Four Features of the New Covenant (communion msg.)

Introduction: The New Covenant in Christ's Blood

0:02 The following communion meditation was delivered on Sunday evening, December 3rd, 1995, at the Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, New Jersey. Now will you follow with me, please, as I read two familiar portions of the Word of God as the basis of our communion meditation. Though our focus in the unfolding of what is here in germ form will take us to a third passage, but the first of the two passages is found in Luke's Gospel, chapter 22, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22. And I begin the reading at verse 14 and read through to verse 20. Luke 22 and verse 14.

0:58 Luke, recording the activity of our Lord Jesus with his disciples on the eve of his betrayal and crucifixion, writes, And when the hour was come, he sat down and the apostles with him. And he said unto them, With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say unto you, I shall not eat it until it be fulfilled. And he said unto them, I shall not eat it until it be fulfilled.

1:28 And he said unto them, I shall not eat it until it be fulfilled. And he said unto them, I shall not eat it until it be fulfilled. And he said unto them, I shall not eat it until it be fulfilled. For the Corinthians, that which was delivered to him from the Lord himself, and I read just verse 25.

2:43 In like manner also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. Now surely. If we confess that our coming to the table, as we shall do in approximately 35 to 40 minutes from now, has its tap roots in the words recorded in Luke chapter 22 and in the directives of the apostle in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, then our coming to the table and engaging in the breaking and eating, eating of the bread upon the table and drinking the substance of the cup upon the table is in some way or another connected with what Jesus designates as the new covenant. Now you don't need to know a word of Greek. You don't need to be a theologian. You don't even need to be a Christian to make that connection.

4:05 For our Lord makes it abundantly clear in the record in Luke's gospel when he says this cup is the new covenant in my blood. And the words are repeated here in 1 Corinthians 11, 25. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. So the question is, to what?

4:35 What is our Lord referring when he says the new covenant in my blood? And here I ask you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 8. For here in Hebrews chapter 8, we have the most succinct, condensed, accurate answer to that question to be found in the New Testament. In this particular chapter in which the writer to the, Hebrews is setting forth another aspect of the better things that have come to God's people in the person and work of the Lord Jesus.

The Superiority of the New Covenant over the Old

5:18 Particularly in this setting, the better priesthood of Christ superseding and exceeding the Levitical order of the priesthood. We read in that setting, verse 6 of Hebrews 8. But now, Now hath he obtained a ministry the more excellent by so much as he, that is, the Lord Jesus, is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a second. For finding fault with them, he said, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that 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 forth out of the land of Egypt. For they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For,

6:36 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their mind, and on their heart also will I write them. And I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people. And they shall not teach every man his fellow citizen, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord.

7:04 For all shall know me. From the least to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more. Now, obviously, the doctrine of the covenants being in many ways a very intricate and complex doctrine in the fullness of biblical revelation, I must attempt in this brief communion meditation, to just fill in the broad strokes of the teaching of the Word of God.

7:42 And what is clear in the passage that I have read in your hearing, in answering the question, what does Jesus mean when he says, This cup is the new covenant in my blood? In what sense, and with reference to what, is it a new covenant? Well, from this passage in Hebrews, which quotes extensively from Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 31 and following, it is obvious that it is a new covenant in contrast to the covenant that God made with his ancient people, Israel, after he had brought them out of the land of Egypt. In the providence of God, in our consecutive reading through the Old Testament, we are reading, we are reading right now in that very section in which God enters in to a covenantal relationship with the nation of Israel. Subsequent to the Exodus, God then, in the language that Pastor Lamar read in our hearing, says that he will take this bunch of slaves and constitute them in covenantal grace and mercy as a nation. A people for his own possession.

9:11 And that covenant made with his ancient people, Israel, after the Exodus, is contrasted with this new covenant that is made with spiritual Israel and is rooted in the work of Jesus Christ, the mediator of that covenant. Now let me say at the outset that any notion we may have that the Old Covenant, was anything other than a gracious covenant must be driven from our minds. The Old Covenant was a gracious covenant. God could say to his ancient people, I chose you, not for what you were, or for what you would become, but because I loved you, and chose to set my affection upon you. upon you it was a gracious covenant that he would have singled out that nation furthermore the God who gave his law by his own mouth from Sinai made in conjunction with that law a whole system of sacrifices and a priesthood that the people might know that though they broke that law that God

10:34 spoke with his own mouth from Sinai there was not to be the hopelessness of despair and in every bleating and bleeding lamb in every carcass burnt upon her altars God was declaring through the biblical system that he was a gracious God he had given promises in conjunction with the stipulations of how they were to order their lives individually in families and as a nation and he promised and committed himself to do gracious things on their behalf if they would keep his laws and his statutes he promised to protect them from their enemies to dispossess the land of promise and to settle them in it it was a gracious covenant but it was only a preparatory covenant and it is called in this passage Hebrews 8 7 if the first covenant had been faultless then would no place have been sought for a second so though the old covenant was a gracious covenant

