The New Covenant - Pastor Loren Larson - Jimmy Swaggart Ministries - Baton Rouge, LA

amen what a wonderful presence of the lord is here pastor and i knew that the weather would probably hinder folk from coming but we felt that you were more important than the weather and i feel that way this morning as well i always love the opportunity to minister the gospel to many or to few it does not matter to me because the gospel is for people and as long as there are people gathered to hear it i am privileged and honored to have the opportunity to try to break down or look at explain uh the gospel and edify the people of god and there is just pastor a wonderful presence of god there's a wonderful presence of god in your services in your church and it's very very special it's very unique i i just i love coming here and i hope they won't uh belittle me for the weather and ask us back again and we'll have a chance to minister to you again this morning uh look at hebrews chapter 8 with me this morning hebrews chapter 8 and i want to start reading in verse 7. hebrews chapter 8 verse 7 we'll read down through the end of verse 13 or to the end of the chapter if you found it say amen amen hebrews chapter 8 verse 7 through 13 for if that first covenant had been faultless then should no place have been sought for the second now there was nothing wrong with the covenant that god gave there was absolutely nothing wrong with what he gave the problem wasn't with the content of the covenant it was the people to whom he made covenant with and he clarifies that verse 8 for finding fault with them you see it he found fault with israel finding fault with them he saith he prophesied behold the days come saith the lord when i will make a new covenant with the house of israel everybody say new covenant if you have a new covenant you can't have or belong to the old can't have two contracts if you're a laborer or a employee you have a contract per se with your employer and it's for x number of dollars or an hour or a salary and if you get a new contract and you get a raise and they pay you per the old contract you will say that doesn't work because i have a a new contract so you can't belong to two contracts two covenants at the same time so he said the days come saith the lord verse eight when i will make a new covenant with the house of israel and with the house of judah remember that god has chosen israel as his as his peculiar people he raised them up from abraham out of one man and raised a whole nation out of one man and he designated this nation the jewish nation then and even now today israel if you will prince with god as the designated special people of god that was to share the knowledge of him with everybody else in the world i'll make a new covenant with the house of israel with the house of judah but watch verse 9 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 continued not in my covenant and i regarded them not saith the lord so this new covenant isn't going to be like or very similar to the old covenant it's going to be with the same god but it's going to have different processes different requirements different ways of attending to relationship with god for this verse 10 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 write them in their hearts and i will be to them a god and they shall be to me a people one of the things that you have to understand that is the game changer the landmark of the new covenant is that under the old covenant that people entered into by faith they did not receive regeneration they did not receive a new spirit or a new heart they were made cognizant they had knowledge of what god desired but he didn't change them today as he does us because the ability for god to do that didn't exist doesn't mean that god wasn't all-powerful it's just meant but sin in us was stopping him from doing what he wanted to do in us so he did what he could he informed and he then gave laws that protected really drew a circle or if you would a box and put those people right in the center of it and said obey my laws and rules and stay in the box and you'll be good but guess what god doesn't stay in a box and we don't stay in boxes very well either and so god said i'm going to put my spirit within them and this spirit is going to teach them about me you won't have to sit and study leviticus numbers in deuteronomy to know what is right what is wrong not wrong to do that but the new covenant that would extend beyond the borders and the specific requirements of israel would be unique in that god's spirit would take up residence within every person everywhere and confirm right and wrong to that individual verse 11 and they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother saying know the lord for all shall know me from the least to the greatest for i will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their iniquities will i remember no more in that he saith a new covenant he hath made the first old now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away and the word old here in both uses in verse 13 you could as some new translations do use the word obsolete obsolete is different than wrong obsolete is that sweater you wore 15 years ago that you probably still have in your closet i have a few of those too i put it on and my kids start laughing dad that's 90s i said you're wrong that's 70s i've been carrying it a long time but those are clothes but obsolete probably would be best to find like our phones when i grew up phones were an item in the kitchen hanging on the wall when you got high-tech with your phone you got a 25 foot cord that allowed your big sister who was a teenager before you to take the phone out of