R703 A Guaranted Covenant, Pt.1

God has an encouraging word for you and me today through the Bible-based preaching of Dr. Don Wilton about a guaranteed covenant. In just a moment, we'll head to Hebrews chapter 7 as we continue God's Word study with Dr. Don Wilton, well-known author, pastor, evangelist. And in these moments, I pray you to allow him just to be your pastor and friend. We believe the Bible, God's Word, has the answers for everything in our life, and today we'll discover some of those answers with regard to the covenant we have with God. As we study the Word together, know that we're available to talk and pray with you anytime at 866-899-WORD.

Jot the number down, store it in your cell. As Dr. Don would say, we all need some 2 a.m. friends, and we're available anytime at 866-899-9673 and online at tewonline.org. Now, Dr. Don Wilton. Please take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to Hebrews chapter 7. The letter to the Hebrews in the seventh chapter. You most certainly are going to need your Bibles as always. I invite you to turn there if you're using the Pew Bible.

You'll find it on page 1165. I'm going to speak to you about an incredible subject this morning. An incredible subject, a guaranteed covenant, a guaranteed covenant. Before I read this whole passage, let me show you where it comes from. Verse 22, the Bible says, because of this oath, Jesus Christ has become the guarantee of a better covenant.

Let's begin at verse 20. And it was not without an oath. Others became priests without any oath. But Jesus Christ became a priest with an oath. When God said to him, the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever.

Now because of this oath, Jesus Christ has become the guarantee of a better covenant. Now, there have been many of those priests since death prevented them from continuing in office. But because the Lord Jesus Christ lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore, Jesus Christ is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest as the Lord Jesus Christ meets our every need.

One who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike other priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day after day. First for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. Jesus Christ rather, sacrificed for their sins once for all, when he offered himself upon the cross.

For the law appoints as high priests, men who are weak. But the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever. A couple of months ago, I went to buy a brand new watch. I knew that I had to have a decent watch, and so I went to buy a watch. The man who served me is a very fine man, and he laid out several options.

And I finally selected one. And of course, the last thing that I asked him was, Mr. Watchmaker, now with what kind of guarantee does this watch come? And of course, I had spent my life's inheritance, and he told me it was a one month guarantee. And I looked at that watch, and I thought to myself, even if it was a 10 year guarantee, there is nothing that can be guaranteed. Life is full of let downs. I know you've been let down, I've been let down. We make promises to one another, that we cannot keep. One of my favorite television personalities in years gone by, was a Cajun man by the name of Justin Wilson.

I used to love watching him, and he'd cook all that food, that Cajun food, and his favorite phrase was, you got it, I guarantee you can go and buy a motor car. Brand new spanking motor car, and you say, I think I'll have that one there, and it fits everything you want, and they will give you a written guarantee. But can I tell you something folks, they cannot guarantee anything. We make pledges and promises to each other about everything under the sun. Most of us are good people, we try to honor our commitments, but the truth of the matter is, if you really think about it because of the frailty of our own human weakness, it really is impossible to guarantee anything.

I've got some good news for you today. We're going to discover some of the most incredible truths in all of God's Word. Has anybody ever come to you at any time and said to you, you Christians, you're always talking about Jesus Christ, what guarantee can you give me? What guarantee can you give me that it works? How can you guarantee that Jesus Christ is the only one?

What about the options? What about Sun, Young, Moon? What about Buddha? What about Mohammed?

What about Confucius? What about Joseph Smith? What about the other book the Mormons keep talking about?

What about all these additions and additives and all the fixings and the trappings? All the addendums that are attached onto this one called Jesus in order to try and provide some kind of guarantee. The Mormon Church, the Church of Latter-day Saints, they'll go from door to door. They'll give you the Bible and then they'll say, here is another Bible. And what this other Bible is going to do, this is the other Bible that actually, according to this person and the angels, is going to guarantee this Bible. I've got news for you today.

Jesus Christ stands alone. He is the guarantee of the covenant. Now folks, we're going to go on a tremendous journey, so get ready for this today. I'm going to submit to you that there are four questions which must be asked in order to understand the significance of this guaranteed covenant. In other words, there are four governing questions that must be addressed.

