His life and ministry is in His sufficiency, not ours
2 Corinthians 3:4-6 · Randy Peterman · Mar 19, 2017
2 Corinthians (2017), No. 11
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926550493968

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Today we're going to continue on where Bob left off last week in 2 Corinthians chapter 3. 2 Corinthians chapter 3 is a whole section that's very much focused on the contrast between the Law and Grace. The whole book of Galatians is like that. We've already talked through Galatians, or at least Roger Bob and I did some years back. But this chapter is reminiscent of that same book. So we'll take a look.

I'm actually going to start in chapter 3 verse 1 and go all the way through 6. And next week when we pick up in verse 7 you'll notice that there's still continuity and flow in the theme. And of course the chapter caps off on the pinnacle of 17 and 18 with beholding the Lord. I love verse 17 and I love verse 18. I have to confess to having spent a bunch of time looking at 17 and 18 and not hardly enough time looking at the rest of chapter 3. So this has been good for me to dive in and see how Paul builds his arguments. We'll start there.

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again, or do we need as some letters of commendation to you or from you? You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men, being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts, Such confidence we have through Christ toward God, not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." So, we have this building concept 1-3 he's talking about commending themselves and why they shouldn't commend themselves and about the tablet and the words written on their hearts. And then in 4-6, again, not commending themselves but talking about the adequacy and then again repeating the principle of the contrast between the law and grace.

And he's building and he's weaving in, Paul's a masterful, obviously it's inspired by the Holy Spirit, but Paul's a masterful communicator, because as he's weaving in not the law, he's going the other direction, he's weaving out it's by the Spirit. So today we're going to see he's continuing that theme and building on those ideas. The first question here, and I ask this broader than 2 Corinthians, but why does Paul belabor the points of distinction between the law and grace in the New Testament? The law gives you death and the Spirit gives you life. Okay, that's a good reason. But he belabors it. Why is it that Paul doesn't just say it once and move on? Why do you think that is? It needs to be repeated. But why does it need to be repeated?

I think people's tendency to want to do something to earn their salvation. People want to earn their salvation, or at least... I heard this guy's reform teacher, Alistair Begg, but I heard him talking about it once. He said the problem isn't that people think that there are lesser Christians. The problem is that they think there are greater Christians.

Well, and this is in legalism, right? The problem is that people don't want, they're not worried that there's lesser Christians, they know there's lesser Christians, but they think there's greater Christians and they want to be greater Christians. Yeah, they want to be more spiritual and more holy. And I think when we look at legalism, that's almost always the cause, right?

That we want to be a better Christian than the other person. or at least not as bad. And you're kind of measuring yourself by the other people. Right. It's not God's righteousness you're measuring yourself, right? It's man's righteousness. I'm better than that.

I don't know if you've ever seen, like in an elementary school classroom, sometimes I've noticed in the younger grades, this never happens in high school for some reason, but in the younger grades they will have the kids line up in order of height or by order of age or something, right?

When you measure yourself with your peers, you're okay. One of my favorite pictures I ever saw, though, was of Shaquille O'Neal in his class picture. And he's seven feet tall, and nobody else in his class is remotely seven feet tall. But when you measure yourself with your peers, you're okay. But if you go into the NBA, suddenly you've got people like Manute Boal, who is seven foot seven, right? I mean, he could just stand and touch the hoop.

So when we talk about legalism and the distinction of law and grace and why Paul belabors that point and brings it up over and over and over again, it's not because he's not come up with cool things to write and he's like, oh, I've got to repeat myself. It's because those saints that were in the churches were surrounded by the same things and outside influences that we are today, right?

We still have a tendency, as Bob pointed out last week, in our work, in our jobs, metrics and measurements are all that matter. And I came up to him after the service and I said, one of my greatest pains in work is that I don't understand the value of a lot of the metrics. I don't think I wanted it quite that way, but that's how I put it. And I love grace. let's let our relationship with one another motivate one another to greater things. And I've worked with people who actually can pull that off. But usually metrics is how the world measures things.

So it influences the church, unfortunately. Alright, so let's dive in here. Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Such confidence we have In verse 1, he says, we're not commending ourselves. In our own commendation, you are our letter of commendation. Here he says, such confidence we have through Christ towards God. So commendation, he's going to be humble about, but with confidence, they're going to be able to approach God through Christ.

