being corrupted by the nations around them, to keep them from being intermixed with the nations around them, to keep that bloodline intact, which would bring God's promised Messiah into the world.

Without the provisions of the old covenant, no doubt the nation of Israel would have been amalgamated and dispersed and that bloodline would have been lost. But the old covenant was designed to protect and preserve the bloodline of Christ, the Christ who was yet to come. And then number two, as we've already seen in previous verses, it was given to show sinners their need of a savior. You must offer a sacrifice because you're a sinner.

You must offer it again because you continue to sin, and so forth. All of the provisions of the old covenant pointed to the fact that men and women need a savior. And thirdly, the old covenant was given to point to the promise of a coming Messiah.

The types and shadows all pointed forward to Christ for those who had eyes to see it by the Holy Spirit's illumination. But this is all to say that the old covenant was inadequate, and therefore there was a need for something better. A need for a way that will actually reconcile sinners to God. The old covenant didn't do that.

A need for a way for something to truly cleanse away guilt and sin. The old covenant didn't do that. And so that's the connection of the previous section to our text for today. And for this reason that I've just explained, the inadequacy of the old covenant, for this reason, he is the mediator of a new covenant. And so we have moved from the connection to the solution, and here is God's solution to the inadequacies of the old covenant, namely Christ. He is the mediator, excuse me, of the new covenant. And thus God himself has brought a twofold solution to the inadequacies of that old covenant. The twofold solution, number one, he has designed a new covenant, and number two, he has sent one who is capable of inaugurating and expediting that covenant.

Executing it perfectly and properly. A new covenant and a qualified mediator are the two answers to that need, the solution. He is the mediator of a new covenant. A new covenant, as I've already mentioned, prophesied by Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31, and extensively expounded by quoting that prophecy in total and in detail in chapter 8, and then explaining how this applies to the coming of Christ in the new covenant. But this is just a reminder that this new covenant, though it is new in the sense that for Old Testament people of God, it had not yet come, it had not been clearly revealed, it really didn't unfold and become clear until Jesus came. And even until he completed his earthly ministry, and then inaugurated the new covenant upon his death on the cross and the shedding of his blood.

But that should not have been a surprise. If it was, it's because people weren't paying close attention because Jeremiah had indeed foretold that there would be a new covenant. He foretold that 600 years before the coming of Christ.

Remember that, don't you? You can see it in Hebrews chapter 8. It would be good to review that section again, where the writer of Hebrews begins quoting in verse 8. Because finding fault with them, he 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, 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 the land of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. 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. I will put my laws, plural, in their mind and 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, Know 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 lawless deeds.

I will remember no more. Wonderful, wonderful text from the book of Jeremiah chapter 31, quoted almost exactly word for word in Hebrews 8, and expounded in Hebrews 8, and telling the recipients of this epistle and all those who read the Bible, who read the New Testament, for it has been included by the Spirit of God in our New Testament Scriptures, telling us that Christ inaugurated the New Testament, a new covenant, prophesied by Jeremiah, and here it is. And we can study what is said about it, how it is described, what it does, how it applies, and that will even help us to better understand what Jeremiah was talking about, because his prophecy studied by itself in the book of Jeremiah leaves some mysterious and puzzling elements, but when quoted and explained in the New Testament Scriptures, it becomes a great deal clearer. And so this new covenant, prophesied by Jeremiah, declared the coming of a replacement for the old covenant. As soon as Jeremiah, by the Spirit of God, spoke these words where God said, I will bring a new covenant to the house of Judah, the house of Israel, then he was declaring that the old covenant was to end.

Now it's going to be another 600 years before it actually did, but the declaration of its conclusion was made in the Old Testament Scriptures. And there was the declaration of a coming replacement for the old covenant, revealing, even by Jeremiah's prophecy, that God's ultimate goal was not wrapped up in the details and provisions of the old covenant. God's ultimate goal must be found in an understanding of the new covenant. Only in the new covenant, inaugurated by Christ and executed by Christ, when he died on the cross and became the mediator of the new covenant, only then do we understand God's full way of salvation and his ultimate goal for his people. And so a new covenant, designed to replace the old, the very fact that one is now in the scriptures, called new, makes the previous one old. So we can call it the new covenant versus the old covenant, or we can call it the second covenant versus the first covenant.

Both of those would be appropriate terms, but it indicates that something more was necessary to meet the need. There would not be a new if the old was adequate. There would not be a new if the old could meet the need of sinners to be reconciled to God, but it could not.

