SPEAKER_00: The book of Hebrews ends, Hebrews 13, verses 20 and 21, with these words.
SPEAKER_00: Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good, that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Late 1500s, there was a group that developed in Europe, Poland really, called the Sassinians.
SPEAKER_00: And the Sassinians would go on through time, they would morph and they would become what's became the brethren in parts of Europe, even in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: It eventually gave way to the Unitarians.
SPEAKER_00: So you see how this theological thread goes, as they end up as Unitarians.
SPEAKER_00: But in the 15 and 1600s, the Sassinians were not Unitarians.
SPEAKER_00: They were arguing that they were in fact evangelicals, that they did in fact believe the scriptures, that they wanted the necessity of personal conversion.
SPEAKER_00: They took on the Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_00: They were on the face of their movement Catholic.
SPEAKER_00: They were supposedly under the authority of the Catholic Church, and yet they fancied themselves evangelicals because they were calling for people to come to faith.
SPEAKER_00: This is after the Protestant Reformation, so they were trying to have a foot in both worlds.
SPEAKER_00: But the heart of the Sassinian teaching came down to this logical dilemma that they were unable to answer.
SPEAKER_00: They would present it to other believers, and this is how many, so many people became as Sassinians, is they were not able to answer this question for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They would ask the question, is salvation free?
SPEAKER_00: Does God freely save?
SPEAKER_00: Is it in God's heart or is it in God's desire to save?
SPEAKER_00: And we would be prone to answer yes to that question.
SPEAKER_00: And they would argue that if salvation were free from God's heart, that God was freely saving, then there's no need for the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Because the cross represents a payment required for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: So it goes.
SPEAKER_00: And so they said you would have to choose between either believing God wants to save people freely, or that God saves people reluctantly through the cross.
SPEAKER_00: So either the cross purchases your salvation, in which case God is not freely giving it, or God is freely giving it, and the cross does not purchase it.
SPEAKER_00: And this eventually became known as the exemplary view of the atonement, the idea that the cross didn't purchase your salvation, but it was just a model of love.
SPEAKER_00: It was a model of self-sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: And if you keep going through history, that view morphs into really modalism, that Jesus wasn't God in the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't the eternal Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, he was just a person who was born that had the Spirit of God dwell in him in a unique way for a period of time.
SPEAKER_00: And that ends up being Unitarianism, and which, you know, now really is universalism and you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Unitarianism is, you know, you see a Unitarian church today, it's everything all at once.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a total mess.
SPEAKER_00: But it traces its way back to this very idea that if the cross actually accomplishes your salvation, that means God can't freely be desiring to save you.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you don't want to give something away if you're also charging for it.
SPEAKER_00: You can't say, Oh, I desired for you to have this, but I demands$100 for it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, which one is it?
SPEAKER_00: Which one is it?
SPEAKER_00: That was the great Sassinian riddle, and it has stumped a lot of people through the centuries, but I think this notion of a covenant of redemption that is taught here at the end of verse 20 of Hebrews 13 is the way that we solve that riddle.
SPEAKER_00: It allows us to say that salvation is free from the very heart of God, that God desires in himself to save, and at the same time the cross is the necessary payment for our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Before we get to how this passage solves that, I want us to look at the phrases in this these two verses more carefully.
SPEAKER_00: In many ways, this little paragraph here at the end of Hebrews is a fitting partner with the passage we looked at this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Be an imitator of God, walk in love as Jesus did, who gave himself up as a sacrifice and a fragrant offering for us to God, as Ephesians 5, 1 and 2 says.
SPEAKER_00: This partners with that so well, because this is a verse in light of all the moral commands that go through Hebrews 13 for you to live out these moral commands, you know, keep the marriage bed pure, be submissive, and uh all the moral commands in Hebrews 13 are building up to this blood of the eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: This demonstration that God is the one who can work these in your life.
SPEAKER_00: There's parallelism in these two verses, and maybe you notice that verses 20 and 21 as I read through them.
SPEAKER_00: There's two actions.
SPEAKER_00: There's an action in verse 20, that is God bringing Jesus up from the dead, and there's an action in verse 21, that God is equipping you.
SPEAKER_00: God is working in your life to do his will.
SPEAKER_00: And so as you look at these two verses, they're joined together.
SPEAKER_00: God is at work on Jesus, bringing Jesus out of the grave, and that same energetic work of God, the same power of God that is at work resurrecting Jesus Christ from the grave is also at work in you, equipping you for every good work that the Father would have you do, working in you which is pleasing in his sight.
SPEAKER_00: So both are pleasing in his sight.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection of Jesus is pleasing in the sight of God, and you being sanctified is pleasing in the sight of God.
SPEAKER_00: Both are works of God too.
SPEAKER_00: It's God who worked in Jesus to resurrect him from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: This is resurrection power as through the Holy Spirit, as Paul says to the Philippians, and it is also God at work in you to sanctify you.