And this is a really, really big deal. So for us, we don't think about that too much at Holly Hills, because what are we reminded of on a weekly basis, or nearly weekly basis, if we come here and listen to a lesson? Our position in Christ. And where is that? It's in the heavenlies. What is the barrier between us and God the Father? Nothing.

We know that. We walk in confidence in that, and it's no big deal, right? But when you've been walking in legalism, that's a really frightening thought. So let's take a look, just briefly, at why that would be a frightening thought for those who are in Corinth, because we have to remember that we have the whole New Testament, and they had these letters from Paul, and they might have had some copies of a few other things, but their awareness of these doctrines was much smaller than our own.

So let's take a look at Exodus 33. We could go to Exodus chapter 3, it wouldn't do us any good today in this context. So Exodus is the second book of the Bible, in case you're flipping through there. Exodus 33 is a remarkable chapter because in Exodus 33 we find Moses seeing God on the earth, in His condition. Not His position. In His condition. So when we see Moses seeing God, it's a pretty big deal. I'm going to look at verses 9-11 here.

Whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend, and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. So all of Israel is watching this, right? We've got the pillar of fire and the pillar of smoke, day and night, they know where God is. And Moses goes into the tent of meeting, and the Lord has a little chat with him. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would arise and worship each at the entrance of his tent. So they're in awe of God at this point in time, but Moses is close. they're staying at home inside their tents. That's the kind of fear of interaction with God that there is. Because they don't want to die.

In verse 11, Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. So Moses is talking with God face-to-face, and what is the word of the relationship that's used there?

As a friend. In the Old Testament, who else sees the Lord as a friend? Actually, the list isn't particularly short, but what are some other names? Who sees the Lord as a friend? Abraham? David? David writes of the Lord with an intimacy that we don't find in a lot of other places.

But the idea of this friendship with God is a foreign concept under the law. Because God's righteousness is shown over and over again, and what does the law expose about mankind? We're stinky, right? We don't have God's righteousness and holiness. We carry with us, at least before we're saved, and definitely the Old Testament saints, they carry with us their father Adam and their father Noah. And so this idea that you'd be terrified would make Paul's statement of confidence foreign. and make Paul's statement of confidence something that these people just did not understand.

At the end of chapter 33, I want to read the last 21, 22, and 23. Then the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and you shall stand there on the rock. And it will come about, while my glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take my hand away, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen."

God shows Moses a fraction of his glory. That's all you can handle. And that's God as Moses' friend. They spoke face-to-face, not literally seeing his face, and Moses doesn't get to see God's face at the end of the chapter. So, when Paul is talking about this confidence here, it's through whom? Who does he say this confidence comes through? Through Christ. Moses was the intercessor for Israel. He represented Israel to God. But Moses was merely a man. favored him, God chose him, as the text says there, he treated him as a friend. But they were not equals. They were not equivalent. Randy, we're going to see as we go through all of chapter 3 this parallel between Moses and Christ. There's a parallel that we see as we trace through that.

It's critical that we know that people were depending upon Moses and in essence we depend upon Christ. It's a different dispensation, different thing going on there. So Paul is building that contrast. It's critical that in the Old Testament you saw Moses was an intercessor. You saw Moses was able to interact and interface with God, but his humanity limited. He was lacking.

So we see here that it is through Christ that we have this ability to interact. To parallel with that idea, I'd like to cross-reference. If you've got your Bibles open, you might as well flip back into the New Testament to Ephesians chapter 3, verse 12. Paul, again the author of that book, writes something that I think is super critical for us to meditate on as we study God's Word.

Ephesians 3.12. I'll start in 11 just because it's one of Paul's famous run-on sentences. He says, This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which he carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and in him. Access to who? God the Father, right? We have access. But what kind of access is it? What's his modifier? What modifier does he use?

Boldness. Confidence. So let me ask this question. When we pray, Do we pray with confidence? Not about, will God answer it? But with a closeness. Hey, Heavenly Father. We pray to the Heavenly Father, right? I don't know if you guys notice that, but we pray to the Father. We pray in Jesus' name, right? But we pray to the Father. We have that closeness. We have that boldness. We're right there. We're seated in the heavenlies.