It was not designed to do that. And therefore we realize that the new covenant did not merely augment the elements of the old covenant. Some might say, well, there's the old covenant, but it needed a little bit of help. It needed some things added to it, so God brought along the new covenant to set along beside it. So now between the elements of the old covenant added to the now elements of the new covenant, we have the full design of God and the full description of how God saves sinners.

But no, that's not how it works. We're told very plainly in the book of Hebrews that the new covenant's inauguration makes the old covenant obsolete. It's gone. It couldn't be added to. It couldn't be fixed.

It couldn't be tweaked. It had to be removed, and a new covenant had to be brought in its place. The new covenant replaced the old covenant and rendered it obsolete. And in this way, God now addresses the inadequacies of the old covenant. So there is a new covenant, which is a solution to the need of the inadequacies of the old covenant. There is a new covenant, but the new covenant needs a mediator who is qualified to inaugurate and execute the provisions of the new covenant.

And that, of course, is Christ. Verse 15, and for this reason, he is the mediator of the new covenant. Christ is the mediator. What is a mediator? We've seen that term before in Hebrews.

A mediator is one who can represent men before God, one who can reconcile sinners to God, one who can bring sinners into the presence of a holy God, one who can inaugurate and execute the new covenant, because that's what is needed to accomplish these things for sinners. The Aaronic priesthood was not qualified to accomplish this. The Aaronic priesthood was God-given.

It was God-designed. God had a purpose for it, but the purpose was not to reconcile sinners to God. Those who thought so placed their hope in something that was never designed to do that. And those who thought so were placing their hope in something that would not reconcile them to God.

It was a misplaced hope. It was a useless religion. Not to say that anyone who partook of the elements of the old covenant worship, believing in the promises of God, was doing something useless. They certainly weren't. And even in respect to the fact that those who were not believing in the promises of a future Messiah, were nevertheless protected and guarded and isolated from the total defilement of the world and amalgamation into the world.

They were all part of that. They got a design for the old covenant. But they could go through all of this worship faithfully, regularly, obediently, perfectly, and still not be reconciled to God because the old covenant didn't accomplish that. But a new covenant designed by God did accomplish that when that new covenant was inaugurated by the God-appointed Messiah, a mediator. The Aaronic priesthood was not qualified to accomplish this.

Why? Because, number one, the Old Testament priests were sinners like the ones they represented. Number two, the old covenant priests needed a mediator for their own sins. And number three, the old covenant priests were only provisionally appointed for a time, temporary, until the time of reformation, until the qualified mediator arrived on earth at God's appointed time in the fullness of time. Then all of the provisions of the old covenant were brought into place. Which brings me then to the requirement. What is required of the new covenant and the mediator of the new covenant in order to accomplish what needs to be done?

What is the requirement? And we are told in our text that he is the mediator of the new covenant, and here it is, by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant. Here is the requirement that will make the new covenant effective. By means of death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant. I take four key words out of this phrase that I just quoted in the middle of our text.

Number one, redemption. What is redemption? Well, if you take time to look up that word in an English dictionary, you'll find it's a fairly complex word with a lot of different meanings.

But if you just stick with the first couple of meanings in the dictionary, you will come up with these concepts. Redemption means to buy back. It means to free from captivity. It means to ransom. In fact, in many of its uses, it is virtually synonymous with the word ransom, though not in every use of the word redemption is that so. But therefore, the word redemption, number one, involves a purchase and number two, involves a transfer of ownership.

To redeem is to buy or to buy back. Are any of you old enough, you'll have to be pretty old, to remember S&H Green Stamps? Any of you remember those?

Oh, I see a few hands. And I don't know how your family handled that, but my mother got those faithfully and kept them for a while. And then when she had enough of them, we had a work day for the children. And we sat around the table with all these stamps, and we didn't lick them because we'd go dry during that. We'd put them on a sponge to wet the stamps.

They weren't self-sticking. And paste them in these books. And it took a lot of stamps to fill up a book. And then when you had enough books, you had a catalog. Just like any other catalog, it would give you things that you could purchase. But instead of paying dollars, you paid X number of books. This one will cost you three books.

This will cost you seven books and so forth. And what do they call the place where you went to get your merchandise? The redemption center.