the kitchen go around the corner and sit in a chair and talk all day to her friends back in those days geezer report get ready younger generation geezer report here it comes back in those days they had things called party lines which were really no parties at all it just was the opportunity for everybody to listen in on what you were saying and you could pick up because five or six families had the same line and that's all they had available but thank goodness you could make a call out to whoever and the the technology worked you could make calls all over the nation and all over the world on that technology but as men grew a little smarter and and today there's probably not a whole lot that a iphone can't do from telling us where to shop and how to drive and where to go and what the weather's going to be like and you know all of us i fear have you know hook and neck disease it's when we go to eat i make my kids put that phone down because i would like to see their faces and not the top of their heads but that new technology came in and it didn't say that the old technology was bad said it was obsolete it couldn't do for us what the new technology could do for us so when god says i'm going to make the old covenant decay and wax old it simply doesn't mean that it wasn't as paul said holy and righteous and good it just meant that it can't do the job for humanity that i want it to do it began some things that will continue on in the new covenant and it'll get rid of some things that we won't need in the new covenant right so the new covenant that you have today is a new covenant it's a better covenant it has better promises and you can't be under the old covenant and under the new covenant at the same time you can only be under one covenant so the mosaic law is not my covenant i say that with all respect just like i say respect to the phone in the kitchen with the 25 foot cord it was our phone but it's not my phone today i have a better phone i have a better covenant i have a better covenant with better promises that being said i have to take us today to the issue with the hebrews but before i do that let's pray heavenly father we thank you for the opportunity today to study the new covenant to think about and learn about what you've given us and to make sure that we are approaching the benefits of this new covenant as you have designed it and warned us father not to let loose of that which we have been given so today as we learn as we partake together of your word solidify the truth of the new covenant in our hearts and minds and let us rejoice in what christ has done but also lord help us to recognize that it's our responsibility to keep our faith in you that this new covenant that you have provided might ever bring us benefit and we'll ask it all in jesus name amen and amen the author of hebrews goes through the benefits of the old and compares it to the new covenant for a group of israelites we think that are probably christians in jerusalem now it is it is probably written uh we don't know we're guessing 70 to 80 a.d sometime i'm sorry 65 to 70 a.d sometime before the fall of jerusalem and the destruction of the temple because a lot of the things that the author says and it people argue about paul is it paul or is it who it's what's written that's most important so let's just stick with that but what he tried to do if it is paul was to convince these that are in jerusalem that are in the new covenant not to return to the old pressures of the day situations where they were losing their job because of their faith or losing their way in the community because of their faith losing their standing because of their faith losing finances losing income losing homes family members that would have nothing to do with them because they were now espousing a christ a messiah that had come and this messiah had died and rose again and that's mind-boggling for the jew they weren't looking for a messiah that would deal with sin and they weren't looking for a messiah that would die and rise again they were looking for a messiah that would come and kick rome in the back pockets and get them out of their situation and by the second generation of christians this offense of the gospel was being meted out to the children of god who were around jerusalem in a way that no one else was experiencing in a powerful powerful attack of the enemy against their faith i hope you see that you and i might very quickly be in a similar situation so this message isn't just for the hebrews of that day it's for us as well how far our communities and governments and nation will come against christianity i don't know but i strongly suspect it will get worse before it gets better and that means that you and i should probably take a really close look at hebrews and say let's not go the way that some of them did some of them said you know what if i just relinquish my faith in christ and i go back to the status quo of practicing judaism then i won't have any conflict i'll be able to go back to the way things were before my job will be secure my family will accept me as a regular or not as a as a kosher jew i'll i may have to compromise some things but i'm just i'm just tired of the battle i'm just weary of not being accepted and not having and so little by little they swept back into judaism so the author writes and says don't do that you've got a better covenant but in this breakdown we have to understand that the first covenant was established and a lot of people don't think this way but i want you to think this way i need you to understand how the first covenant came to be the first covenant was really began by god reaching out to his chosen people in captivity and in