The Spirit gives life

At the end of the service this last Sunday, I included a couple of slides that were not in your handout, and it went like this. I asked the question, is there anyone you love and care about who does not know the Lord or perhaps once seemed to believe, but does not now claim to walk with Him?

And I had quite a bit of comment, by the way, on that slide and the following one. And so I've included it on the last couple of slides in your handout today, just so people have that. What I left you with was three things to pray about for these people that You, I would say most of you know somebody who fits one of those descriptions and perhaps both. And so anyway, I'd leave that with you. And now you have it in writing here to work with.

Now, let's go ahead and start into our passage. This is kind of the beginning of a study of 2 Corinthians chapter 3. We'll address the first half-dozen verses today, and then after the Palm Sunday and Resurrection Day services, we'll resume and finish the last part of the chapter. continuing on from verses 7 to 18. So essentially be covering the chapter for three Sundays.

So we're introducing a chapter that's got some real content to it, some depth. This is a chapter from Paul's heart. He is not being hypothetical here. He's not being cold doctrinal. This is a passage that is spoken from his very heart. It is Paul expressing his heart for the believers there at Corinth. He's had some difficult words with them. He's had some tough things to say. But at the same time, he has already told them in the previous chapter that he cares for them greatly. He even put it that, I care especially for you.

I love especially you. He doesn't just use the word heart or hearts casually here. He uses it over a dozen times just in this one book. Three times here in this one chapter. But he says that the saints and Corinth are a letter written on his own heart. They are letters written on his own heart.

He has them very definitely at heart. These are believers that he loves especially. What's amazing is that in spite of the difficult things he's had to deal with them, and he's had to use some really hard words with them, at the same time he tells them that he loves them dearly. He cares for them. It's because he loves them that he's had to use such hard words, such difficult words with them.

It is a passage that contains Paul's love. It also is a passage that addresses the law of Moses, which was once Paul's great passion. A number of you may recall throughout the book of Acts there are two places, chapter 5 and chapter 22, where Paul mentions in 22 that Gamaliel was his own tutor in the law. He studied under this Rabbi Gamaliel. Gamaliel, it's interesting, is written about outside of the Bible, and he is said to have loved the law so dearly that when Gamaliel died, the law died. He held it so deeply to his heart. Gamaliel was one, unlike most of the rabbis, or many of the rabbis, was married later in life and not earlier. And they asked him why, and he says, it's because I am so in love with the law. That was Paul's teacher. So here's Paul talking about something, again, it's not hypothetical, it's not cold and distant, but something he held dearly to his heart.

And now he's coming to have to reckon with what's the character of this law? And thirdly, he ends it talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and our relationship with Him. The Lord for whom he would lose all things. All of these hearty themes are there in this chapter. It's also a chapter of momentous issues. Some of the issues that he brings out in this chapter, how are we church saints to view the law of Moses? And especially, because this is a theme in this chapter, especially the Ten Commandments.

There is in addition to that, he brings up early, and starting in this chapter here today, the passage that we have, he brings up the New Covenant. What relationship does the Church have with the New Covenant? So he begins to address that. And then finally, how is the Church different from God's chosen people who are called Israel? Are they one and the same? Are they both God's people, but different?

He addresses that. It's also a chapter of critical importance. It turns out that this is a chapter not of just things that happened long ago, but a chapter of critical importance for us now and actually on into eternity. On into the time when we walk through heaven's gates.

This also is a chapter that spells out who we are as church saints. And by the way, who are we, right? It provides not just a definition of who we are, but practical details, how we're to live and how we are blessed. The chapter also answers the question about how God intends to change us. How does God intend to go about changing you and I as believers? This chapter addresses that. In the first three verses, one of the issues that Paul addresses is how will we interact with each other as believers?

Will we focus our efforts in trying to get others to regard us? Will we focus our efforts on external endorsements, recommendations? The world, of course, makes great use of recommendations of different kinds. We see that especially in our modern media. How will we go about getting people to pay attention to us and having regard? Or will our lives and the lives of those we minister to be the testimony that's sufficient? Will it be testimony enough?