11:53 in God's sovereign love being set upon his people in giving to them a summary of their moral duty that is called holy and just and good and spiritual and giving them laws for their corporate national life that were equitable giving them a system of sacrifice that they might know there was mercy and pardon and forgiveness with God it was a covenant that did not secure the loyalty of those with whom God entered into covenantal arrangement and commitments and the characteristic of that old covenant community was that they were stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and again and again particularly in the book of Deuteronomy and you find Stephen picking up that thread and summarizing it when he looks into the faces of those who are opposing him in Acts 7 and verse 51 he says you stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart

13:04 you do always resist the Holy Ghost as your fathers do so do you also and we had a glaring example of that in the reading in our consecutive reading tonight just a matter of a few days after God himself has spoken in his own voice miss all of that unusual phenomena there on signposting To think that they could do what they did was an indication that though they had pledged all that the Lord says we will do, that there was no real heart commitment to the obedience to Jehovah. And now God says to the prophet Jeremiah that in the coming age he would make a covenant that was so radically different in the commitments that God makes to the covenant community that God himself calls it a new covenant. And God himself says not like unto the covenant that I made with their fathers.

14:19 So this. Contrast in calling the new covenantal arrangement new and saying it will be found in great disparity with the old is not something imposed upon the scriptures. It is something warranted by the scriptures themselves. And when we ask the question, what are the distinctive blessings of this new covenant?

Feature 1: Internalized Law and Secured Obedience

14:47 Blessings procured and secured. For the covenant community by nothing less than Jesus Christ giving up himself in the violent death on the cross himself, the priest and the sacrifice, his body broken, his body given up a sacrifice to God, his blood poured forth in the violent death of the cross. All to secure the benefits and blessings. Of the new covenant, this cup is, it stands for, it represents, it sets forth my commitment to secure the blessings of the new covenant. It is the new covenant in my blood. Well, looking with me at the Hebrews 8 passage quoting from Jeremiah, note with me very simply the four specific.

15:49 Features of the new covenant of declaration of God's commitment to effect these four things in every member of that covenant community, verse 10, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days set the Lord. Now notice these are declarations of what. God is committed to do in the new covenant. First, I will put my laws into their mind and then their heart.

16:34 Also, will I write them here? First of all, in the new covenant is a commitment to secure the obedience of the members of the covenant community. By an. Internal renewing of the heart and of the mind.

16:56 Do you see that in the passage? I will put my laws into their mind and on their heart. Also, will I write them? And obviously there are overtones from what God did when he originally gave the summary of the moral law in the ten words.

17:19 He wrote them with his. Own. Finger upon stone, that which has no light, that which could not respond to what was written. The stone had no ability to perceive, to respond to the finger of God.

17:34 But he says in the new covenant, I will put my laws into their minds and on their hearts. Will I write them? I will secure the obedience of every. Member of the new covenant community, I will not merely call them to obedience and set forth the standard for their obedience.

Feature 2: Mutual Personal Covenantal Engagement

18:04 I myself will so work in them as to secure that obedience. Secondly, there is a commitment to mutual personal covenantal engagement. I struggle with. The words and if you can come up with something more simple that states it, I would welcome your help.

18:27 But this is the best I can do. A commitment to mutual personal, covenantal engagement. The great blessing of God's covenant promises throughout the Old Testament, culminating in the promise of the New Covenant, is, And I will be to them a God. And.

18:50 They shall be to me a people. Everything it means for the creature to have God as his God. The object of his supreme devotion, love, admiration. The sole object of religious worship.

19:09 Having God as one's chiefest joy. Having the glory of God as one's chief end. And everything that it means for the creature to have the God that is as his own personal God. God says, I'm going to secure that in every member of the new covenant community.

19:29 I shall be to them a God. And they shall be to me a people. Everything it means for God to take sinners who by nature and practice deserve nothing but the wrath. Sinners in whom God could be glorified by their eternal damnation.

19:53 Yet he will take them to himself. And so identify himself with them that he will unashamedly call them his own possession.

Feature 3: Imparted Saving Knowledge of God

20:07 And I call that, for lack of better words, God's commitment to mutual, personal, covenantal engagement. This is what he promises to do in the new covenant. And then thirdly, he expresses his commitment to impart a saving knowledge of himself to all the members of the covenant community. And, here's an additional blessing, they shall not teach every man his fellow citizen and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me from the least to the greatest of them.

20:44 Now this is not speaking in absolute terminology. That within the new covenant community, everyone is so directly taught of God that there need be no exhortation, no instruction, no office of the ministry, no pastor, teachers, no. God is using a figure of speech. And you could find many passages where God uses the absolute for the relative.

21:08 God says, when I called you to myself, I didn't talk to you about sacrifices and offerings. I talked to you about giving me your hearts. Well, he did talk to them about sacrifices and offerings. God is a figure of speech.

21:20 And what God is saying is in the new covenant community, there will not be this necessity for people within the community to come to a personal saving knowledge of God. But rather, it is that very saving knowledge of God imparted by God in his grace that warrants their incorporation into the new covenant community.