ten plagues or miracles or signs however he he makes himself known to them the first several were just showing his power over those who that had captive israel and the last was a step of faith that god demanded of the people in all the other plagues other than the passover god just did something but in the passover god asked something of his people see most of the time in our relationship it's because god does something but he also comes to us and he says i want you to do something i want you to exhibit faith in me so here's what you're going to do you're going to kill a passover lamb and you're going to put his blood on the doorpost and you're going to by faith enter into the house and if you by faith enter into the house when the death angel comes and i see the blood i will pass i will pass over you significant is the blood on the doorpost just like the blood on the doorposts of our hearts god and we enter by end here's my point we enter into a covenant by faith are you seeing it so god's people weren't saved by the law they were saved through faith as they exhibited faith in a god that had revealed himself to them in egypt and it was the next day that he brought them out of egypt and he marched them along a specific route for three months and then parked the whole camp at sinai for a year and a month did you know that was the breakdown three months he kind of tests them and see if they'll if they'll keep their faith up and you know what they did they grumbled and mumbled and kind of like you and i we grumble and we mumble as we go in so god said okay let's park you at sinai was always god's idea and for a year and a month he gave them the law he gave them the tabernacle and chose specific men to build it and every piece of that tabernacle every shadow and type of the law pointed to jesus pointed to a messiah was a type and a shadow every single piece of it as they put it together and god gives israel the law and the law was a regimen of civil laws ceremonial laws and moral laws now they didn't divide them that way we do for teaching purposes but be careful when you do that because it breaks up somewhere it's not biblical but it is right that you can find things that pertain to civil and ceremony and moral but all the ceremonies in the world couldn't change the hearts of the israelites and so as they marched into their land and their faith was tested when they were drawn away from their faith that's when god really laid down the law so to speak they violated many of the covenants and things that god asked but he didn't destroy them it was only when they refused to walk by faith that god did something drastic when he calls them into the promised land and you know the story 12 spies go in to come back say we can take it we are able to go up and take the country time says no we can't and most of them said okay oh i wish we'd just stayed in egypt i miss leeks and onions leeks and onions they don't even serve lakes and onions in texas am i right so who doesn't you know who wants to go back to leeks and onions for goodness sake see when we get crying about what god's asking us to do because we don't believe we make the bad look good and god said okay you want to do that this generation is going to die in the wilderness and i'll take the next jed see that wasn't a violation just of law and principles and activities symbolic and civil laws it was a violation of faith that kept them out of the promised land and god brings them into the promised land and you know the stories establishes them and right away they began to leave off the little things of the law that god had tried to show them see faith is affected by the little things sometimes we don't think it much but our faith in god which is what establishes relationship which always establishes relationships see the law didn't establish relationship the law was just meant to help maintain relationship but when we start violating little things that help us maintain relationship our faith is affected we just let a a little bit of that well let's see i'll watch that i know i shouldn't really uh uh but i just like the story uh you know and i just gotta and you know there's this going on and that going on and f bombs dropping and all they said well i'll just sit here a little bit and listen and watch and a little bit of this and a little bit of that it eats at the fabric of faith it hardens the ear dims the eye and hardens the heart and we're not preaching holiness just via action but remember that the god that said be holy as i am holy is the same in the old covenant as he is in the new so we have to be careful as to what we do and where we go what we say not because i make it a law but because i have to recognize that my relationship with god is the most important relationship that i have and i have to do everything within my power to keep my eyes open keep my ears open keep my heart open don't cloud the issue with things that destroy the very thing god wants to do in my life and the israelites didn't listen and of course we know the story they went into captivity first the northern kingdom then the southern kingdom because these processes kept hardening their heart the things they were doing hard and hard they got to the point where they began to practice idolatry new gods it got so confusing in israel that they couldn't even tell the difference between jehovah and baal i'm afraid we're in a church today that has trouble separating god from the gods of all the rest of the world we need to be aware and so god allows the southern and the northern kingdoms both to go into captivity in the saddest thing of all see all those little items that destroyed their faith destroyed their relationship