And finally, when the time comes, will it be people or paper passing over and through heaven's gates? We have the common question, if you've been at the grocery store at all in the last several years, paper or plastic, right? You've heard that numerous times. Maybe even it's gotten to the point where they don't even get the question out and you've already told them what you want to do. Well, Paul comes to the question, do we go by the paper or the people? What really counts here? What or who ought to impress us? That's the question. One of the things we brought up in last week's passage, which is answered in this passage, is the question of adequacy and sufficiency.

I have a picture of a lady crossing a tightrope. And you know, obviously a great number of feet below her is the city streets. And as I saw that, I thought, you know, that's a lot like being a mother. You know, very, very difficult challenge, right? And the moms here know that. How will each one of us be adequate and sufficient for the ministries that the Lord has placed before us? That's a question that he actually asked in the last chapter, and he addresses and answers here in this chapter, in this passage.

What or who will we rely upon to meet the needs, to meet the demands that are put in front of us? Where will our confidence from our ministry come from? One of the things that Paul will make clear is our confidence is always to be found in Christ. Always to be found in Christ. Our sufficiency, our adequacy is always to be found in Him.

You know, as human beings, that's a circumstance that we find ourselves in, asking, how will I be adequate, or will I be adequate for what's in front of me? And the thought that, you know, I might not be sufficient for what's in front of me is a rather terrifying thought, isn't it? But he answers this here. Where is our sufficiency? Our sufficiency is to be found in the Lord. Our adequacy is found in Him. He is always sufficient for these things.

Now, we have this topic that comes up, the New Covenant. And we particularly title this slide, The New Covenant with Israel. The old covenant with Israel was under the law of Moses. And you remember how that was at least begun, not the entire thing. But here is Moses who goes up on Mount Sinai and gets the commandments written by the finger of God himself in stone, the stone tablets. The New Covenant, and we'll go into this in a little more detail, is one that will be enacted, put in place in the yet-to-come Millennial Kingdom, a time yet to take place, even now. Here is what the New Covenant will do in summary.

The people of Israel will, in this future time of the Millennial Kingdom, they will all have the Holy Spirit. and will be empowered to both know and to live out the law of Moses from the heart without a teacher, it says explicitly. Nobody teaching them. They will know it from the heart and will be empowered by the Holy Spirit to do the law. That's the promise of the New Covenant to the Jews, to Israel. They will live the law and will all be blessed. They will be blessed.

The Bible says so. You have an outline here on the bottom of page one of your handout. Here is a walking through God's covenants with Israel. It begins with the covenant with Abraham, which is presented several places in Genesis, but initially in chapter 12, first three verses. Real simple. And so that's the first covenant with Abraham, kind of the proto-Jew, right?

The next is with Moses, and this is where he gets the old covenant, the law. This is where Moses presents the law that the Jews held so dearly to their hearts. And this is at the time, initially out in Mount Sinai and out in the desert, they finally presented it, the book Deuteronomy, Deutero meaning to, nomos meaning law, the second giving of the law, is the recitation of the law by Moses before they proceed into the promised land. And the Book of Deuteronomy then contains the land covenant, the dictates of what will take place as they go into the land. So that's the third of the covenants with Israel. The next one is the covenant with David.

This is the covenant that basically Mary is told about about a thousand years later when she is to bear as a descendant of David, Jesus Christ. And it's initially given as a promise to David about 990 BC, round numbers, about a thousand BC. 2 Samuel 7, 12-16 gives that. So when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, the angel Gabriel made reference to this promise to David and how Jesus would be born to fulfill that covenant. And finally, the New Covenant. We have here the 590 date in Jeremiah. In fact, Isaiah and Ezekiel also contain some recitations of the New Covenant as well.