The redemption center. You redeemed, you bought those things, but you in a sense were buying them back. In other words, if you thought it all through, you realized that those things really weren't free after all. You'd already paid for them. The grocery store and gas stations and whoever gave them added that to the price.

They had to. They weren't giving them away free. So you're really just buying back what you'd already paid for, but it was kind of a pleasant way to do it. Now you young folks, you don't have a clue what we're talking about. But that is what we call that, redemption center. And it gets to the idea of redemption here. Redemption. I know now by some of you who raised your hands, some have actually surprised me that you knew what this was.

I know you're older than I thought you were. Redemption. Redeem.

To buy back. Or to free from captivity the idea of ransoming a prisoner. We just had a prisoner exchange recently, didn't we? Where we exchanged some of their guys for our guys that were in prison.

And we called that an exchange. But if a price had been paid, and I suppose you could even understand it that way when you're exchanging people. But if a price had been paid, it would have been ransoming a captive. When somebody tries to get some money by kidnapping someone, what do they demand? They demand a ransom. If you're going to redeem that person, your wife, your child, whatever it is that I've captured, it's going to take so many dollars. And that is what it's going to cost you to purchase this person back. That's involved in this idea of redemption. Redemption. Redemption involves a purchase and redemption involves a transfer of ownership. In the case of slavery, the slave belongs to somebody and you purchased the slave.

And now the purchase price has secured the transaction and now a transfer of ownership has taken place. And the same thing is true in salvation. We are redeemed. In what sense are we bought back?

Go back to the garden. God created Adam to worship him, to serve him, to belong to him, and sin spoiled all that. And so even though in the sense of creation, we all belong to God and he has a right to our lives. Nevertheless, in the atonement, in redemption, in salvation, Jesus Christ comes and he pays the price of our sin debt so that we can now be reconciled to the God from whom we were estranged because of our sins. This is involved in the word redemption. It involves a purchase.

It involves a transfer of ownership. We no longer belong to Satan. We belong to God. We no longer belong to the kingdom of darkness. We now belong to the kingdom of light and so forth. Redemption.

What's another key word in this phrase? Death. By means of death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant. Death.

What is this telling us? This is telling us what the redemption price is and it's a high price. It is death. And that concept is explained more fully in the verses to come where we get into this business of without the shedding of blood there is no remission. That will follow this introduction of that concept that redemption takes place by means of death. But death is the price that is required to redeem sinners to God. And a price reflects the value. Whatever you could redeem out of the S&H Green Stamp book or catalog for one book wasn't nearly as valuable as what you could redeem for twelve or fifteen books obviously. It works the same way in dollars. The price reflects the value of the thing that is being purchased, that is being redeemed. Which raises the question, what is the value of a human soul?

The Bible provides the answer. What would a man give in exchange for his soul if you gained the whole world and lost your own soul? What kind of a bargain would that be?

That would be a terrible loss. So the human soul is worth more than all the world. So the price of redemption that secures salvation, that secures reconciliation to God is very, very high indeed. Which then causes us to reflect again upon the old covenant system and realize that the redemption price involved in that was the death of animals.

The shedding of blood to be sure but the shedding of the blood of animals and animal sacrifices cannot suffice for human redemption because the value of a human soul is worth more than all the world and the animals value is not nearly that. I remember years ago when I was preaching through the book of Acts and so this goes back a long ways, maybe twenty, twenty-five years. But we got to that place where Paul was going to supply the required sacrifices for four men to complete their vow in the temple.

You remember when he went back to Jerusalem? And the price was they each were going to have to bring a sheep. And I got curious, what did that cost Paul? I wanted to know how much Paul had to shell out in order to cover the sacrifices for these men completing that vow. So I called my uncle on the farm and I said, what's the value of a sheep or a lamb?

And he gave me a value, I don't remember what it was, but it was less than a hundred dollars. Might have been eighty-five, it's probably more than that now, that's been a long while ago, but that was the value of that animal. He raised sheep along with pigs and other animals and so he knew the value.

That's not very much. So when you bring your animal to the tabernacle, to the priest to be sacrificed upon the altar, and this is a substitute for your guilt. This animal is going to bear the punishment for your guilt upon himself. You have to realize that this is really only symbolic, this is really only provisional, because there's no way that that sheep or goat or bull, which would be more expensive than a sheep, there's no way that that animal could even come within a little smidgen of the value of a human soul. The old covenant has no provision to truly redeem men and women to God, does it? Animal sacrifices cannot substitute for human redemption. The death of Christ is the only sufficient payment. That's the one that is spoken of, and for this reason he, and the antecedent for he takes us back to verse fourteen, how much more shall the blood of Christ, verse fourteen and then verse fifteen, for this reason he, that is Christ, is the mediator of the new covenant. So the death of Christ is the only payment that has enough value to actually redeem a human soul from the bondage of sin to the freedom of God.