with god and god says i've got to divorce my people now he says that in his word hosea chapter one he says i've got to call them lollamy they they're no longer my people and in deuteronomy he tells us why is that not because of all the little wrong things that they do but all the little wrong things that they did led to bigger things until ultimately their faith didn't exist in jehovah anymore at all it was in their life the world the gods of the other nations around them and god says i divorce you low amy you are no longer my people jeremiah weeps over the city and over jerusalem and ezekiel in captivity sees a vision of the temple where god dwelt between the cherubim above the mercy seat in the temple and ezekiel sees god's spirit leave the temple god leaves the people he built and the place that he chose to place his name he leaves it after 70 years they come back from captivity but things are never really quite the same note that the ark of the covenant has never been recovered the ark of the covenant is where god lived it was never reestablished not in jerubal's temple not in herod's temple it never came back there's 400 years of silence between the last prophet and john the baptist we call it the 400 years of silence why is there 400 years of silence know and understand the work of the prophet the work of the prophet was to reinforce covenant he's a covenant enforcer he preaches righteousness to god's people but it shows us by those 400 years of silence that god is no longer focusing on that particular covenant because he sends no one to reinforce it because he's already got something else in the works in his mind that is about to step out into human history and the last old testament prophet by the name of john the baptist introduced us to god's plan the new covenant when he said behold [Music] [Applause] behold here it is the prophesied new covenant prophesied in deuteronomy chapter 30 and verse 6 prophesied in ezekiel 11 prophesied in ezekiel 36 i got news for you god doesn't run away from us he works it out to where we can get back into relationship with him if we'll just let our faith go into what he has provided glory to god glory to god glory to god glory to god 400 years of silence and then repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand he's right there hallelujah hallelujah and jesus came to israel and said come unto me o he that labor and a heavy laden i will give you rest he said i am the way the truth and the life to israel no man cometh unto the father but by me he said i am the good shepherd i am the door i am the bread that came down from heaven i am the resurrection i am the life he there is absolutely insane or he is who he says he is the claims that christ makes to the woman in samaria she said we know when messiah comes he's going to answer all our questions and jesus looked at the little woman at the samaritan well and said i'm the one i'm he i'm he and jesus came and offered the new covenant that had been prophesied in the old covenant to israel and you know what they did they said no thanks we don't want it jesus died but what they didn't know what they didn't understand was that in the mind of god his son would establish and cut this new covenant by the giving of his life by the giving of his life he would pay the price for all the law that had been broken by all men for all time every act of evil every wrong thought that anyone would ever encounter in a lifetime of humanity would be paid for by the s by the sacrifice of christ on calvary and he ascends or descends down into hell if you will and he rises again on the third day and then he ascends to the right hand of the father after ministering to his disciples for 40 days and he sends back the game changer he sends back the holy spirit now i don't want to i don't want to spend too much long time here but you need to understand that under the law as i said last night the big problem was we enter the relationship with god by faith but we can't live up to what god wants and a lot of times we're not even sure what god wants under the new covenant on the day of pentecost and i could teach on this for three weeks i don't hit well we got 30 minutes not you know i mean we might get trapped in here and then we'll do it anyway but what we need to understand listen the holy spirit is the game changer he's the new covenant promise ezekiel 36 said i 25-27 god prophesied the coming of the holy spirit and he said here's what i'm going to do since you've had such a difficulty under the old covenant i'm going to give you a new covenant but first of all i'm not going to make it with you because you can't you can't you can't maintain with me you can't you can't keep up with what i want so i can't make it with you like i did with israel this new covenant is going to be with god and man but it's going to be with god and the god-man his son so god stands at the covenant table and looks at his son his son cuts covenant with his death and god enters into covenant with man based on the perfect life death burial and resurrection of his son and everyone who believes in his son is considered as being in christ i'm not in law i'm in christ i'm not in law i'm in christ i'm not in law i'm in christ glory to god and now not just the jew not just those that lived in israel that followed the mosaic law could be right with god but every gentile every jew every person everywhere that places their faith in jesus stands in him and looks to god and god is in covenant with you because of what jesus did and your faith in him hallelujah and the only way to get rid of this covenant is get rid of god good luck with that or to get rid of the man god the god man they already