Let's be seated. Open the Bible once again, this time to Hebrews chapter 8. Hebrews chapter 8. If you would get a Bible someplace in front of you, a phone, a tablet, or a copy of the Word of God in print, this would be a real blessing to you and a help. Hebrews chapter 8 will be our text. In days long past, God thundered from Mount Sinai the terms of the old covenant. the rules and stipulations that defined the relationship between God and Israel. And the terms of that covenant were conditional. God said to them on the one hand, whoever does them shall live by them. And on the other he said, cursed be everyone who does not continue in all things written in the book of the law to do them. These two conditions are set side by side in the law of Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 11. The Lord said to the people in verse 26, look, I am setting before you a blessing and a curse. The blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today. And the curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God. The blessings of the Old Covenant were conditioned upon obedience. This is why Paul says the law is not of faith. The Apostle Paul testified that to every man who accepts circumcision, he is obligated to keep the whole law. The old covenant multiplied laws, right? God gave this covenant that multiplied commandments, but because of rebellious hearts, it only multiplied sin. Paul, the apostle, personalizes that history. He sees a reflection in the personal experience of conversion in the salvation history of God's revelation when he says in Romans chapter 7 and verse 10, before, excuse me, when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be what? It proved to be death to me. Why? Because of a problem with the commandment? No, because sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. It produced all kinds of lawlessness in me. There's a sinful nature that I had that when it was confronted by God's law, found in that law a provocation. and manifested itself, all the more when the law came. And this is God's ultimate purpose for the law, that it demonstrate, that it demonstrate once and for all the utter sinfulness of humankind, the extent of mankind's rebelliousness against God. The law came in to increase the trespass, right? Through the commandment, sin became sinful beyond measure. And in fact, part of the Old Covenant actually reiterated the moral law of God that was originally written on the hearts and the consciences of humanity by virtue of being created in the image of God. And so, even though you and I were never under the Mosaic Law as covenant, we were under the curse of the Old Covenant as it was originally expressed to mankind. So when you find yourself confronted by the law, like salvation history when the law came in, when the law comes to bear on you personally, and you become aware of the demands of God's perfect righteousness, and you find something in you rebelling against that, ignoring that, pushing that word to the side so that you can go your own way, then If you find that and you see your own rebellious sinfulness provoked and manifest and you cry out to God, Oh God, save me, deliver me from myself, then the law has done its job. The law has done its good work in you. Now I pray, I pray for the law to do its good work in you. For only in turning to the Savior in desperate need, recognition of my need, can I know God's salvation and deliverance from the curse of the law? Because of their sin and their breaking of the covenant with God, Israel was cursed, right? They were banished. from the land. They were defeated by their enemies and driven out of the land. God gave them, as he says in the prophets, a bill of divorce and sent them out of his house. And of course the curse of the Mosaic Covenant echoed in national and a typological way for Israel. It echoed the curse upon all mankind that resulted in the breaking of the original covenant in the garden. a covenant that we all stand as covenant breakers before God. Even while that covenant that God made with Israel also pointed forward to something better, to a covenant that would come. For God promised again and again to bless this cursed people, a people who had been driven from their homeland who had been sent out of God's house with a decree of divorce. God promised, you read the prophets over and over again, God said, I'm going to gather these people again, right? I'm going to regather them. Jeremiah says, I'm going to take one from a city and two from a family and bring them to myself. And this is happening right now. Not in the establishing of unbelieving Jews in the modern state of Israel. No, that's not what I'm talking about. But in the gathering of a people for God from every tribe and nation, Jews included, into Jesus Christ by faith. This is the new Jerusalem. This is those with whom a new covenant is made, a much more excellent covenant. than that which God made with our typological father. So we read now our text, beginning in Hebrews 6, this passage that describes that better covenant. Hebrews 8, beginning in verse 6. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the ministry of the old, as the covenant he mediates is better, that is, than the old, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant. And so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. Now in speaking of a new covenant, he says, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. Jesus Christ, you've seen this all the way through this book, He's a better priest than the priesthood of Israel. He's a better priest who has a better ministry than the ministry of those who offered the blood of bulls and goats in an earthly temple. And that better ministry corresponds to a better covenant. Now really the question before us this morning is, how is the new covenant better? That's the question at issue. And the answer is that it accomplishes for every one of its members what the old covenant failed to bring about, which is salvation to the uttermost. Or to say it another way, the New Covenant gives what it requires. Or to say it another way, it is enacted on better promises. Verse 6, the Old Covenant promised life on condition of obedience, but those in that covenant failed to do what it demanded. But this passage now identifies four better promises. of the New Covenant, four wonderful, glorious promises that cause the New Covenant to stand out as far superior to the old. And this morning we're going to look at the first two of those. The first wonderful promise by which the New Covenant is so much better than the old is this, verse 10, I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts." The Law of the Old Covenant was written on what? It was written on tablets of stone, external to the people, delivered to them and pressed upon them. And from nearly the very beginning they bucked against those laws. From the moment that Moses came down the mountain with the tablets, you remember that Moses saw them and heard them and he threw the tablets down and broke them. But the New Covenant, in the New Covenant God plants His laws within people. He internalizes it. He writes it upon their minds and their hearts. He grants to them minds that accord with His laws. This is an amazing miracle if you really understand the natural depravity of the human mind. this promise that He will put His laws into their minds. You know what the Bible says about your natural mind? The mind of the flesh is hostile to God. Just the natural human mind. It's hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot, Romans chapter 8. You have a mind by nature Just being born as a son of Adam and a daughter of Eve, you have a mind by nature that is unwilling to think God's thoughts after Him. This is just what God says about it. So in the New Covenant, what is happening is nothing short of a miracle, right? God is literally transforming the mind so that it's made new. Under the new covenant, minds are made receptive to God's ways. Miraculously, they understand. They get it. They are receptive to God's law. They receive it with meekness, that implanted word. This is the promise of the new covenant. This will take place because God himself will do it. And really, honestly, the promises of this covenant are just all like this. They're all miraculous. They all require something far beyond what any human in His nature is willing to do. When Israel received the law, for the most part, Most of them had hearts that were as hard as the stone tablets onto which the commandments were written. But in the new covenant, God writes his law on our hearts. He wondrously creates new hearts ready to receive the impression of his word and his ways upon it. This is a wonder indeed. Ezekiel speaks of the giving of the new covenant in these kinds of terms. He calls it the everlasting covenant of peace. And he says in Ezekiel chapter 36 and verse 26, the Lord says to his people, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you. This is the way it happens. It doesn't happen by the flesh. It doesn't happen by nature. It doesn't happen just because you were put in a good environment and raised up in a certain way. This does not happen that way. You have to be born again, born from above. You have to have a miracle happen to you. And it happens when God grants his spirit and puts his spirit within that person and he has a new mind, a receptive mind now. Not a mind that's hostile to God, does not submit to God's law and cannot, but a mind that says, yes, I see, I receive, this is wonderful, this is glorious. Not a heart that's hard, and resistant, and stubborn, and selfish, but a heart that is receptive, moldable. This comes by the Spirit, God says. And the end of the verse says, and I will cause them, I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Who will cause this to happen? God. This, what we're talking about, this promise of the New Covenant is a promise of sovereign grace. God alone does this. This is not the kind of thing that any human being can ever cause to happen on his own. This is mercy that transforms. The next chapter, in fact, Ezekiel likens it to resurrection from the dead. You cannot reform a corpse. All you can do is pray for a miracle, right? This is what is promised in the New Covenant, a miraculous transformation, life from the dead, a new heart, a new mind. This is the miracle of regeneration, new life, a new heart, a new mind, new desires after God and His Word to obey His law. This comes from the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ implanted within the soul. And for those in the New Covenant, God causes them to walk in His Word, to walk in His ways, to obey His rules. God puts His work within them. He causes them to will and to do of His good pleasure. What a grace from God to take a sinful soul who by nature is hostile to him and so transform