21:48 You're not in. In the covenant community, to learn of him, you are taught of him with saving knowledge and brought into the community of those who know him. Remember the words of Jesus in John 17. And this is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

Feature 4: Full and Irreversible Forgiveness of Sins

22:16 And then the fourth blessing of the new covenant. The covenant is this, a commitment to the full and irreversible putting away of the sins of the covenant community. For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more. God's commitment to the full and irreversible putting away of the sins of the covenant community.

22:49 I will be merciful to their iniquities, and their sins will I remember no more. Unlike the passing over of sin in the old covenant. But the writer to Hebrews says there is a remembrance of sin made every year in the day of annual atonement. In the new covenant community, God says I am committed to the full irreversible putting away.

The Foundational Nature of Forgiveness and its Connection to the Other Blessings

23:19 of the sins of every member of that covenant community. Now, while the most frequent focus is on this fourth blessing as the very foundational blessing of the new covenant, and it's right that our focus should be there, Matthew 26, 28, if you turn there for a moment, lest some sensitive soul feel, well, have I been dishonoring the Lord by focusing primarily on this fourth and foundational blessing? No. For in Acts 26, 28, we read, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. And what blessing of the new covenant is highlighted? Unto remission of sins. So the Lord Jesus himself in Matthew 26, and verse 28, according to the words of institution given to us by Matthew, the Lord Jesus himself, when speaking of the cup, signifying, representing, standing as a symbol of this covenant, this new covenant, he highlights that fourth and foundational blessing, the forgiveness of sin.

24:43 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. He doesn't...

24:47 He doesn't say unto a saving knowledge of God, or unto having the law written upon the heart and in the mind, or unto mutual covenantal personal engagement, but that which he highlights is remission of sins. For that is indeed the foundational blessing. And in the way in which God, deals with sinners to bring them into the possession of the benefits of the new covenant,

25:25 ordinarily God does it in terms of, first of all, making men desperately and deeply aware of and hungry for that fourth and foundational blessing, namely, the forgiveness of sin, the turning away of the wrath of God, the obtaining of a right sin, and the standing with God. And ordinarily, that is God's way of drawing people into the possession of the blessings of the new covenant. Hence, as we have been studying together in our introductory studies on the law, by the law comes the knowledge of sin. Sin by the commandment becomes exceedingly sinful. Why do men need the law applied to the conscience? Until they smarten to the sense of their sin, their sinfulness, and feel so deeply and keenly their sinful state, that they are driven out of themselves to look to Christ alone for forgiveness. Christ crucified is the last place a sinner goes.

26:33 And it's the only place where true relief can be found. So ordinarily as God is bringing us into the covenant community, He does so by awakening in us a consciousness of guilt, and pollution, and punishment, and hell deservingness. And Christ is set before us as the mediator of the new covenant, particularly as the sin bearer. So Paul can say, this is the gospel I preached unto you, 1 Corinthians 15, the gospel by which you are saved, if you hold these things fast, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures. So it is right that this fourth, and what I'm calling foundational blessing of the new covenant, should receive a disproportionate emphasis in the way God deals with us in bringing us into the covenant community. And in our thinking when we come to the table as a part of that new covenant community, to partake of this simple, new covenant supper of remembrance. However, however,

All New Covenant Blessings are Inseparable and Mediated by Christ

27:57 while it is right that forgiveness of sin should be foundational and central in God's dealings with us, in our remembrance of Him at the table, we must never forget that as surely as God's commitment to that fourth and foundational blessing in the new covenant is always imparted to every member of the new covenant community, He never imparts that fourth and foundational blessing without imparting the other three as well. Never. He never says, I will be merciful to their iniquities and their sins will I remember no more, without also fulfilling these I wills. I will put my laws into their mind and in their heart will I write them. I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a people and they shall all know me from the least to the greatest of them. Now why is this so?

29:14 For the simple reason that when by the operation of the Spirit through the Word, any sinner is brought to come to Christ, he comes to Christ in his capacity, I'm not saying he thinks this, he may have never even heard the words, but in reality, the Spirit who is dealing with him by the Word brings him to Christ in what capacity? Turn over to Hebrews 12. And I hope you'll see the thing coming together as we draw this to a conclusion. A passage we looked at, several Lord's days ago in the evening, contrasting what they came to in the context of the deliverance of the Old Covenant. What we now come to under the privileges of the New Covenant. Verse 22 of Hebrews 12. You are come under the New Covenant.

30:12 You are come unto Mount Zion. And he mentions all the things to which we come. Then look at verse 24. And to Jesus.

30:23 You are come to Jesus, the mediator of the fourth promised blessing of the New Covenant? No. The mediator of a new covenant. All God's commitments in that covenant, Jesus, the mediator of the covenant, confers to everyone who comes into the orbit of the blessings of that covenant.

31:02 Therefore, if you sit here tonight and say, oh yes, I have pardon, I have forgiveness through the blood of Christ, I have absolute confidence, my sins will never be brought up and paraded before me. Now, in the day of judgment, I'm confident that my sins and iniquities have been put behind the back of God. If so, then let me ask you a very simple question. Has God's law been written upon your mind and in your heart so that you can say, in spite of all of the contrary pull of a vicious world, a cunning devil, and remaining sin, I delight to do thy will, O my God, yea, thy law is within.