tried that and he said i am he that was alive and i was dead but i'm alive forevermore and i hold the yeah i hold the key see i hold the keys you're not going to get rid of jesus can't get rid of jesus and as long as jesus is here he ever liveth to make an accession for me he is able to save them to the uttermost take you all the way into what god has for you he can because this is an everlasting covenant one that will never be changed we have a new order of priesthood he's a priesthood forever after the order of melchizedek doesn't have to offer up any more sacrifices it's done he offered up what a sacrifice for all he's not from the tribe of levites from the tribe of judah and the author of hebrews says because the priesthood has changed the covenant the law had to be changed too but in this covenant on the day of pentecost having paid for our sin debt he now sends back the holy spirit now if i want to cause a fight in church i just choose acts 2 38. and i acts 2 38. um can you put it on the wall so we can have a fight peter said unto them okay listen day of pentecost right and the holy spirit comes if i wanted to have a church fight i could preach this because the baptists are going to want me to say one thing and the pentecostals are going to want me to say another thing and the united pentecostal brethren are going to want me to say another thing but when we have i go back and we take a look at the text of peter you know here's these people impacted by the coming of the holy spirit let's get this in mind this is the coming of the holy spirit it's not just about salvation and it's not just about sorry pentecostals just about the baptism it's about the coming the coming the coming of the holy spirit it's about the entrance of the holy spirit in the covenant relationship where because of calvary and the price paid through the blood of christ that god can now enable his new covenant people that move from jews to gentiles with the presence of himself he gives the power source for life to all that are in the new covenant and on the day of pentecost the the power of god is made evident in acts 2 1-3 we hear the sound of a mighty rushing wind and we see fire like tongues on the head of each that's the coming of the holy spirit you never see that again because he's never left but he didn't just come to do one thing he didn't just come to provide us with the baptism even though acts focuses on the baptism see now the baptists are awakened me he came to provide the new covenant promise of regeneration baptism into christ new heart new spirit new life and the power source to live holy and acts 2 and 4 he came with a twin a baptism with power with the evidence of speaking in other tongues that gives us the power to witness one of the things the holy spirit does is save us regenerate us and sanctify us the other work of the holy spirit is to empower us with power to proclaim this gospel and on the day of pentecost it's not the birthday of the church it's the installation of the eschatological promise of god to israel i will send a new a new covenant [Music] men get hit with this power and they're stumbling around like drunken people i know what that's like because i read about it you know and people are saying what's going on he says this is that and then he begins to quote joel now if all he wanted to do was was bring us the knowledge of the baptism with the holy spirit then he should have stopped after he said acts 2 turn there with me uh didn't mean to do this but it's cold outside so we might as well take a moment acts chapter 2 verse 16 but this is that which was spoken by the prophet joel it shall come to pass in the last days saith god i will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy your young men shall see visions your old men shall dream dreams and on my servants and on my handmaidens i will pour out in those days of my spirit and they shall prophesy there's the aspect of the holy spirit that comes to help us with service the baptism with the holy spirit but this is if this is all about the baptism with the holy spirit then he should have stopped there but he didn't he continues to quote joel you remember what he's doing he's answering the question what is this this is that not just prophecy but what else verse 18 uh verse 19 and i will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath blood and fire and vapor of smoke the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before that great notable day of the lord look verse 21 and it shall come to pass that whosoever what is this peter it shall come to pass that young men and women will prophesy young men and men will prophesy servants will prophesy and conjunction new thought whosoever what is this peter whosoever if it was just the baptist message he just had given us the last verse if it was a pentecostal message he'd have given us the first verse but if it's all of it if it's all of it he gives us both of it are you getting it are you getting it whosoever shall call in the name of the lord shall be saved regenerated baptized into christ freed from the power of sin and the indwelling presence of the spirit in us and there's an availability for a second subsequent work grant is power it's the coming of the spirit it's not just the baptist day of salvation it's not just the pentecostal baptism it's the coming it's the installation of the new covenant with the game changer here the person of the holy spirit and they said after peter preaches to him that they killed their messiah what are we going to do and he said repent get the fighting verse up there acts 2 38 repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of jesus christ for the remission