But often in our earthly condition, I think we've been culturally trained about prayer a lot in the last couple of years. It seems like one of the stumbling blocks, and I'm in the same camp, I want the Lord to address my problem. I want to address the problem. Let's kind of move on with this. Let's not delay us to do it. God has a different timetable many times. I say most of the time. His timetable is not that our prayers are answered on our schedule.

So that's the challenge of not getting your focus off on that and being upset with God that he didn't answer my prayer. God, I told you this prayer and I know you're listening and I know that I have, because of Christ, well, what's going on here? Is God sustaining our attention?

Maybe that's a good question that comes from that thought. Do we pray with that confidence and that boldness and that idea of closeness? And I have to say that I would be lying if I said that I have that wrapped up. But it's good as I think about this and meditate on what's here.

Paul has confidence through Christ towards God. Again, that's foreign from an Old Testament concept. If you're in a church in Corinth and you've been trying to be the super better Christian, Who's super better? The one that's right next to Christ or the one that's right next to Christ? We're all equally right next to Christ. We don't have a confidence of our own, but the confidence is in Christ. The next section here is talking about the believer being justified. The believer is justified and seated with Christ. We've mentioned this a little bit.

If we take a look at Romans 3.24 and 28, I'm sure these will be familiar verses, but they're worth reading.

Romans 3.24, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But then in 28, for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Paul writes some verses in between there, so please allow the ellipsis and understand I'm not trying to glaze over some text.

But when we look at that in Romans, we're justified. What does it mean to be justified? To be declared righteous? as a younger person so that I could easily remember it. It's justified. It's just as if I'd never sinned at all. And if it's just as if I'd never sinned at all, that would lend you to confidence. If you've been declared righteous, that would lend to confidence as well.

And so when we look at these things, as we take a look at this verse here, I hope that you walk away this morning with an understanding of what that confidence means for your own prayer life and your own walk with the Lord and your moment by moment time with him as he reveals his truth to you as you're studying the word, as you're driving. I really need sanctification when I'm driving, right? As you're spending time with the Lord, the reality is that we're justified and we're seated with Christ in the heavenlies. God came down to Moses. In Christ, God brought us up to Him. That's a really high contrast comparison.

Alright, when we lack confidence, what is that an indicator of trust in? Ourselves. Our own merit. Isn't that funny? Paul says we have confidence to go through Christ to God. But when we don't have confidence, it's looking to ourselves, and it's just a temporary roadblock. It's a temporary thing that is a distraction. But we can abide again in a moment's time, just returning our attention to the Lord. Alright, so let's talk about adequacy. Paul continues on here with this idea Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.

So he knows exactly why he can have confidence, and he knows exactly why he's adequate. Now what's interesting about the word adequate, this reminds me of Bill Cosby's routine about good. Sales people always call this the best thing and the most awesome thing, and it's going to be rusty and broken in 10-20 years. God creates all of creation and he calls it good. Right? We hear the word adequate and we kind of go, oh, well that's just barely enough. Right? Oh, that's adequate.

Hey, how much broccoli do we need tonight? Well, we need one head, but oh wait, so-and-so's a vegetarian. You better grab two heads. Well, I got one and a half. This one looks a little sketchy. Well, that'll be adequate. Right? That's just barely enough broccoli. Now, fortunately, there's meat for me. I'll be all right. Hopefully it's bacon.

But our adequacy is not in ourselves. Our adequacy comes from God. And when God says something is adequate, that means more than if we say that we're adequate. Oh, it's adequate. When we consider our own offerings in contrast to Christ's offerings and righteousness as a perfect sacrifice, we come up short. We are not adequate. We are inadequate.

But that's consistent with our federal head in Adam. As believers, who's our federal head? Christ. Christ is our federal head. And I know that federal head is one of those $5 theology words, so just in case that's confusing for anybody. A federal head is the idea of one representative of a group of people. And Adam is the representative of all of his descendants. And so when we're identified with Christ, we get a new federal head.

We are of the type of Christ after that. So God instituted, and this is a really important principle, so let's pause on this here. God instituted a method of salvation that was consistent with having been made in His image, but still possible after the Fall. There is only one way this can happen. This is through faith. Faith is the only method of dealing with the issue of adequacy without requiring adequacy first. When we think about other world religions, how do they deal with inadequacy? Is there grace in Islam? Is there grace in Hinduism? Is there grace in Buddhism? Buddhism is technically more of a philosophy than a religion, but some people have turned it into that. Go ahead. I was going to say, wouldn't it be works? their best shot at this works. You've got to look at a scale of good things you did, and hopefully your scale is lopsided in the right direction. That way, if you even it out, you're ahead still.