SPEAKER_00: And he's at work in you in the same way.
SPEAKER_00: His Holy Spirit is convicting you of sin and equipping you, gifting you, encouraging you, putting you in the church that is built together by the Holy Spirit to do his will is the language in verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this parallel act of God.
SPEAKER_00: He works on Jesus to resurrect him, he works on you.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the word for equip here, I love, love this word, the first word in verse 21 in the ESV, to God is equipping you.
SPEAKER_00: That word equip, it's the word for fixing something that's broken, which should be humbling to you.
SPEAKER_00: That you're broken and God's got to fix you.
SPEAKER_00: It's used in Matthew 4, it's another place it's used in the New Testament, for mending nets.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the fishermen were doing.
SPEAKER_00: They were mending their broken nets.
SPEAKER_00: Their nets have holes, can't catch a fish with a net with uh you know a holy net.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus makes nets holy, but in a different way.
SPEAKER_00: They had to knit their nets together so it could keep the fish in them.
SPEAKER_00: That's this word here, that the Holy Spirit is doing that to you, so you can then be useful again according to the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: God's working in you.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, he's called here the God of peace.
SPEAKER_00: He's working in you at the beginning of verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: He's the God of peace, which is the way Paul ends most of his letters, a description of the peace and grace.
SPEAKER_00: He goes back in verse 25 to grace be with all of you.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a typical uh Pauline ending here, but it's different in that he calls out the eternal covenant in the middle of this.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Hebrews 13, this is another lame seminary joke.
SPEAKER_00: I want seminary to learn this, but Hebrews 13 comes at the end of the book of Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: You'll have to look in your study Bible to get that without paying tuition for a seminary.
SPEAKER_00: It's the end of the book of Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: And when you track through Paul's argument through the book of Hebrews, you build up this monument to the glories of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 1 is all about the supremacy of the Son of God over angels, that angels were ministers of God, and yet Jesus is greater than angels.
SPEAKER_00: He's superior to angels.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrews chapter two, it talks about how Jesus frees you from death in a way superior to how people were freed under the old covenant, in a way that really crushes death and delivers people from this fear, this lifelong fear of slavery, he says in chapter two.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter three, it talks about how Jesus is greater than Moses.
SPEAKER_00: So he's greater than angels, he's greater than death, he's greater than Moses, even, in the same way that the one who builds a house is greater than the house.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is greater than Moses.
SPEAKER_00: Moses was just a brick leading to Jesus, and he's the one who made Moses, and he's greater than Moses.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter four, it talks about how you get a better rest.
SPEAKER_00: The old covenant rest came on the Sabbath, it came every Saturday, and you would cease from your works to think about the nature of God who made work, and in the new covenant, you have a different kind of rest.
SPEAKER_00: You cease from your labors for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: You have full rest in Jesus Christ as the Word of God is active in you.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 5, you have a better high priest, a better priest than the Old Testament priest, a better priest than Melchizedek.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 6, you have a better understanding of godliness, a better understanding of God's promise through Jesus than you had in the Old Covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The promise is more secure through the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 7 is back to Melchizedek again.
SPEAKER_00: That's inferior to what you have in the new covenant, because Paul's words here is the old covenant is obsolete, it passes away.
SPEAKER_00: And then chapter 9 speaks of the holy place, that when you pray, you're brought into the very throne room of God because Jesus is in the throne room of God making intercession for you.
SPEAKER_00: How different is that than the throne room under the old covenant?
SPEAKER_00: Or the old covenant, the priests would go in and then but once a year.
SPEAKER_00: Now in the new covenant, you pray, Jesus is making intercession for you.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is sanctifying you because you are the temple.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a place you go into, you are it.
SPEAKER_00: And your conscience is cleansed by the blood of Christ, so you can serve the living God.
SPEAKER_00: How much better is that than the sacrifices made by Moses?
SPEAKER_00: And then chapter 11, my goodness, is the faith.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying that you have a different kind of faith than the old covenant saints have.
SPEAKER_00: You have the same faith they did.
SPEAKER_00: Their faith was in the future, Savior, your faith is in Jesus Christ, but they were not made perfect.
SPEAKER_00: They were not made complete without you.
SPEAKER_00: So when you take all that together, you have a better kingdom promised than the kingdom of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: You have a better covenant, the new covenant, than the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: You have a better priest.
SPEAKER_00: You have all of this as superior.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get to chapter 13, after all of that, verse 20, the God of peace who brought up the Lord Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: There was never a Passover lamb that was resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: Never.
SPEAKER_00: Hundreds of thousands of them killed every single year.
SPEAKER_00: Never was one resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: They repeated the sacrifices every year, over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Those sacrifices could not sanctify the conscience and make the worshiper able to serve God with a clean heart.
SPEAKER_00: That couldn't happen.