him with mercy that that soul desires to follow after its God. A person with a new heart is a person who used to say about all of the things of God, oh, what a weariness this is. But now he says, oh, how I love thy law. This is a miracle. This is the transformation that is promised in the new covenant. And it is a wonder indeed. I remember hearing the testimony of a woman who grew up around the church. and she conformed outwardly to all the rules. She was a good kid, kind of obeyed her parents for the most part, attended all the services of the church, and heard all the sermons, and was involved in the youth group of this particular church, and yet she did not have a heart for any of it. And it grew to be just a real weariness to her and a drudgery just any time to go to church or to have family Bible time or to read God's word on her own or to pray. It was just all a weariness to her soul. And inwardly, though she was conformed outwardly, inwardly she was resistant to what was going on around her. She was bucking up against it in her spirit, even though outwardly she seemed like a good person until one day. until one day that God did a miracle in this woman's heart. And she received the promise of the new covenant, a new heart and a transformed mind. She was regenerated. God caused her to be born again. And she stood up in the service of that church. And she bore testimony in a testimony meeting one day of how God had brought her from where she used to be. and had given her a new heart and a new mind. And at the end of that testimony, she declared with conviction that struck everyone in that room, these words, she said, and now his commandments are not grievous to me. That's the testimony of a transformed heart. That's the testimony of someone who is in the new covenant. Is that the feeling of your own heart? I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their heart. There's a second promise of the new covenant, and that's found in the very end of verse 10. The promise is this, and I will be their God, and they shall be, what? I will be their God, and they shall be my people." You see, in the New Covenant, a member in the New Covenant isn't just... it isn't just about living in a new way. Being in the New Covenant isn't just about even receiving eternal life. It's about a personal relationship with God. Isn't that what's described here? I will be their God and they will be my people. The new covenant is about a personal relationship with God. It's about getting God. Not just getting what God gives, but getting God. That's the promise of this covenant. Being one of God's people. Here's an honest question. Do you want God as your God? Do you desire to belong body and soul, heart and mind to Him. The promise of the new covenant is that God will be yours and that you will be His. I mean, this is such personal language. So many people have an idea that religion is about following certain rituals or obeying certain rules, but at the heart of true religion is this, a relationship between God and his people. Very much akin to the relationship between a husband and a wife. They not only do certain things and have certain expectations and go through certain activities together, but they have a relationship together. You are my husband and I am yours. You are mine and I am yours. Does your heart say that about God? You want that with God. Well, there is a similar promise that God made under the Old Covenant, right? This is not new language in the Bible. You can go back to the Old Testament Scriptures and look up this kind of language, I will be your God and you will be my people, and you find that in the Old Covenant as well. But the difference is that there, the promise For God to be your God and you to be his people is conditional, conditioned upon the obedience of the people. Let's go back to Exodus chapter 19. There is where God entered into covenant with the people in terms of nationally making that covenant known with the descendants of Abraham. There God brought the people of Israel to Mount Sinai and gave them the old covenant. Moses goes up, of course, into the mountain and he goes up to speak with God and then God sends him down from the mountain to the people of Israel with this message, verse 5, Exodus 19, 5. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then God says, you will be my treasured possession, you will be mine. You will be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Notice the wording of the text. If you obey, then you shall be mine, right? And you have really the same thing expressed in the covenant that God made with Abraham. For in Abraham, of course, you have the seed of the covenant that God made with Israel at Sinai. So in Genesis chapter 17 you see the same dynamic at play. Genesis chapter 17 verse 1 says that when Abram was 99 years old the Lord appeared to him and he said to him, I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly. And then number seven, he says, and I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout your generations for an everlasting covenant to be what? To be a God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. And here's the other part of the promise. And I will be their God, right? I will be your God." So the command is this, walk before me and be blameless so that I will be your God. And again you have the same thing in Leviticus where God pronounces the blessings and the curses of