We're going to look at these four questions today. And I'm going to promise you one thing. You open up your heart, you open up your life, you be willing to let God by His Spirit speak to your heart. I will guarantee you today, not on the authority of Don Wilton, I'm too weak. I cannot guarantee that I might end up in ICU tomorrow.

I'm too frail. I'm too sinful. But I can guarantee you this on the authority of God's Word. If you open up your heart today to Jesus Christ, I want you to know that He within Himself, by virtue of who He is as our High Priest, guarantees the covenant that God has made with all people, that those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved. Do I hear an amen this morning?

All right, there are going to be four questions. Number one, what exactly does Jesus guarantee in this covenant? What exactly does Jesus guarantee in this covenant? Well, according to this passage, there are three things that Jesus guarantees. Number one, He guarantees my complete salvation. Look with me very quickly at verse 25. Preceded by that wonderful little word, therefore, on the basis of the things that God has already told us about His permanent priesthood, about the oath that He has made, about the fact that Jesus Christ lives forever. On the basis of these things, Jesus Christ is able to save us completely.

He guarantees complete salvation. By the way, did you know this? Did you know that you are not saved, sort of? You ever gone to someone and said to them, excuse me, are you a Christian? And they say, well, I think so. Or some people say, well, you know, I hope so. I've heard people say, well, you know, I'm sort of kind of saved.

I want to tell you something, folks. The Bible tells us that because of God's covenant with all people through the death of Jesus upon the cross, what exactly Jesus does is He saves completely. Let's take one component of salvation, which is forgiveness of sin. All of us need to be forgiven of sin. I need to be forgiven. You need to be forgiven. All people need to be forgiven. I want you to know on the authority of God's word, because Jesus Christ is the guarantee of the covenant, that when I confess my sin to Jesus Christ, my sin is forgiven completely.

I don't necessarily understand that. I cannot figure it out that God would take my sin and cast it as far as the east is from the west. But He tells me that my sin is completely, completely forgiven. And my salvation is completely, completely in Him. I was saved. I am being saved. And I am always being saved.

I know that I know that I know that I know that I'm saved. What exactly does Jesus guarantee in this covenant? Number one, He guarantees complete salvation. Number two, He guarantees complete intercession.

Look there at the second part of verse 25, the latter part of that verse. The Bible says, because Jesus Christ, now watch this folks, this is incredible, because Jesus Christ always, what? What does He do? Always lives.

Now say that with me everybody. Jesus Christ always lives to do what? To intercede for them. But as I was to say to you now, what exactly did Jesus do when He came to the earth? When He was born, remember in Bethlehem's manger, and He grew up as a little boy, and then He messed around and went all over the place with His disciples. What did He do?

Well, we can tell you what He did. He broke up loaves and fishes. He fed the 5,000. He rode in boats.

He ran headlong into Pharisees and Sadducees. He went into the temple. He taught. He healed people. He made blind people see. He rubbed shoulders with the community, went uphill and downhill.

We have no problem, but here's the question. What did Jesus do after He went back to heaven? What is Jesus doing? Is He fishing? Is He walking around? What is Jesus doing?

What's Jesus doing right now? Do you know what the Bible tells us, folks? That Jesus Christ is engaged in nonstop, endless, eternal intercession for somebody like me. That means that through our time in eternity, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is seated at the right hand of God the Father, is having a conversation with God the Father about me and about you. Wow.

Did you know that? Oh, and when we know of His holiness, sometimes it frightens us to think, well, how could we come close? We can come close because Jesus builds the bridge. You've heard Dr. Wilton as he's been teaching in today's message on a guaranteed covenant. Now open your heart to what Dr. Don wants to share next.

You might be forgotten somewhere. Now watch what the third thing is that he does. Not only does he complete salvation, not only does he provide complete intercession, but he guarantees complete satisfaction. You see, if you go to verse 26, the Bible says, such a high priest who is the Lord Jesus Christ meets our needs.