SPEAKER_00: But now through Jesus Christ, his blood does sanctify us.
SPEAKER_00: It speaks a better word than the blood of Abel, and it makes us able to worship him, capable of worshiping him, because it results in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's how qualitatively different the new covenant is from the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The pinnacle of the old covenant sacrifices did not get resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, our only new covenant sacrifice, was resurrected, led back out of the dead, and so he becomes the shepherd of the sheep.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, we are his sheep.
SPEAKER_00: We uh serve him, we go into this world as sheep.
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of humility with being called a sheep.
SPEAKER_00: You know, sheep are dumb and they're bite and they're angry and they wander away and they just do ridiculous things.
SPEAKER_00: And you've heard all kinds of illustrations about how dumb sheep are, and then you're humbled by recognizing the Bible calls you a sheep, and you need a shepherd, and Jesus is your shepherd, and you you have all that together.
SPEAKER_00: But here it's the shepherd of the sheep who has resurrected to work in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's this phrase in the middle of this this happens by the blood of the eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The old covenant is certainly transitory.
SPEAKER_00: I just gave you a summary of the book of Hebrews and how much Jesus is better than all of those other things that have gone before him in the book of Hebrews, but I want to talk specifically about how much this new covenant is better than the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a couple phrases.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to flip there.
SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar with Hebrews, these verses will sound familiar to you.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 7, verse 22 says that Jesus is a guarantor of a better covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus signs off on a covenant that is better than the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: That's the language that Paul uses, Hebrews 7, 22.
SPEAKER_00: It is a better covenant.
SPEAKER_00: It's just I just like that Paul cuts through all the fog just there and says, you know what, the new covenant is better than the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: It just is.
SPEAKER_00: And then you can make a list of a million ways it's better than the covenant given to Moses.
SPEAKER_00: But it just is.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 8, verses 6 through 13 says the old covenant is obsolete and replaced with a new and better covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Now, obsolete is something that just runs out.
SPEAKER_00: If you have an iPhone, you understand what obsolete means.
SPEAKER_00: Your iPhone is obsolete right now.
SPEAKER_00: Those things are programmed to be obsolete.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was a class action lawsuit a few years ago that Apple settled when it was revealed that some of their batteries were programmed to start losing capacity after a couple years to force you to go out and buy a new one.
SPEAKER_00: Man, that's infuriating.
SPEAKER_00: We have an Apple computer in our house that is just pristine.
SPEAKER_00: It is kept.
SPEAKER_00: We just took the plastic wrappers off of it a few years ago, and we can't sync it with anything because none of the software updates.
SPEAKER_00: This thing is precise and glorious in our basement and entirely worthless because it is obsolete.
SPEAKER_00: That is the idiom or that is the picture for the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't update.
SPEAKER_00: The update came through and it didn't sink, it wasn't connected to the Wi-Fi, the old covenant did not get updated.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're living under the old covenant, you have no access to God because it hasn't been updated.
SPEAKER_00: Even when he was working properly, it wasn't doing what the new covenant can do.
SPEAKER_00: That's an argument for a new phone, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Even when your old one is working fine, it can't do the things the new things the new phone does.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant is so superior to the old covenant because the old covenant ran out.
SPEAKER_00: It's obsolete.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the many ways the new covenant is better than the old, is that the old covenant is obsolete.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the many ways the obsolescence of the old covenant is seen is that the new covenant provides an eternal inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: That's Hebrews 9, verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: That through the new covenant, we have an eternal inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where Paul drops the word eternal on us here.
SPEAKER_00: We have an eternal inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: Through our faith in Christ, our inheritance does not run out.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't expire.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like one of those coupons you get in the mail that says expires after 30 days.
SPEAKER_00: It's not one of those offers you get that says act on it by the end of this year.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you go to refinance your house and you're told you have this rate locked in for 30 days and then you could lose it.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what the new covenant is like.
SPEAKER_00: There's no expiration on it.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't expire.
SPEAKER_00: The terms don't change.
SPEAKER_00: It's an eternal inheritance stored in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Now that doesn't mean the new covenant doesn't require blood, as we see here.
SPEAKER_00: It is the blood of the eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Even the old covenant required blood, and its obsolescence it required blood, but the blood couldn't sanctify you.
SPEAKER_00: That's where Paul goes in Hebrews chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: The blood of the new covenant can actually sanctify you, it actually purifies your heart.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he says in Hebrews 10, verse 29.
SPEAKER_00: And there he says it in a negative sense.
SPEAKER_00: If you reject the blood of the old covenant, you deserve death.
SPEAKER_00: If you walked away from the blood of bulls and goats and you rejected the Torah, you deserve to be stoned to death.
SPEAKER_00: There were capital offenses in the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: If you committed one, they would put you to death.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how much more, Paul asks in Hebrews 10, verse 29, would you deserve death for rejecting the blood of the new covenant?