The fulfillment ultimately of these covenants is in this kingdom that's coming in the future. The second coming will be the time initiating those. It could be as close as seven years from today. Now, the next chart that you see is a little simpler. We have a New Covenant timeline, so this is just the New Covenant. There's the New Covenant promised. We have a passage there in Isaiah, the one we referred to before in Jeremiah 31, and then Ezekiel chapters 37 and 38. There are also a few other places, but those are the primary ones. This is where this covenant is promised to the Jews of many centuries ago. Next is the covenant confirmed.

When Christ died on the cross, what was he doing? He was the blood sacrifice that confirmed the covenant. He was crucified as a confirmation that the new covenant was going to take place. One of the things that is valuable for us to get a grip on is when Christ died on the cross, a whole bunch of things were happening. When Jesus said, it is finished, a great deal of different categories of things were accomplished and finished there on the cross.

And one of those was as a blood confirmation of the new covenant that had been made. And finally, the covenant fulfilled, the covenant put into action, and that's described several times in the last part of Isaiah. when it will come about that the Jews will actually be blessed.

Why? Because they will have the Holy Spirit in them during the millennial kingdom when Christ will reign upon the earth and we will come with Him from the heavenlies. They will have the Holy Spirit in order to be able to live out the law. And they will not even need a teacher among them. They will know it from the heart. It will be written on their heart.

You have here, and I won't take the time to go through it, the passage, a pivotal one, from Jeremiah 31. That's on page 2, and I think it's a half-page sheet there. Behold, the days are coming. That's telling you it's future, right? Declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. That's key because the new covenant points out here, is with the Jews. The house of Israel, because at this late point in time, the Northern Kingdom, which is the Northern Ten Tribes, were in Israel. And then the house of Judah was, by that time, the Southern Kingdom.

It won't be like the covenant that was made with the fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. It won't be like that. Not that the content will be different, but how it's carried out will be different. When Moses came down from the mountain, and when Moses gave them all the rest of the law, it was entirely up to them to fulfill it. This will be different.

The Holy Spirit will indwell the Jews during the coming millennial kingdom so that they will live out the law, every little bit of it. He'll put the law within them, write it on their heart. Okay, here's the quick story on the Old Covenant. The law of Moses was inspired by God himself and reflected God's holiness and that he was a moral God. Oftentimes we as believers will get the impression that the law is bad. You ever get that impression? The law is just all bad, right? Well, you have to realize it was inspired by God. Yes, God wanted Moses to give the law to the Israelites.

So what's wrong with the law? The problem, as we'll soon see, is with man. You see, in 1 Corinthians 10, we even learn from the law. We spent two Sundays when we studied that, learning from the law. The big problem with the law of Moses is that people can't do it. That's the problem. Now, there are 613 laws in the laws of Moses. Do you have them memorized? No? Neither do I. But there are Jews that did. But it didn't matter if you memorized it or not. They still couldn't do it. You still couldn't quite pull it off.

The Law of Moses, and this is important, the Law of Moses could never save anyone and never was intended to save anyone. Very important. Why? Salvation from the time of Adam until the time of the last day on this planet. Salvation is always by faith. Always.

The Law never could save anyone and was never intended to. The law was intended to determine blessings and curses. There were blessings for those who obeyed, Deuteronomy 28, verse 14 verses. There were curses for those who disobeyed, verse 15 to the end of the chapter. were all the curses for those who disobeyed. The law was never to save anyone. It was only to determine who got blessed. And you were blessed if you obeyed it.

Now, there have been different proposals, different ideas put forth among people in the church as to how the New Covenant applies to us. What's the connection with us? And so we're going to touch briefly on some of those proposals, the ideas as to how those get carried out or touch the church at all. One of the proposals is that the church takes Israel's place.

God set aside the Jews. Some would even say God hates the Jews. God set aside the Jews and now the church is in Israel's place and now we get the new covenant. We're going to set that aside because has God rejected His people Israel? You can look at the first few verses of Romans chapter 11 and you will conclude very quickly God has not rejected His people Israel. He has a plan and a place for the people of Israel and the nation of Israel.