Just by the way, I hope I don't burst your bubble with this one. Did you know that the Bible does not say that Jesus Christ solves our problems? You know, some of us kind of think that he's sort of like a motor mechanic, and something goes wrong with the motor car and you take him to the motor mechanic and the motor mechanic finds the problem. No, no, Jesus Christ so meets our needs.

He provides complete satisfaction. The meeting of needs is far more significant than solving our problems because when our needs are met, our problems are solved. Problem solving is temporary. It's a papering over the cracks. Many times you will have a problem solved and it rears its head again the next day. They're going to be watching me for the next four or five months and they got me on all kinds of blood thinners and I'm not allowed to bump my head and I've got to give up parachuting and I'm not allowed to ride motorbikes and I've got to stop jumping off cliffs and I cannot arm wrestle with my sons.

In fact, life has just gone to pieces. Here's something, my friends, Jesus Christ guarantees complete satisfaction. That's why he is the guarantor of the covenant that has been made between me and my Heavenly Father. Let's go on to the second question. If that is the answer to what exactly Jesus does to guarantee this covenant, how exactly does Jesus guarantee this covenant?

How does he do it? Well, the Bible says it is done by means of two things. Number one, he guarantees this covenant with a binding commitment. Now, I want you to go back to verse 20 through 22 because a word keeps coming up here called an oath.

Did you know something, folks? The Bible says this. The Bible says that there was never an occasion when God told the Levitical priests of the Old Testament that they would serve according to his oath. God never made an oath to Aaron. He never made an oath to any priest. Now, he instituted the Old Testament priesthood. It was not bad because God instituted it, but he never did it with an oath.

He never made a binding commitment, not in one place, nowhere in the Scriptures. Those priests could only serve until the age of 50. They could only offer one sacrifice, one at a time for one sin at a time.

They died, all of them. This passage tells us they all died, even Aaron died. They were frail and weak according to verse 28. God by no means bound their covenant relationship with him by virtue of an oath, but not so with Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us right there in verse 20, he says, and it was not without an oath. Others became priests without an oath, but when he became a priest with an oath, what were the two consequences of what God did? Number one, his oath signified the permanence of the covenant that God, his son, and number two, the oath signified the fact that God would never change his mind. That's what the psalmist said in Psalm 110 and verse 4. The Lord is sworn and will not change his mind. You, my son, the Lord Jesus Christ, you are a priest forever. By the way, if you've ever been to court, I know some of you have.

We could ask our solicitor about this. I can tell you, you go to court today and you're up for whatever it might be. The prosecutor, whoever it is, the judge gets you up there and you put your hand on the Bible and you raise your left hand or you put your left hand and raise your right hand. I can't remember.

In fact, I've never done it. Just wanted to put that in there. So whichever hand you put on is fine with me, but you put your hand on the Bible, raise your other hand, and what do you say? I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me, God. Excuse me?

Why? In the Constitution of the United States of America, no matter what the Anti-Christian League Union has to say about it, no matter what the marchers and the protesters have to say about it, no matter how people try to do whatever they can to destroy the value system of this nation, which is grounded in the Word of God, I'm here to announce to you today, my friend, that when this country was founded, it was founded upon the fundamental principles of the guarantee of the covenant of who God is in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. That is why, my friends, you can get out a machine gun, but I will stand until my dying day and I will pledge allegiance to the flag of these United States of America, one nation under God, under God. You don't mess with God. America better stop messing with God. We better stop trying to take God out of everything that we do and removing the Ten Commandments and playing a game with prayer. We better be careful. Why? Because it is God in Christ Jesus who is the only guarantee of the covenant between God and man and if you take Jesus Christ out of the equation, we do not have a guarantee.

We're gonna fall flat on our face. How did he do this? Number one, with a binding commitment. Number two, with an horrific action. Bible says in verse 27, the middle part, it says there that Jesus Christ sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. I want to submit to you today, my friends, that the cross of Christ Jesus was an horrific act. That's how Jesus Christ did it.