SPEAKER_00: Which is so far superior to the old.
SPEAKER_00: But even that phrase, don't miss that phrase, for rejecting the blood of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The covenant requires blood, which Jesus shed.
SPEAKER_00: And then he takes that theme all the way to chapter 12, verse 24, when he says, the blood of the new covenant speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
SPEAKER_00: That's Hebrews 12, 24.
SPEAKER_00: What did Abel's blood say?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Abel was murdered by Cain?
SPEAKER_00: What did his blood say?
SPEAKER_00: Well, his blood cried out from the ground.
SPEAKER_00: If you go back to Genesis chapter 4, Abel's blood was crying out from the ground for vengeance.
SPEAKER_00: God declares that he heard the cry of Abel.
SPEAKER_00: He sees his blood.
SPEAKER_00: It demands a punishment on Cain.
SPEAKER_00: So the blood of Abel was crying out for justice and for revenge.
SPEAKER_00: But the blood of Jesus cries out something different.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't cry out for vengeance and cries, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: That's the better word.
SPEAKER_00: It tethers you through faith in the blood of Jesus to an eternal covenant and an eternal inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: We should have looked at the use of the word blood through Hebrews and saw how it's building up to this crescendo.
SPEAKER_00: But there's one more word that's used repeatedly in Hebrews that I want to get you to track with throughout this entire book.
SPEAKER_00: It uses the word eternal.
SPEAKER_00: And lots of things are called eternal in the book of Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation is called eternal.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrews 5, verse 9, there's an eternal salvation you can have.
SPEAKER_00: A judgment is called eternal.
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrews 6, verse 2, if you are apart from the gospel, you stand condemned to an eternal judgment in hell.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 9, verse 12 says that the new covenant, salvation, and redemption are eternal.
SPEAKER_00: That your redemption won't expire.
SPEAKER_00: It is also eternal.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at this one already.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 9.15 says your inheritance is eternal.
SPEAKER_00: But most critically, in Hebrews 9.14, it says that the Holy Spirit is eternal, which makes sense if you understand the eternity.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is the has all the attributes and the essence of deity.
SPEAKER_00: A person of the triune Godhead.
SPEAKER_00: And so of course He would be eternal.
SPEAKER_00: If God is eternal, the Holy Spirit is eternal.
SPEAKER_00: And you see where all of these threads run together and they join in Hebrews 13 to the end of verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: Here you see the superiority of Jesus Christ, resurrected from the dead, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Paul has developed all three of these themes blood, eternality, and the covenant independently throughout this whole book, and they all connect here in verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: This is a reference to an old covenant verse.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 37, verse 26 says, When the new covenant comes, it will be an everlasting covenant, an eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: It won't end.
SPEAKER_00: And so there were already Old Testament prophecies about a new covenant coming.
SPEAKER_00: That's his point back in chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: There wouldn't be a promise of a new covenant if the old covenant wasn't obsolete.
SPEAKER_00: But by promising you a new covenant, it makes the old one obsolete.
SPEAKER_00: Well, here Paul says, the old one will be obsolete, but the new one will also come with blood, and that blood will bring with it an eternal promise.
SPEAKER_00: But it too is a covenant.
SPEAKER_00: This is an eternal covenant because it's God's final, costly payment for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: It results in an eternal forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: Our forgiveness won't ever run out.
SPEAKER_00: We won't ever lose track of our forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: We won't ever get to a time where our forgiveness expires.
SPEAKER_00: Our forgiveness also is eternal.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, it's fitting that God would completely remove our sin from us because in all of his ways he's holy, righteous, and true, and he died his own death on the cross in the place of sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the old covenant couldn't do.
SPEAKER_00: The lambs and the rams and the bulls could be, in some sense, sacrificial, in some sense substitutional.
SPEAKER_00: They could go in our place, but they could not actually take on our sins.
SPEAKER_00: They would even lay their hands on the scapegoat.
SPEAKER_00: They would lay their hands on the goat as a public demonstration that our sins became the goat's sins, and one goat would be killed, and one goat would run away to demonstrate that your sins went away and it was your goat took your sins away with you.
SPEAKER_00: You did not want that goat wandering back in the camp, did you?
SPEAKER_00: Like, whoa.
SPEAKER_00: But when Jesus dies, he never wanders back into camp.
SPEAKER_00: He actually took our sins on him.
SPEAKER_00: And he actually takes them away forever.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why looking forward is called an eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Because you will experience the joys and the privileges of this forever.
SPEAKER_00: I know I've coming close to beating a dead ox here.
SPEAKER_00: But the old covenant wasn't eternal.
SPEAKER_00: It was not eternal.
SPEAKER_00: Have you feared Yahweh in the wilderness?
SPEAKER_00: Every year.
SPEAKER_00: You sacrifice the lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Every year.