Very clearly we are not there to replace Israel. We're not there to plug in on God's promises to Israel. That would be rather false of God to make promises to Israel and say, whoop, not so fast, right? And to put us in the place of Israel when he's made the promises to them, especially when those promises were unilateral. That is, God promised not an if, but a certainty.

So no, we won't go with the church replaces Israel. There are also those who say that the church is a partial participant or a beneficiary of the New Covenant with Israel. Well, what's interesting is to do that you have to kind of pick pieces out of the New Covenant with Israel in order to make that work. For example, what am I doing right now? I'm teaching, right? What does the New Covenant say? No teachers.

So if the church gets the New Covenant, it must be something very different. Besides of which, teaching is a gift of the Holy Spirit, right? So why is the Holy Spirit given in the church in order that there be teachers, but in Israel under the New Covenant, no teachers? So that wouldn't quite be consistent. And as we'll also see, our relationship with the law is not there. The church is a is a partial participant or a beneficiary in some way, essentially we would have to pick through the New Covenant in order for that to be the case. Does Israel under the New Covenant get the Holy Spirit all the time? Yes. Does Israel get the law? Yes. Are we under the law? No. Does Israel have teachers under the New Covenant? No. Do we have teachers? Yes. As a matter of fact, they're given as a gift of the Holy Spirit.

We would have to pick and choose parts of the New Covenant if that were the case. So that's not very consistent. There's also been a proposal that the Church gets a New Covenant and Israel gets a New Covenant, so that there's two of them. There's a few issues with that, though, and there's no place that actually says that the Church gets a separate New Covenant. It raises the question, did the church have an old covenant? There's no place where it speaks of two new covenants.

So there's a few questions about that approach. What I would suggest to you, however, is God's written word promises a new covenant specifically for the Jews. That's clear. And they won't be set aside. That's clear. And the Jews will be empowered to live out the law. They won't be rejected. God has a plan for those people. Jeremiah 31-33, which is included on your handout there, says explicitly this, But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it.

We in the church are not, however, empowered to live out the law, but have died to the law. and are instead empowered by Jesus Christ himself, living his life through us. Let's look at Galatians 2, 19 and 20, which I have on the screen, not on your handout there. For through the law I died to the law, died in relationship to, so that I might live to, live in relationship to God. I have been crucified with Christ. If you're a believer here this morning, you have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, Paul writes, but Christ lives in me, the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. We have died in relationship to the law. Is the law dead? No. But we have died in relationship to it. That's key. That's key.

You see, the Lord did radically different things with the Law between Israel and the Church. God gave Israel the Law of Moses and the new covenant for Israel will have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them in order to know and to live out the Law of Moses and be blessed by it.

But the Church For the church, Christ died in part so that we died to the law. One of the things that we make a very important point of teaching here at Holly Hills is the truths of identification. And the starting point of those, we were identified with Christ in his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, and his seating. The starting point is we were identified with Christ and his death.

And one of the things that would make a point of telling people, you know, the Roman soldiers record is that there were four, let me pull this out, four of them, okay, there were four of them there that day and they nailed Jesus on the cross and they nailed a thief on each side. Now we know from history that the assignment of the Roman soldiers were, you're going to stick around until those guys are dead. So this was long haul. The Roman soldiers looked and they saw one criminal on one side and another criminal on the other side and Jesus in the middle.

The centurion in charge of those soldiers at the end of the day said, this truly was the Son of God. It's how he died he even could look at Jesus and tell this was the Son of God. But all they saw was one person up there on that cross, on Jesus' cross. What that centurion And nobody else knew that day, because that cross was crowded. The cross was very crowded.

You were there that day if you're a believer here this morning. There were all kinds of people who were crucified with Christ that very day. And it's because of that that we have died to three things. We died to the law. to sin and to the world. The New Testament makes that very clear, saying each of those things more than once. We do indeed, like the new covenant that the Jews will have, future tense, have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, not so that we can live out the law, But rather, the life of Christ lives through us.