But we know, as we saw in Romans 3.23, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

So God made a system that is perfect, right? It's by faith. And salvation has always been by faith, all the way through the scriptures. All salvation throughout all time was based on faith in God and paid for by the work of Christ. In the Old Testament, when Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. She's quoting the verse, she's got it memorized. It's awesome. It makes me happy.

Abraham believed, but his sins were paid for by Christ. Christ's sin-paying work on the cross was universal. But what changed throughout the periods of time is the content of their faith. Revelation was progressive. God revealed truth over time, and leading up until the end of the New Testament, there was new doctrine that was being revealed.

This is an acronym. I come from computers where acronyms are everywhere, and there's a plethora of them. But my favorite acronym for this is COMB. C-O-M-B. And the reason why the acronym is COMB is it's content, object, means, and basis. The content of what you believe to be saved, if we go throughout the Old Testament, changes. the content of what was revealed is progressing over time. You can't believe in Jesus during the Law of Moses, right? You can believe that someone like Jesus is coming, but you don't know who he is and you don't know specifically what's going to take place at about 33 AD. The object of your faith is always God. The means is always faith, and the basis is always on the work of what Christ did.

So come. Not very good for the bald guys, sorry. But come. I'm getting there. I'm getting bald. It's happening slowly but surely. So I just want to cover that. Adequacy is from God. The adequacy of Abraham, if you look at Romans chapter 4, The adequacy of Abraham is through faith, through the work of Christ. David, the same. Paul, the same. Us, the same. God foreordained that salvation would come and be offered freely so that all who believed would be made adequate in Christ. The adequacy for all saints is in Christ.

So then he says something, and Bob did a great job last week talking about the covenant principle that was there. And Paul writes here this idea that we have a new covenant, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant. But Bob did a good job last week talking about the fact that this is not talking about Jeremiah's new covenant. Paul is saying a new covenant in contrast to the old covenant with Moses. This is not the law being written on Israel's hearts, which, as we went over last week, is in Jeremiah. So we need to make sure that we understand this is a very strong contrast, and this fits in as a parallel idea to verse 3, where he was talking about the stone tablets versus human hearts. But again, it's not Jeremiah's covenant from Jeremiah 33.

I want to point out why we can say this with confidence. Another reason, on top of what Bob mentioned last week, is that each covenant has participants, provisions, and tokens, or signs of the covenant. If we look at Deuteronomy 28 and 29, when God's making His covenant with Israel, and Moses is brokering this covenant, who are the participants? We have Israelites and God, right? And we also see that there are provisions.

God outlines fourteen positive things, and I can't remember the longer list of negative things. If you're obedient, I'll bless you in these 14 ways. If you're disobedient, the list is longer. And you'll forgive me for not remembering the count of the negative side of that.

And then there's tokens or signs of the covenant. God gives the token and sign of the covenant of circumcision to Israel. Where in the New Testament Do we find this New Covenant if we're going to compare it to Jeremiah? I'm intentionally saying that's what people often identify that as. Where in the New Testament do we find the parties of God and the Church, explicit provisions, and tokens?

And if you're having a hard time thinking of anything, the answer is nowhere, and that's why you're having a hard time. But when people say that there's a new covenant, and they go to Jeremiah, these things don't line up. We don't find it in the New Testament. What we do find, and why Paul is drawing this out, is that we are serving a new covenant. is a New Covenant, but he's not talking about Jeremiah's New Covenant, and he's not talking about the covenant as the actual contract, he's contrasting it from the law.

I apologize if there's any confusion on that, we're going to keep going and building on this idea, and so hopefully by the end of Chapter 3 you guys are whizzes at this whole New Covenant discussion. I want to point out three what I would call erroneous explanations of this, so let's just take a brief look here. One of them is called Replacement Theology.

This is what the Catholic Church teaches. This is what Reformed Theology would teach, and that is that Israel is replaced by the Church, and the New Covenant in Jeremiah is fulfilled by the Church. God has written His law on the hearts of the Church, and we're all more righteous now because of Jesus. Jesus is in our hearts.