SPEAKER_00: You come into the promised land, every year you sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the five sacrifices that are described in Leviticus.
SPEAKER_00: You're doing them all the time.
SPEAKER_00: And you're doing them knowing that they are obsolete, knowing that they're going to run their course because there's a new and better covenant coming.
SPEAKER_00: So the whole time you're doing this, there's the sense of eternality is lost on this because you know it will be repeated next year, and then the year after that, and then the year after that, until it's not repeated anymore because it's no longer effective.
SPEAKER_00: There's a real sense of lostness in that, a real sense of hopelessness in that.
SPEAKER_00: That is replaced with the blood of Jesus that is eternal and not repeated once for all time, once for sin.
SPEAKER_00: When you understand that, you understand why it's so significant that the sacrifice of Christ was singular.
SPEAKER_00: It's not repeated every time in the Catholic Mass.
SPEAKER_00: And that would make it obsolete again.
SPEAKER_00: That would make it impotent.
SPEAKER_00: It would make it powerless to actually produce change.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, you understand that the benefits and the blessings of it don't run out after a year.
SPEAKER_00: Or a million years.
SPEAKER_00: Forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: But there's one more word I want to drill down here on verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: That pretty much covers blood and the eternal, but the last word here, covenant.
SPEAKER_00: What a strategic word that's used.
SPEAKER_00: This is the blood of the eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Now, all of God's dealings with mankind are through covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And when you define covenant the right way, it's just this idea that there's expectations, there's commands, there's two parties involved.
SPEAKER_00: God is not negotiating with an equal here, he's giving to us commands about how we should live our life.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's fitting here that he would describe the eternal plan of salvation also as a covenant.
SPEAKER_00: It was Dwight Pentecost, the professor at Dallas Seminary, who said it's critical to understand that God relates to people through covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And a covenant is not a plan, Pentecost writes.
SPEAKER_00: A plan is not eternal.
SPEAKER_00: A plan is not internal, and a plan can change.
SPEAKER_00: Those are Pentecost's three points.
SPEAKER_00: That a plan is not eternal.
SPEAKER_00: When you plan something, you're just going with it.
SPEAKER_00: And the plan has this idea of flexibility, Pentecost writes.
SPEAKER_00: That plans are flexible.
SPEAKER_00: We use that word the same way, right?
SPEAKER_00: What are your plans for this weekend?
SPEAKER_00: You know, and you probably go through this with your kids.
SPEAKER_00: Your kids ask, what are your plans?
SPEAKER_00: You tell the kids the plans, and something changes, and your kids at first are like, rah, you promised.
SPEAKER_00: No, we planned.
SPEAKER_00: It's wrapped up in the word.
SPEAKER_00: We planned it, but it didn't go out that way.
SPEAKER_00: We understand.
SPEAKER_00: This of Pentecost says that's one of the reasons a plan is different than a covenant.
SPEAKER_00: A covenant can't change.
SPEAKER_00: You don't write a covenant or a contract would be more of an English word, and then change it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you can't tell your bank, yeah, you know, I signed that contract, but hey, contracts change.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have that idiom with plans.
SPEAKER_00: You can tell somebody, yeah, plans change, so we didn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: But you cannot tell your bank, yeah, contracts change, you know?
SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: You'll find yourself in court.
SPEAKER_00: A plan can be entirely internal.
SPEAKER_00: You can plan something to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You can say, I'm scheming this.
SPEAKER_00: I have a plan in my own mind of what I'm going to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's my own plan.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't consult with anybody, I did this myself.
SPEAKER_00: It's my own plan.
SPEAKER_00: But a covenant is not that way.
SPEAKER_00: You can't covenant with yourself.
SPEAKER_00: A covenant requires another party, it requires a second person to covenant.
SPEAKER_00: That's part of what makes it so formal.
SPEAKER_00: So, when Paul uses this word here, the blood of the eternal covenant, what does he mean when he calls it a covenant?
SPEAKER_00: Who is he talking about here?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in some sense, he's talking about the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: It's new covenant, which is, you know, replacing the old covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The old covenant has become obsolete.
SPEAKER_00: The blood of Jesus Christ ushers in a new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And we understand that we look forward.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it started at a point in time when Jesus came to earth.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant was inaugurated at Passover when he had his blood, and he held up the cup, the wine, and he said, This is the blood of the new covenant, and be poured out for the sins of many, and do this often in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: And he inaugurates the new covenant through his blood.
SPEAKER_00: That's the starting point of it.
SPEAKER_00: But you understand that the blessings of it go into eternity future, but that doesn't wholly make it eternal.
SPEAKER_00: For something to be truly eternal, it has to be eternal in the way the Holy Spirit is eternal, without a beginning, going in to eternity past.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what it means when he describes this covenant as eternal.
SPEAKER_00: It stretches back in both directions.