of sins now quickly i won't go into all of it but here that here's the first action is to repent being baptized every one of you in the name of jesus christ stands alone in the greek repent is actually joined with the remission of sins you can tell by the order of the verses in the greek i can't i won't take the time to explain it but so it would be repent for the remission of sins be baptized be identified with jesus christ back then we don't recognize the strength of water baptism because it said to the whole of community i'm baptized in jesus name i'm baptized into jesus he's everything to me it's an association identification with jesus repent for the remission of sins be baptized be united and identify with christ and you shall receive the gift not a gift from the holy spirit but the gifts he the holy spirit is the gift not just one thing that he does the holy spirit is the gift of the new covenant that we get when we accept christ and he's there to sanctify and if we allow him a second subsequent work he's there to immerse us into power to be a witness for his work but the gift is the holy spirit the gift of the new covenant is the holy spirit to save and to sanctify and to change forever what we are the old covenant is obsolete it it was trying to get us here but it couldn't do what the new covenant could until the day of pentecost when the gift of the holy spirit well who's it for look at verse 39 it's to you and to your children to everybody that's far off and in just in case i've missed anybody anywhere even as many as the lord our god shall call if he calls and you've answered the gift is for you not just one aspect of it all of it not just some of the holy spirit but everything the holy spirit was meant to do for us in the new covenant oh we argue and we fight and we banter about and we attack and oh yeah yeah it's this and it's this and the problem of it is that both are right to a certain degree and both are wrong to a certain degree i'm a classic pentecostal i was raised up in that box and i thank god for the box that i was raised in but there's some things in our boxes that need to change 1988 brother swaggart with a broken heart doesn't understand why he failed in front of the whole world there's nobody that preaches pentecost then and now stronger than jimmy swaggart nobody that preached the baptism with the holy spirit stronger than jimmy schweigert his ministry is probably totally responsible or a big part in responsible for springing the message of the baptism with the holy spirit to central and south america brazil brazil is having a revival right now they are we might not but others are so nobody was a bigger proponent of the baptism than jimmy swaggart but as a result of his personal failure in seeking the lord the lord told him these words and i'm not i've been with this man for 30 years i love him as a father as a son my love of father in the lord so i'm not telling you something he wouldn't tell you himself that you probably haven't heard him say but in seeking god with a broken heart the lord spoke to him and said i'm going to show you some things about the holy spirit that you don't know because of our boxes we've been learning one aspect of the holy spirit and then for years we've been fighting each other about the one aspect that we were knowledgeable of but because he began to see god what god opened up to him was the truth of what the gift of the holy spirit truly was it wasn't just the baptism with the holy spirit it was the ability to be sanctified by faith some things about the holy spirit now our baptist brethren would have said see we knew that all along but i didn't come to try to have a part of the new covenant god didn't send his son to give us just a piece of the new covenant and the message of the cross has the unique opportunity of combining all these thoughts into the gift of the holy spirit so that you the people of god can truly be witnesses acts 1 and 8 you shall receive power after that the holy ghost has come upon you now i believe that that means you will be an anointed verbal witness number one number two hebrews 2 and 4 says that god will work with us signs miracles wonders etc etc but number three the greatest significance and the greatest sign and the greatest signal of a witness is not activity for evangelism it's a changed life by this shall all men know that you have power power to testify power for signs miracles and wonders but power to exhibit fruit of the spirit that exemplifies the spirit of christ if that's not included in our witness our witness is incomplete and the baptism with the holy spirit doesn't provide us with that salvation and the gift of the holy spirit who comes in regenerates sanctifies and takes up residence within us that's what equips us to live right we have a new covenant established with better promises okay can you handle five more minutes and then i'm done five are you okay i know we all gotta drive in the snow so i get it i have this covenant we have these promises dearly beloved therefore let us cleanse ourselves of all filthiness of flesh and spirit second corinthians 7 and 1 now that we have these promises of the new covenant we have to make sure that our faith remains in christ because just like the old covenant they had to keep their faith in god and there were things that came in that began to rob them of their faith let me just tell us some things we need to think about really quick before we go home god is still the same god in the old as in the news so while the civil and ceremonial shadows and types have disappeared his morality hasn't he's still the same god he's the same yesterday today forever so if lying was wrong then the