He did it with a binding commitment and a horrific act. When I was a student in Africa, I used to go and work on farms and I spent at least two of my summer vacations working on a massive sheep and cattle and wheat and maize farm, massive, massive farm, hundreds of thousands of acres. This farmer, Mr. Oedendall, had 44,000 sheep and I would be put in charge of running the entire operation right there in Central Africa. We used to slaughter sheep almost every day. You know how you kill a sheep? At least back then, you'd just lime down, just pick him up, lime down, put your knee in his shoulder blade, just lift his chin up a little bit and you stab him right in the jugular vein and then you cut his throat. One of these days, God's gonna allow me to get up and preach in this pulpit about the reality of the horrific nature of the cross.

I've been into some churches where you walk into a church and there's a pretty picture of a pretty Jesus hanging on a clean little cross with a white linen wrapped around him with his head tilted over the side looking like he's taking a nap. I want to tell you something, my friend, the guarantee of this covenant was that the Lamb of God slain from before the foundation of the world went like a lamb to the slaughter and opened not his mouth. How did Jesus do this? There's a third question. Why exactly does Jesus guarantee this covenant?

Why? Well, again, verse 26 in one verse. The Bible gives us five reasons why Jesus guarantees this covenant. Number one, because he is holy. Did you know that the holiness of God is that component of the character of Jesus Christ which points to God? His holiness, my friend, means that there was no sin in Jesus Christ which Satan could point to.

In John 14, 30, Jesus said, the ruler of this world is coming and he has nothing to me. He means nothing to me because I am holy. Peter said, be ye holy because God is holy. Why did Jesus become the guarantee of the covenant between God and man? Because he is holy. Oh, and when we know of his holiness, sometimes it frightens us to think, well, how could we come close?

We can come close because Jesus builds the bridge. You've heard Dr. Wilton as he's been teaching in today's message on a guaranteed covenant. Now open your heart to what Dr. Don wants to share next. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ?

I'm so happy to hear that. Why don't you pray this prayer with me today? Dear God, I know that you love me very, very much and I know that the Lord Jesus Christ came and died on a cross so that I might be forgiven of my sin. Today, I repent of my sin. I confess my sin to you and I invite you to come into my heart and into my life by faith. In Jesus' name I pray. If you've prayed that prayer, let me be the first one to welcome you to the family of God.

This is wonderful. I hope that you know how much I'm going to be praying for you and how very important this is for me. Call us so that we can talk to you and connect you in the right place so you can begin this wonderful journey.

And in just a moment, I'm going to come back with a final word. Welcome to the family of God or welcome home to the family of God. Some of you, I believe, were praying along with Dr. Wilton moments ago in your heart kind of just repeating after him and knowing that today is the day that God's heard your heart.

It's time for a new beginning. We would rejoice in that and would love to pray you through the next steps. And Dr. Wilton has wonderful resources that he wants you to have absolutely free that'll help build on the decision you've made today, whether it's a first-time decision or a decision to recommit and reconnect with God. If you'll give us a call at 866-899-WORD, we'll send you these free resources.

That's 866-899-9673. Or you can connect with us on our website at www.tewonline.org. That's www.tewonline.org. You'll discover great resources like a call for courage and the new book from Dr. Don Wilton about his time as the pastor of Dr. Billy Graham.

It's all online at www.tewonline.org. Did you know that you can receive exclusive teaching letters from Dr. Wilton and information about our newest messages and Bible guides every month? Join our email community. Dr. Wilton's letters will encourage, fortify, and inspire you in your walk with God. You will also receive periodic updates on how The Encouraging Word is working to share God's truth with a searching world. Subscribe today by visiting our website at www.tewonline.org forward slash email.

That's www.tewonline.org forward slash email. The Encouraging Word is a viewer and listener supported ministry. Thank you for listening today. Now, Tamara, I hope you'll join us and invite a friend to join you to listen in to A Guaranteed Covenant Part 2. Dr. Don dives into the time where Jesus broke the loaves of bread and fed the 5,000 and so much more.

Again, join us for that Bible study. And between now and then, let's stay connected on our website, www.tewonline.org. That's www.tewonline.org. A great place to sign up for the daily devotion from Dr. Don. That's www.tewonline.org. .