That's the only way it can be done. But there's a third word in this phrase in the middle of the verse as we're talking about the requirement for our redemption. The third word is transgression.

He is the means, the mediator of the new covenant by means of death for the redemption of the transgression under the first covenant. Transgression. Transgression is one of the words for sin. Sins are violations of God's requirements, God's commandments, God's law. Whenever we violate anything that God has declared he requires of us, we have sinned. And the sins that are problematic here are the ones that involve moral guilt and internal guilt. Several times in this passage has been reference made to guilty consciences that cannot be cleared by the provisions of the old covenant because it's not really dealing with inward guilt. But here we are told very clearly for the first time, I've mentioned this several times leading up to it, but it was not made clear until we got to verse 15. It now becomes clear, and this is so critically important, that old covenant transgressions, hundreds of years before the coming of Christ, old covenant transgressions are dealt with by the provisions of the new covenant.

There was no provision for them that actually did the job under the terms of the old covenant. That was all pointing forward, but it wasn't doing the job. Now the job was going to be done. Infallibly, whatever God designs will come to pass. Satan has done his best to stop Christ, to thwart God's plan, to keep Christ from living a sinless life. He tried to tempt him into sin, to keep Christ from dying a vicarious death.

He tried to keep him from the cross. He wasn't able to do that, but if he did, then nobody would have salvation from sin. Nobody under the old covenant, nobody under the new covenant, because all the old covenant people who were actually saved were saved under the terms of the new covenant.

That's what verse 15 tells us. For this reason, he is the mediator of the new covenant by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant. Christ, the mediator of the new covenant, is the one who actually dealt with the transgressions that occurred under the old covenant. Those sins were piling up for centuries. God forgave them, we might say, on credit until Christ came and paid the debt.

But there's a pretty mounting bill from all these Old Testament transgressions up until this time. Old covenant transgressions are addressed by the new covenant. Old covenant believers were saved by faith in the promises of God. Old covenant believers knew that the accomplishment of their salvation awaited the coming of the promised Messiah. God justified old covenant worshipers through faith like he does new covenant believers. Haggai, I think it was in the Old Testament, said the same thing that the New Testament says. The just shall live by faith. People are justified not by works, but by faith.

That's as true in the Old Testament as it is in the New. But nevertheless, Christ had to come to finish this task, to complete this payment, which was payment enough to pay for all the sins of all the people who believed the promises of God from the Garden of Eden until the Lord comes again. I cannot imagine how big that sin debt is, but Christ was equal to the task. Christ's value was enough to pay for it all. It required his death.

It required the shedding of blood, but he paid for it. And so God justified old covenant believers through faith, just like new covenant believers, because the old covenant sacrificial system saved no one. And that brings me to the fourth word in this middle phrase. It's actually two words. First Covenant.

Did you see that? He is the mediator of the new covenant by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant. The first covenant. We could call this the Mosaic covenant. We could call this the Sinaitic covenant. It was made at Sinai. We could call this the national covenant because it was made with national Israel.

All of those terms would be appropriate. But the new covenant addressed the transgressions that the old covenant was unable to address, for it was inadequate to deal with inward guilt, moral guilt. It only dealt with ceremonial transgressions, ceremonial defilement, the things that removed people even from being able to worship with the people of God under the old covenant. If they had the kind of defilement, like touching a dead body, they had to get cleansed from that in order to be able to join old covenant worship again. And those transgressions were dealt with by the terms of the old covenant because they really weren't substantial transgressions, were they? They were temporary transgressions. We don't even have those stipulations in the New Testament, do we? If you touch a dead body, go to a funeral with an open casket and reach over and pat the hand of that person in the casket, you don't defile yourself so that you're not qualified to worship God.