SPEAKER_00: It goes into eternity future where your salvation is always secure, and it goes back to before the creation of the world, the time before time, when God made this covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Who are the parties of this covenant?
SPEAKER_00: When he describes the blood of the eternal covenant, who are the parties?
SPEAKER_00: If a covenant requires parties, or a covenant requires two people, who's God making a covenant with?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he's already hinted at this earlier in Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: He says, the God who cannot lie wanted to make a promise by something secure.
SPEAKER_00: So what is God going to promise by?
SPEAKER_00: You know the old schoolyard expression, you know, I swear on my mother's grave.
SPEAKER_00: What is God going to swear by?
SPEAKER_00: Who can God make a promise to where it's vouchsafe?
SPEAKER_00: Of course, God is the God of truth.
SPEAKER_00: There's no lies in him, so in that sense, he wouldn't need to promise, but he would promise by himself.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing greater than he could swear by than himself.
SPEAKER_00: Well, who's he swearing to?
SPEAKER_00: This is the language in Titus chapter 1, verse 2, that God made a promise before the ages began.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very interesting question, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: God made a promise before the ages began.
SPEAKER_00: To who?
SPEAKER_00: To the angels?
SPEAKER_00: Did God swear to the angels he would do something?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a strange dynamic.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00: Plus, it was before the angels were made.
SPEAKER_00: God's promising to himself.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same phrase he uses earlier in Hebrews 6.
SPEAKER_00: And it gets brought up here again.
SPEAKER_00: Only here it's not the word for promise.
SPEAKER_00: Here it's the word for covenant.
SPEAKER_00: God covenants with himself.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 6 14.
SPEAKER_00: It's God speaking to Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: Surely I'll bless you and multiply you.
SPEAKER_00: And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise, and God made the promise, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself.
SPEAKER_00: You understand the eternal covenant as being between the eternal Father and the eternal Son.
SPEAKER_00: It colors your view of salvation differently.
SPEAKER_00: This is a covenant our Heavenly Father made with the eternal Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Two persons of the Trinity, they covenant together, they promise together, they pledge together, they plan together.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, the persons of the Trinity share one will.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll do this as long as you don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: They share one plan together, but they covenant and they purpose together to do this.
SPEAKER_00: This was their plan.
SPEAKER_00: This was their covenant.
SPEAKER_00: They did this.
SPEAKER_00: That should color the way you view salvation.
SPEAKER_00: When you see salvation as an eternal covenant between the Father and the Son, it should put to death works righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot earn your salvation.
SPEAKER_00: When God plans before time and promises to his son that he will save you.
SPEAKER_00: What works do you have to offer to that?
SPEAKER_00: Imagine you coming in to the throne room of God, an eternity past, where the Father and the Son are planning and covenanting salvation, and you speak up and you say, I have something I could offer.
SPEAKER_00: I have something to contribute to my salvation.
SPEAKER_00: It's outlandish.
SPEAKER_00: You're not, you're out of, you're out of your league there.
SPEAKER_00: This is an eternal plan between the Father and Son, witnessed by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He's a party to this, he's witnessing it.
SPEAKER_00: This is his plan as well.
SPEAKER_00: It's not our plan.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't come up with this.
SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't have designed the cross.
SPEAKER_00: If you would have come up with this, if you and your friends would have been on a planning committee for redemption, you would not have come up with God becoming man, being born to a virgin, leading a sinless life, dying a substitutionary death on a cross, being buried in a grave for three days, and then resurrecting.
SPEAKER_00: And this would not have been your plan.
SPEAKER_00: But this was God's plan.
SPEAKER_00: And that should encourage you.
SPEAKER_00: Because it was not your plan, there's nothing you can do to add to it.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing you can do to contribute to it.
SPEAKER_00: It makes your salvation secure.
SPEAKER_00: You are not a co-author of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: You are not.
SPEAKER_00: The Father and the Son wrote this script, and the Holy Spirit enacts it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, a covenant has parties to it.
SPEAKER_00: A covenant has obligations to it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature of a covenant that both sides promise something.
SPEAKER_00: Both parties promise something.
SPEAKER_00: They're obligated to do something.
SPEAKER_00: And the scripture is filled with examples.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many I could give you of what the Father promises the Son, and the Son promises the Father.
SPEAKER_00: But I just chose two.
SPEAKER_00: The Father promises that he would send the Son.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says in John 12, verse 49, I have not spoken of my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me this commandment.
SPEAKER_00: He has given me a charge, and that's the word for a command.
SPEAKER_00: The Father is giving it to the Son.
SPEAKER_00: The Father pledges that he will send the Son.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Father is promising.
SPEAKER_00: His part in this covenant is to send the Son.
SPEAKER_00: And what's he sending the Son for?
SPEAKER_00: Well, to redeem sinners.
SPEAKER_00: The Father pledges and promises and covenants with the Son to send the Son to the world to redeem sinners.