moral code of lying is still wrong now it's not written on tablets of stone but it's written on your heart so the minute that you lie to your spouse there should be something on the inside of you going or something similar however you do it and when we begin to push away the moving of the holy spirit in our hearts and minds as to what is right or we read in the word older new testament the moral codes of god and we disregard them we are attacking the very fabric of our faith and it's faith that brought you into christ last night as the service ended one of the ladies from another church was here and she said brother larson talk to me about justification well justification is god's legal decree of your innocence based on your faith she said well can you ever lose lose that and i told her what i felt i'm not uh and inherent to unconditional eternal security but at the same time i do believe in eternal security let me say as long as your faith remains in christ your performance doesn't doesn't negate your relationship with god having said that i warn you and i warned me that just like israel of old the little things that we let in that we know are morally wrong have the capability pastors of robbing us of the fabric of our faith it robs us of the ability to hear and see and sense in our heart the things of god even with this new covenant provision of the holy spirit in you you can still grieve the holy spirit you can still quench him shut up i don't want to listen to you and so we have to be careful not to let moral code slip from our lives we have to be careful not to bring modern idolatry like the love of the world the church has fallen in love with things god does instead of god himself god gives prosperity so we have people that make an idol of prosperity we have a a people that love god's grace and they make an idol of god's grace and like sentence is the end result we have a people that fall in love with experiences and a faith in the baptism with the holy spirit of faith in the supernatural is the result no no faith in jesus faith in jesus and what he did these other things can be modern idolatry we can fall in love with knowledge we can fall in love with preachers and churches and put them in front and say oh that's what makes me a christian be careful that you don't let in modern idolatry somebody came to the church and gave you a little figure totem pole and said fall down worship this you'd never do it but some of these other things i mentioned were busy worshiping and it robs us of the fabric of our faith the worst thing that could ever happen to a believer is what happened to old testament these people in israel's day when ezekiel saw the holy spirit leave it's not an easy place to come to and you won't get there in one day or one act or one moment and if you want to make sure that you never get there that i'm talking to people that i trust will never get there you keep your eyes on christ you keep searching out the meaning of this new covenant you walk in all the benefits of it and you let god continue to change you and you let god continue to use you by the power of the spirit you keep your faith in jesus who he is and what he's done and when you fail when you come short don't excuse it don't embrace it take it to god ask him to forgive you and go beyond it trust in the power of the holy spirit to take the desire for that thing out of your life and no matter how long it takes remember god sent his son to condemn sin in the flesh it's coming down it's coming down if you'll stay faithful to the one who established this new covenant and you understand what he did to provide it for you then you'll walk in the benefits of the new covenant would you stand with me please lord we love you today we give you all praise we give you all glory i thank you for these that have endured these words but i pray that perhaps something has been said something has been done today that strengthens their faith in you o god for you are my god creator of heaven and earth and sea and sky and all that in them is you are the father of the lord jesus christ who established for me and these the new covenant a new covenant an everlasting covenant a sure covenant oh father help us to walk into that covenant by faith each and every day to embrace it by faith and allow your spirit to decide what's right and wrong and reveal to us and empower us to be in do and say all that you desire all that you design we humble ourselves before you today father when we give you praise for the new covenant in jesus name i know that it's stormy outside i know it's ugly and i know we need to get home before harm happens but we're not coming back tonight so maybe if we could i love doing this in the college and i love doing it at church where we can if something has been said that you realize you need to embrace take a moment before we leave here as the team what a wonderful team what a wonderful group of people what a wonderful uh music and praise that goes before the lord that you have let uh let them take us into the presence of the lord and just solidify the things we've heard today before we leave would you join me at this altar and let's just praise him for the new covenant that he's given singers musicians as you feel dead [Music] jesus [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you jesus thank you jesus thank you for the gift of the heart thank [Applause] [Music] thank you thank you [Music] [Applause] oh jesus

Channel: Christ Community Church - Palestine, TX

Views: 8,129

Rating: 4.8816566 out of 5

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Id: RCkVu23GvRY

Length: 59min 35sec (3575 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021