That was a temporary stipulation. That really wasn't a moral issue, was it? But take a look at the Decalogue. Drop down into that Decalogue nearly any place you want to go and you're going to find what are those sins that defile the soul. Failing to honor and worship God and God in Him alone. Committing adultery, stealing, murder, even coveting. These are inward sins, inward guilt, and the old covenant system didn't deal with those. God just said, if you'll trust me, if you'll believe my promises and do these things that I tell you, which I have my reasons for, then on credit, on the basis of Christ's sacrifice when He comes, I'll overlook your sins. I will not hold them against you. I will cover them. But it takes the coming of Christ to remove them.

The first covenant only dealt with ceremonial transgressions. Something more was needed to deal with moral defilement. So now we come to my fourth point in the main points of the message. What have we had so far? I know this is a little complex. That's why I keep repeating these points.

I don't want you to get lost. We saw, number one, the connection. Number two, the solution.

Number three, the requirement. Number four, the result. And that's the last part of the verse. Here's the result of Christ coming as the mediator of a new covenant. That those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.

Here's the result. That those who are called may receive the promise of the internal inheritance. Of the result, we can ask about the what and we can ask about the who. What is the result of the application of the new covenant? It enables sinners to receive an eternal inheritance. It secures the fulfillment of that promise that an eternal inheritance based upon sins cleansed away and sinners being reconciled to God is the promise of God. And those who believe his promises are granted that promise because of Christ's mediating the new covenant through his sinless life and vicarious death. And so the what of this result is eternal life and all that attends it.

And there's so many other blessings that attend eternal life we couldn't begin to name them all. But then we come to the who. Who is involved in this result? And they are described here as those who have been called. Those who have been called, called to God, called to Christ, called to faith in the gospel. Now actually the New Testament speaks of two different calls. The one that is mentioned only occasionally is what we call the general call.

It's not mentioned nearly as often as the effectual call. Those terms aren't used, it's just call in the Bible, but you can distinguish these. The general call goes forth by indiscriminate proclamation. When we proclaim the gospel we call sinners to Christ indiscriminately. We don't know who are those who will be inwardly called by the Holy Spirit. We don't know who are the sheep of God who have not yet come into the fold. We don't know who are the people of God.

We don't know who are the elect of God. We proclaim the gospel to one and all equally and invite all men to come to Christ. And any who do not heed that call are adding the guilt of their refusal of the gospel call to all of their other sins.

They have refused to come. The general call goes forth by indiscriminate proclamation. The general call is the church's responsibility. We generally call that evangelism or some people call that soul winning.

It's going out to tell the gospel to friends and neighbors and people that we don't know, people who are not our acquaintances far and wide. And the general call is a call which may or may not be heeded. Some people will heed it to the salvation of their souls. Some people will refuse it to add to the sins of their condemnation. That's the general call. That's not the call that this verse is talking about.

Why? Well, just look at what it says. For this reason, he is the mediator of the new covenant by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. This is the effectual call. It is the inward call of God's spirit which produces a definite result. Everyone who is called in the way that this verse is talking about receives eternal inheritance. It is both a summons and an assurance that the summons will be answered.

What's the assurance? The omnipotence of God, the power of the Holy Spirit of God who calls men to himself. It is a call to repentance. It is a call to faith.

It is a call to an eternal inheritance. That's the result. That's the result. We have considered the connection, the solution, the requirement, and the result. Now, I don't have much time for lessons, so I'm just going to skip to my last one.

I'll have to save the two that I wanted to deal with more extensively. But let me just tell you, dear friend, this is the way of salvation, namely to recognize that you are a sinner. Guilty, guilty, guilty before Almighty God.

Guilty, vile, and helpless we. Spotless Lamb of God was he. Full atonement, can it be?

Yes, believe. Hallelujah, what a Savior. Go to him, we're sinners, guilty of transgressing God's law. We have no way to remove that guilt. If the religion that God himself gave from heaven to the old covenant people in Israel did not remove that guilt, what do you think you can do to remove that guilt? What religion can you devise?

What works can you do? What religious things can you perform that will satisfy God and remove that guilt? There's nothing. We have no way to remove our guilt. Only Jesus Christ can reconcile sinners to God, so humble yourself before him. Acknowledge yourself to be a sinner before him.

Cry out to him for mercy. And those who come to him like that, he promises, will in no wise be cast out. Glory, hallelujah, praise the Lord. That's how I got in. And if you're in, that's how you got in. And if you're ever going to get in, that's how you must get in, shall we pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Oh, Lord, help us to believe it. Help us to receive it and to believe it to the saving of our souls and to the honor and glory of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.