That's Galatians 2.20, right? And here's the thing. The Jews, when they live out the law, they are blessed. If they don't live out the law, they are cursed. Here's the way the Lord did things differently with us in the church. You're already blessed. You're already blessed. Imagine, here is Moses. He comes down with the Ten Commandments. And one of them is don't steal. And so what's he telling them in Deuteronomy 28 before they go into the Promised Land? If you steal, you'll be cursed. If you don't steal, you'll be blessed.

Here is Paul writing to the church at Ephesus. He just gets done saying, Hi, I'm Paul. Greetings. And then he says that you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. He waits to the end of the book, the last half, to say, Now, let's talk about your stealing problem. Right? You're already blessed. No question. Now let's talk about your stealing problem. Not Let's talk about your stealing problem, and if you've stolen, you're not blessed, but cursed. The order is reversed.

The Jews lived out the law, were to live out the law, in order to be blessed. Even under the new covenant, because they live out the law, they will be blessed. We in the church are already blessed. and we're to live out the things that God has spelled out that we live out because we've been blessed. See the difference? The blessing is the basis for our living out the life that God desires of us. Not in order to be blessed, but because we're blessed. The law blesses earthly. He said, you won't have the diseases. You'll have good crops. Your offspring will be blessed. The law blesses earthly. We in the church are blessed heavenly.

Ephesians 1.3. In the heavenly places. The question of whether we're blessed is different, and where we're blessed is different.

These things cross in Christ's death, and I'm meaning to use a pun there. Christ's death on the cross was the confirmation for the Jews of the new covenant so the Jews could live out the law of Moses by the Spirit. Why is that the case? Because when the Jews had a covenant, the covenant was to be confirmed by a sacrifice. I give the example here in pictures out of Genesis 15. God makes a covenant with Abraham and that chapter describes how several animals were sacrificed as a confirmation of the covenant that Abraham made with God. In the same way God gave the sacrifice of Christ, not only did He die for our sins, but as a covenant confirmation of the new covenant with the Jews.

Christ's death on the cross was also where we in the church are joined to Him, joined to Christ in His death so that we died to sin, to the world and to the law. We died to the law. Christ's death on the cross was also his part in fulfilling the eternal covenant between the Father and the Son. Not only was the cross a crowded place, but it was a place of multiple accomplishments. A place of confirming the new covenant for the Jews. a place of dying for the sins of the whole world, a place of our being identified with Him in His death, a place of fulfilling the eternal covenant between the Father and the Son. All those things took place in Christ's death.

It was a busy day, a very busy day, and a very crowded cross because we were there with Him. One of the songs that we will from time to time sing is a variation on Were you there when they crucified my Lord? And so we will, in variation, sing, I was there when they crucified my Lord. Yes, the answer is yes. We were there. If you're a believer here this morning, you were there.

One of the questions that then comes up is why are all Ten Commandments referenced in the New Testament? Some are quoted and some more than once. All Ten Commandments are referenced in the New Testament. Why is that so if we're not under the law? Each of the Ten Commandments are indeed referenced or even quoted in the New Testament. And there are reasons for that. One reason is so that Christ, as he addressed the Jews, could point them to the law.

In the Sermon on the Mount, the first chapter, chapter 5, a great deal of the chapter is, you have heard this, but I tell you this. You have been told from the ancients this. I tell you this. You have heard that the ancients were told you shall not commit murder.

So Jesus then goes on to clarify and actually point the Jews that he's talking to back to the law. You've heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery and he goes on to point them back to the law. That's what most of Matthew chapter 5 after the Beatitudes is about. So the first purpose for repeating the law in the New Testament, the Ten Commandments particularly, is so Jesus could point them, the Jews, to the law. The second reason And this is in parts written to the church to convey the spiritual principles from the law that apply to the church. And one of those, for example, would be in Ephesians chapter 6.

Children, obey your parents. Honor them. And why? Because then it's the first commandment with a promise that you live long in the land. The principle applies not to place the church under law, but to teach the principle. The Ten Commandments, each one of them has a principle behind it. And thirdly, in some cases, it's to show that we in the church are not under any of the Law of Moses and can't fulfill it. There are places where that's quoted.