SPEAKER_00: The Father gives the Son, the elect.
SPEAKER_00: He predestines them.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 1 verse 4 says, In love the Father predestines us to be conformed to the image of his Son.
SPEAKER_00: He'll adopt us, he'll redeem us, and he'll make us brothers and sisters, co-heirs with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's the Father's promise that he will redeem people and hand them to the Son.
SPEAKER_00: You are a gift from the Father to the Son.
SPEAKER_00: You're not a party to the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: You are back to the language of Hebrews 13, you're being acted on in this.
SPEAKER_00: You are the gift to demonstrate the Father's love to the Son, and you think I'm not worthy.
SPEAKER_00: How can I be a gift?
SPEAKER_00: How can I be a sign of the Father's love for the Son?
SPEAKER_00: How can I possibly be a sign of the Father's love to the Son?
SPEAKER_00: Because the Father promises to sanctify you and redeem you and cleanse you and purify you and present you holy and spotless and faultless and perfect as a worshiper for all time to the Son.
SPEAKER_00: That's the gift.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, This is the Father who has commended this.
SPEAKER_00: It's not my own authority, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: You notice how he says it?
SPEAKER_00: Not my own authority.
SPEAKER_00: Well, whose authority is it then?
SPEAKER_00: The Father.
SPEAKER_00: And the flip side of that, John chapter 10, verse 17, is what the Son promises.
SPEAKER_00: The Son promises that he will go and die.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, John 17, for this reason the Father loves me, because I lay my life down that I may take it up again.
SPEAKER_00: This is how the love of the Father is seen, in that Jesus returns the promise.
SPEAKER_00: The Father gives all of the elect to the Son as a gift, and Jesus receives the elect and goes to redeem them.
SPEAKER_00: The Father sends and the Son goes.
SPEAKER_00: This is the plan of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And what do you call a plan with two parties and promises and obligations?
SPEAKER_00: A covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Son goes.
SPEAKER_00: The Father pledges and purposes to give the Son a people too numerous to count as a gift.
SPEAKER_00: People who will be loved because he loves them.
SPEAKER_00: And the Father says, I will accept them on the merits of the Son.
SPEAKER_00: And the Son pledges to go as a Savior, to become a man, to take up residence on earth, to robe himself in humanity, to set aside the worship and all the prerogatives of deity that he has in glory forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: He sets those aside and humbles himself and lowers himself and comes down to earth to live in this wretched world, but with complete and total and perfect obedience to his heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_00: He pledges to be a substitute, to take the wrath of God on himself and to proclaim, by my stripes they will be healed.
SPEAKER_00: He promises to be obedient to death, even death on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And he promises to magnify the Father by calling to him and making much of him, even as he suffers the death of a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: The Son promises to honor the Father by making himself responsible for everyone the Father gives him.
SPEAKER_00: So you are a gift from the Father to the Son, and you are received by the Son who takes ownership of you and pledges to nurture you and purify you and sanctify you.
SPEAKER_00: The very thing the Father promised to do, the Son receives and says, I'll do that.
SPEAKER_00: So the Father gives you to the Son, and the Son presents you back to the Father, spotless and holy and righteous.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, Well, what does the Holy Spirit do?
SPEAKER_00: What's his role in this?
SPEAKER_00: He's doing this to you.
SPEAKER_00: He's all over this.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one that is implementing this promise, implementing this pledge.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who resurrected Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one that is equipping you to do all the good works that are pleasing in the sight of God our Father through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Do you notice how each person in the Trinity is making much of the other?
SPEAKER_00: The Father is doing everything he can in redemption to make much of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The Son of God is doing everything he can to make much of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: The Father gives you to the Son as a gift so that the Son can celebrate and rejoice.
SPEAKER_00: And the Son gives you right back to the Father so the Father can marvel at the Son's beauty.
SPEAKER_00: Each is acting reciprocally, each is acting, directing glory and worship to the other, and the Holy Spirit is as well.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way of love.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul means in Ephesians 5, verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: When you consider the cross, you walk in the way of love.
SPEAKER_00: You prefer others, you pursue them, you elevate them.
SPEAKER_00: This is the act of love in the Trinity.
SPEAKER_00: It involves giving and going, it involves sending and receiving, serving and sanctifying.
SPEAKER_00: And this is huge because it shows you that what happened at Calvary didn't start in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: What started in Calvary didn't start when Jesus was born.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't start even with the prophecy given to Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't start with the prophecy given to Jeremiah of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't start with the prophecy given to Abraham that there would be an only son who would come and be the sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't start with the prophecy given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 that one of their seeds and descendants would crush the head of Satan.
SPEAKER_00: It started well before that.
SPEAKER_00: This is a promise whose roots are not in the garden, but before the garden.