the old covenant. Remember we've gone back to this text again and again. In Leviticus chapter 26 And here again is the conditional promise that God makes with Israel in the Old Covenant. He says to them beginning in Leviticus 26 verse 3, And if you will observe My commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains and your season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And he just goes on and announces many other blessings, right? If you obey, then you will be blessed, you will be blessed, you will be blessed, you will be blessed. And he goes on and he does that all the way through verse 11. And then verse 12, here is another blessing of this obedience. He says, and I will walk among you and will be your God and you shall be My people." So, once again, again, and again, and again, this is the way it's stated in the Old Covenant, right? If you obey, if you observe, if you do, then I will be your God and you will be My people. Under the terms of the Old Covenant this promise is always conditional. Exodus 19, Genesis 17, Leviticus 26. Under the terms of the Old Covenant this promise is conditional, but when Israel failed to live up to those conditions of course they lost this privileged relationship by which God was their God and they were His people. This is in fact the point of Hosea's prophecy. Remember Hosea, this guy who was told by God himself to go and marry a woman as part of his prophetic ministry, a woman who would prove to be unfaithful to him. And so he took this woman and he married her, and together they conceived and bore a son. Then this woman became pregnant again, and it's less clear in the text whether it was by Hosea this time. Already perhaps she is beginning to manifest her unfaithfulness, and she will continue to do so, but she bears a daughter. And then once again she becomes pregnant a third time and bears another son. And Hosea chapter 1, verse 9, God commands Hosea to name that child as a sign to the people of Israel. The Lord said, Hosea 1, 9, call his name Lo-Ami, not my people. Not my people, right? Why? because God says you are not my people and I am not your God. What is that but the exact reversal of what was said in terms of the covenant relationship. This is a complete undoing of that covenant relationship that Israel had with God. And of course that is in keeping with the conditionality of the Old Covenant promise. If you follow Me, if you obey Me, if you observe and if you do what I tell you, you will be My people and I will be your God. You have not done so, so you are not My people and I am not your God. But in the New Covenant, look again at the terms that are stated here in the prophecy of Jeremiah recorded by the writer of the Hebrews. in the new covenant there is no such condition it is simply a promise I will be their God and they shall be my people stated unconditionally now why is that and the answer friends is that God himself meets the conditions of that covenant in Jesus Christ Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 14 tells us that by a single offering Jesus Christ has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. He by His life and His perfect sacrifice has met the conditions for New Covenant believers. He has met the condition on their behalf. This is why Paul says, the writer of Hebrews says in chapter 7 verse 22 that Jesus is the guarantor of this better covenant. Remember that term when we saw it back in chapter 7 that Jesus guarantees the covenant? Again, I'm saying this is the answer to the question, why are there no conditions here in the promise of the New Covenant? that God will be your God and you will be His people. Why are there no conditions here when there were conditions in the Old Covenant? And I'm saying the answer is that God Himself has undertaken to meet those conditions Himself for His people, for all the members of that New Covenant. God does for them what they have failed to do for themselves. In the mediator of their covenant, the guarantee of their covenant, the guarantor that one who is the surety of their covenant. Remember that term? The surety. This is the one who cosigns, as it were, who puts himself up as a pledge, who ensures that the conditions are met. Regardless of the failure of the other party, this is like Jacob's son Judah in the book of Genesis who convinced finally his reluctant father to send Benjamin off to Egypt far away by saying to his father, I will be a pledge of his security. Whatever happens to him, I will take responsibility for it. I will put my life on the line on his behalf. That's the idea here in Hebrews. Jesus Christ is the guarantor of the new covenant. Or like the Apostle Paul when he was advocating for the slave Onesimus said to Onesimus' master, receive him like you would receive me. I'm going to stand in his place. I'm going to take up for him. I'm going to be his sponsor, his guarantor, his surety. Jesus Christ like that is the guarantor of the new covenant. So friends, the new covenant is unconditional, not because it doesn't matter how you live, God will still be your God and you will still be his people. No. It is unconditional because the Lord Jesus Christ will meet its conditions for you, and in you, and through you, that is for all of those who are in the New Covenant. This is the certainty. This is the promise. This is the assurance. This is the encouragement. This is why the New Covenant is so much greater