Here, for example, in Romans 7, verses 6-8, But now we have been released from the law, Having died to, this is one of those died to passages, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

And what does he do right after that? He quotes, you shall not covet out of the Ten Commandments, and then goes on to explain, I could never carry it out. Could never do it. And that's the problem with the law. The law is good, Romans chapter 7 says. I even recognize that in my heart. I just can't do it.

In Colossians 2 verses 16 and 17, there's reference there to the Sabbath, one of the Ten Commandments there. Therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. And by the way, we're not worshiping on the Sabbath, right? That was yesterday. This is Sunday, first day of the week.

The other important thing as we step into this chapter is 2 Corinthians 3, starting with verse 3 on into verse 14 is mostly about the Ten Commandments and the giving of the Ten Commandments. It is specifically referenced there as the tablets of stone. The tablets of stone. In the Greek Old Testament, where it repeatedly refers to Moses getting those tablets of stone, those exact same words are used here in 2 Corinthians chapter 3. The exact same words.

He's making particular reference to the giving of the law, the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. This is a time, as is described in Exodus, that was quite an impressive time for the Jews. All of them who were there at the base of the mountain told, don't even touch the mountain. Don't even get close. So here is this fiery, lightning, earthquake-filled event. So why do people get so confused about the law and being under grace? What is grace?

You know, among people in the church, and I say the church in a large sense, there's lots of confusion even as to what is grace. I would tell you this, that people get so confused about the law, Israel, and the church because they don't understand that God's holiness and His righteousness can be lived out in more than one way. God has designed so that Gentiles, as an ethnic people group, and Israel, as an ethnic people group, and the Church, as a non-ethnically defined group, each of those groups is designed by God to live out His righteousness in different ways. To express it in different ways. And that's a cause for a lot of confusion. People likewise get confused because God does some things that seem similar.

Here's the new covenant for the Jews, and they're given the Holy Spirit, every single one of them, to do what? To live out the law. We, however, in the church, have been identified with Christ to die to the law. The very same law. And the Holy Spirit given to us so that Christ's life gets lived out. in our lives and not the law. Very interesting. Very different. The Jews will have the Holy Spirit given to them so they won't need a teacher. The Holy Spirit is given among us with teachers.

But in either case, we learn by the Holy Spirit's working, right? There is a commonality between these things because people have a common need. and oftentimes not recognize that that needs in common. We all need what God has revealed in the Bible. We all need an indwelling Holy Spirit to pull off what we can't do ourselves. We all need God's mercy and grace, don't we? Every one of us.

There on Mount Sinai, where the law was given, the tablets of stone, a place of earthquakes, a place of lightning, a place of fire and great cloud, a place that was a death penalty to touch, even to come to the base of the mountain. The Old Covenant did indeed have a glory of its own, a brightness, but it was a fading glory, as we'll see later on in this chapter, and it was a covenant of veils. Cover things up. because of the shortcoming of man. The law indeed had a glory, but man cannot do it. It was a fading glory.

The ministry of condemnation, it says in the passage we'll be looking at next, has glory. Much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. The Lord has given us a ministry that goes beyond any glory that the law could have, fading glory as it was. The ministry that the Lord has given us, the ministry of righteousness, has a glory that abounds and increases.

We, as we behold the Lord Jesus Christ, are beholding the glory of the Lord. What's glory? What's glory? Glory is the radiant essence of who God is, expressed as we in the church behold Him through Jesus Christ. That's glory. The radiant essence of who God is. Isn't it marvelous? Isn't it amazing that we can behold His glory and be changed by Him as we'll see later on in this chapter? Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage and we look ahead to the verses in this passage, some rich things some awesome things some things that are even perhaps shocking a ministry of death a ministry of condemnation Contrasted with a ministry of righteousness We thank you for the glory that you have revealed and the glory of Jesus Christ that you have revealed in us We give you thanks for that in Jesus name. Amen