SPEAKER_00: It puts salvation as authored and planned squarely in the throne room of God before the creation of all times, in a way that you can really call it an eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: It was there that God was a fountain of grace and mercy, waiting to overflow with a joy and delight, waiting to break forward into this world to demonstrate his magnanimity, to demonstrate his benevolence, to demonstrate his kindness and his love for the Son and the Son, waiting to demonstrate it back to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, listen, in a sense, you were there.
SPEAKER_00: You weren't even born.
SPEAKER_00: But in a sense, when the Father plans this and covenants this with the Son, he's predestining you in love.
SPEAKER_00: He has you in mind.
SPEAKER_00: You were there in his mind as he designs you.
SPEAKER_00: And when you come to faith in Christ, you are there in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You are adopted into Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You truly are in him, and so you receive the promises and the blessings that are given to him as you become one in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus prays in John 17, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray that they would all be one as you and I are one.
SPEAKER_00: And you're there forever.
SPEAKER_00: You look forward to the horizon of all time, and your hope will never run out.
SPEAKER_00: There's hope for you in heaven, there is joy for you in heaven, there's the richness and fullness of this eternal covenant waiting for you in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Thus, this covenant truly is eternal.
SPEAKER_00: It begins in eternity past and it anchors our hope there.
SPEAKER_00: It extends into eternity future and gives us a horizon upon which we can cast our expectations.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the parties of the covenant, the Father and the Son.
SPEAKER_00: Those are the promise in the covenant that the Father would send and the Son would go.
SPEAKER_00: But what's the sign?
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't every covenant have a sign?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is also yes.
SPEAKER_00: The sign here is the blood of the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: I remember I was best man in a wedding once, and I was supposed to give the best man speech, and the guy, who is the groom, said, Listen, when you give the best man speech, don't call the wedding a covenant.
SPEAKER_00: He says it's one of my theological pet peeves, because all covenants require blood, and there's no blood at the wedding.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so stop calling a marriage a covenant, he tells me, because there's no blood, and every covenant requires blood.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: So there I am in the courtyard of the hotel where the wedding is, and I'm holding in my hands a glass of red wine, and I'm looking at it, and I just have all of this, as I'm about to give the toast, all of this new covenant illustration where Jesus takes, and it's not communion at a wedding.
SPEAKER_00: I grant that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you're giving a toast at the wedding, it is not the same thing as communion.
SPEAKER_00: But why bother with the toast?
SPEAKER_00: Because there's some kind of pledge and promise that's happening here that's more significant than a pledge or promise you make at the playground or even when you sign a house.
SPEAKER_00: This is something, the most significant promise of your life.
SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily need to call it a covenant.
SPEAKER_00: But there's certainly a sign, the ring is a sign, but you get to the Bible, and everything about this covenant involves the seal of blood.
SPEAKER_00: The old covenant is sealed with blood.
SPEAKER_00: Every covenant, it seems, is sealed with blood.
SPEAKER_00: So what's the sign of this covenant then?
SPEAKER_00: And of course, Paul answers that question.
SPEAKER_00: This happens by the blood of the eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The cross of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So when Jesus takes the glass and says, This is my blood, this is the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, he's inaugurating the new covenant, where Jews and Gentiles will be one in the body of Christ together.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, he will take that cup with us again in heaven, demonstrating the eternality of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: But the Mosaic covenant was not designed in this covenant of redemption before time.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant is our eternal salvation crafted by God.
SPEAKER_00: It alone is spoken of as the eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: So when you look to Calvary, you are looking forward into all time and you are looking backwards into the very throne room of God, anchoring all of redemptive history.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're grateful that you have given us this eternal covenant.
SPEAKER_00: You, the Passover lamb, became the great shepherd of the sheep.
SPEAKER_00: You, the sacrifice, are the author of the sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: In a very real way, you gave it yourself.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard for us to understand this.
SPEAKER_00: Even an act of human sacrifice entails in comparison.
SPEAKER_00: People might give their lives to rescue someone in danger, but they certainly wouldn't have written the script that way.
SPEAKER_00: And yet you did.
SPEAKER_00: In your throne room in eternity past.
SPEAKER_00: You are Heavenly Father covenanting with you, our eternal Son, to save us.
SPEAKER_00: Not based on anything in us except your own sovereign free will.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing more we can do except receive your gift of grace.
SPEAKER_00: And we can pray as Hebrews ends, that the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead would be at work in us.
SPEAKER_00: The same blood of the eternal covenant that has secured our redemption would cleanse us and purify us and enable us, enable us to serve the living God.
SPEAKER_00: So we do pray in light of this eternal covenant that we would be servants.
SPEAKER_00: Filled with love and joy for your people.
SPEAKER_00: Because we are all a gift.
SPEAKER_00: We're all designed by you to glorify the Son, designed by the Son to glorify the Father, recipients of the Holy Spirit, who equips us to do both of those things.
SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily.
SPEAKER_00: Serve others around you and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord bless you.