That is not what this is saying, and I think we'd have a hard time showing that the Church replaces Israel if we go through the order of Scripture and how it was revealed. Another one is that the Church is a partial participant or beneficiary of the covenant.

So this is that still the New Covenant with Jeremiah, and that the Church Again, we can find no place where we're participants in it. And because we don't find the Church as part of the beneficiaries explicitly revealed in Jeremiah, we certainly don't want to jump to that conclusion. And the third one here is the Church gets a new covenant, and Israel gets a new covenant, and the Millennial Kingdom. We don't find explicit calling out of the Church getting this new covenant that is a parallel of Jeremiah's New Covenant. Paul is using the word New Covenant to contrast. We don't have a recording of a specific thing. So we want to make sure that we don't try to be explicit about what that means and just go pointing to Jeremiah.

So I don't mean to belabor that point and I hope that it's not been too theologically nerdy. What about saying that the church is grafted in. What does that mean? Well, I wouldn't say that. That sounds a lot like replacement theology to me or we're tied in with that. Saying the church is grafted in...

Well, so Paul makes statements that says that Abraham is our father because he was saved by faith and we're saved by faith. But the idea of being grafted in establishes a relationship to the covenant, either the Old Testament covenant or maybe this Jeremiah covenant, that we don't find explicitly revealed in the New Testament.

And so I personally get nervous any time we start inferring things. I'm really good at inference. It gets me in trouble all the time. But it's actually not something we want to do when it comes to theology, because that's when you start to get erroneous theology, or in some cases even heresy.

Roger, you look like you had some thoughts. I was just thinking that, and actually I'm still kind of working on those two bits, but the idea of the new, what's new in this time period, what's new is grace. If you had to hang your hat on anything, it's grace that's different. It was law in their time, but now it's grace. So that does seem like he's trying to point that out. The thing that's new now is grace. I'm looking for a covenant. I've got to find a covenant. Once I find this covenant, I'll be all good.

Paul doesn't do that. New Testament writers don't do that. We're left with what has been declared, and it's basically grace. It's a new operating system that we live under. That's helpful to me, I find, by looking at it that way. You do not go looking for or trying to make up or trying to connect in with something, you know, Jeremiah 30 in the Old Testament, it says it's for Israel. I'm going to try to connect myself with that. It's just, you know, you have to do a lot of handstands and stuff to make that happen. That would be coming from covenant theology, right?

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Margaret? Well, I was just going to say, there's so many places Paul talks about how we're dead to the law. And, you know, Galatians 2.21, if we're saved by law, then Christ died in vain. I mean, to me, that verse, that one verse is so powerful. It is what we are talking about here. It's no longer the law. It's everything Roger just said. We're all about grace. Yeah. Well, one of the things that I think is worth emphasizing about the law, and this is the last sentence on this page here, or this paragraph here, is the law can only be fulfilled in Israel with a temple in place. with the priesthood in place.

Yesterday I drove next to a car with Louisiana license plates and it had a America will be great again when we are under Yahweh's Law. That was a bumper sticker. I was like, man, you had to pay extra money for that, because I know there aren't like 7,000 of those.

In Louisiana, though, there could be. Yeah, well, it's true. You're from Louisiana. I can't argue. Maybe there are. But yeah, it was one of those things where I was like, that's way out of place. Just way out of place. Because we can't fulfill the law. It's just not possible. And just to reiterate that, how much of the law do we have to obey if we try to put ourselves under the law? All 613. You guys almost in unison had that one. That's good. All 613 laws.

You've got to be under all of it. Which we can't do because we're not in the land, we don't have the temple, we don't have the priesthood. How can observant Jews say they're obeying the law because they don't have a temple? They spiritualize it. That's my favorite answer for anything. If you find any part of the scripture difficult, just spiritualize it. Bam! Problem solved. Yeah, he wouldn't let me talk to that guy because I was going to realize, what about this one? The clock goes, just be quiet. Oh, man. That is beautiful. So, we're servants of a new covenant, or ministers of a new covenant, the idea that we're talking about grace and liberty and what the Spirit is doing here, not legalism. That's a contrasting analysis, not a statement of Jeremiah 33.

So not of the letter, but of the Spirit. Have you noticed in verses 1-6 how he's building on, he's using the same word, but he's actually changing their context and their place here, so that hopefully there would be less ambiguity, and the readers in Korinth would understand Not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. The letter versus the Spirit. Now, I'm going to tell you right now that we're about to go on a major rabbit trail and take a look at this awesome list that I actually got from Hal some time ago that is 22 ministries of the Holy Spirit.