than the old, because it is established on better promises, unconditional promises, because Jesus Christ undertakes to guarantee the terms of that covenant are met. These are glorious promises indeed. And because they are unconditional, they are the inevitable marks of those who are in the new covenant. So then we can sort of turn this around and use it as a kind of test And you can ask yourself, you ought to ask yourself, listen to me now, everyone, are these things really true of me? Is what he promised about new covenant members, are those things true of me? Do you have a new heart? Have you been made new? I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts. Has that happened to you, young person? Has that happened to you, man or woman? Earlier I mentioned the testimony of the woman who used to find God's Word and God's house and God's people tedious and the commands of God and the commands of her parents just made her kind of inwardly bitter and angry and frustrated. But once God does this miracle of regeneration, His commandments are not grievous. Do you say that? Can you say with all honesty before God Almighty, your commandments are not grievous to me. I want to do your law. I want to. Somehow, by a miracle of grace, I actually want to do what you say. This is a testimony that you are in fact in the new covenant. I feel the need to appeal to you this morning, especially to you, you young people, you teenager, you young adult, test yourself. Can you really say that? That the commands of God are not burdensome to you? That coming to church and hearing God's word and praying and all of the things that you just have to do, that they're not wearisome but that there's a genuine desire in your spirit, in your soul for those things. That there is a receptivity in your spirit toward those things and not a constant push back in your spirit. Maybe, perhaps, there might be somebody here who by the mercy of God would say, I don't feel like that. I don't know what it's like. If my parents really knew what was in my mind and what was in my heart, if people around me really knew how I felt about all this outward conformity, they would know it's all a sham. It's not real. Then I hope and I pray that you will get on your knees and you will cry out and pray for God to give you a new heart. to do a miracle of regeneration in you. Ask Him, God, cause me to be born again. Please do something for me and in me that I cannot do for myself. And I pray all the time that if you would pray like that, that God would answer that prayer. I pray that for you. I pray that today we'll just put in your spirit a desire to pray that way. that these glorious promises that are held out would move you to desire to be a part of such a covenant relationship with God, that you would pray and pray and pray until you know that God has answered that prayer and that you've been made new. You know, it is not merely growing up around a church and being made to attend a service, and being forced to listen to the Bible that makes you a Christian. You need a miracle. You need the transformation of your heart by a sovereign act of God's grace. And oh, if you would cry out to Him, I know, I know by experience that God is merciful and I can tell you according to His word that whoever seeks Him earnestly will be found by Him. I will be their God. and they will be my people." Test yourself out on that. Do you really want God? Do you want God to be your God? Do you really want God to control you? I mean, in your deep down deepest self, I know, I know that when you're tempted, There's a part of you, there's a fleshy response that sometimes resists God's words, but when you go to God afterwards and you realize your failure, do you honestly say in your spirit, God, you know my heart, deep down that is not what I want. I do not want sin, I want to obey you. I want to please you. I want to do what's right. This is a miracle transformation. Has it happened to you? Do you desire for God to be your God, for you to be His child, one of His people? This is a miraculous change of nature. Don't destroy your eternal soul by assuming that just because you outwardly conform and attend a service that you are truly a member of the new covenant. Listen, you belong To Christ, if you can know your heart and know that deep down, that is my desire, is to please the Lord. Those innermost thoughts of your mind that nobody else sees and nobody else knows, you know them. Examine your heart today. And I leave you with these words, this precious new covenant invitation. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his deeds and let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Let's bow our heads now. Maybe you just need to do that. Maybe you need to say right now, God, I turn from my own way and I turn myself, my life, my soul over to you. I pray that you would do a miracle in me. Grant to me a new heart and a new mind Maybe you know in spite of all that you've done that you're ashamed of, that there is genuinely a new desire in your spirit. And you can say with the Apostle Paul today, it is no longer I that do those sinful things, but sin that dwells within me, because I'm a new person. I've got a new nature and a new heart. Then rejoice in the mercy of God and pray. Pray that the spirit would gain more and more control over you. Right now, Let us not waste this opportunity. It takes some time to seek after the Lord. Quiet prayer.