So if we embrace legalism without counting the cost for its outcome, we do ourselves and those around us a massive disservice. Paul's writing about the law is very explicit in nature because he was under the law. He was a zealot for the law. He knew exactly what was required of it. And so when he says that it's dead, when he says it kills, he knows. He knows it kills. He's watched it kill. He even participated. even holding the coats when Stephen was stoned. So contrasting the law, we see that the Holy Spirit has a massively different outcome.

So this list of 22 things is not an exhaustive list, and we're not going to, we'll probably run out of time before we run out of verses, I'll be honest, but I want to make sure that we have a good solid understanding of what's here. Let's turn to Romans chapter 5. This is always a favorite passage for I think most believers here at Holly Hills. Romans 5 verse 5. And if you get there go ahead and read it out loud and we'll do a little round robinning on the reading.

And hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. has been given to us. Where's that in the law? It's not in the law. The Holy Spirit is in the Old Testament. We see the Holy Spirit falls on Saul and he runs with the prophets, right? So the Holy Spirit is in the Old Testament. David writes in the Psalms, taking out the Holy Spirit from me, Psalm 51, if I have my address right there. The believer doesn't have to worry about that. The Holy Spirit indwells us and stays with us. The second one is that the Spirit gives believers access to the Father.

We read Ephesians 2.18 already, so we can take that. We have access through Christ, because we're indwelled by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has fellowship with believers. We're going to take a look at that later on in this book, so I trust that if the Rapture doesn't happen, we'll get there. We'll read it in person and discuss it in more depth. The Holy Spirit teaches believers.

Where is that in the law? Does the law teach Old Testament saints? No, they're to teach one another, right? They're supposed to have it written either on their foreheads, on their phylacteries, or on their wrists, and it's supposed to be on their door lentils, and as they're walking, they're supposed to be talking about it constantly. challenging one another with the law, which the Jews got really good at challenging each other with the law, to the point where they were good arguers. I think every Jew was born an attorney, at least for some time.

The Spirit reveals the glory of Christ to believers. We looked at that in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. The Spirit transforms believers, and of course we've already said we're going to take a look at that in 2 Corinthians 3. The Spirit manifests His fruit through believers. I'm sorry, I should have capitalized that H there. The Spirit manifests His fruit through believers. Galatians 5, 22 and 23, we're familiar with the fruit of the Spirit. But the Holy Spirit is moving in us if we're willing to abide. Number eight, the Spirit gifts every believer for ministry.

In the Old Testament law, who was to be ministering? The priests were primarily ministering. And if you couldn't get close enough to a priest, there were special laws around that extra condition. You're geographically too far from a temple or from a place to meet, so you've got to do these ceremonies in your own home.

The Spirit empowers believers overall. Acts 1, verse 8, we see the Spirit needs to come to do that. Ephesians 3, verse 18, the Spirit empowers believers. Number 10, the Spirit fills believers. And I think that's an important one. Let's take a look at Ephesians I love how many times Ephesians is referenced, it's one of my favorite books, and there's a lot of good doctrine about the Holy Spirit there.

So Paul writes, "...and do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit." Being filled with the Spirit, that's not shocking for us at Holly Hills, but if you think about an Old Testament saint, be pretty shocking that you would assume that every saint is filled with the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit Desires Against Believers' Sin Nature, Galatians 5, 16 and 17, and let's turn there because I think if you don't have these verses embedded in your knowledge they should be. He says, "...But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please." The Holy Spirit is the only way that we will not sin.

The Spirit controls the mind of the new man, Romans 8.5. The Spirit frees believers.

We're going to take a look in just a few weeks at 2 Corinthians 3.17. So right before we get the beholding, we see that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. How much liberty is there in the law?

Zero. One thing I want to point out, and this is not because I work in computers, but the Old Testament law has no place for technology. It doesn't. When you look at some of the things like the elevators that stop at every floor, the ones that go to random floors so that you just walk in, you get into it and you didn't push a button so you're not working. The Old Testament law has no place for technology and so the outcome of that is fear and or that you just lock yourself away from it.

One of my favorite things about working downtown that I've had as the experience for the last three years is seeing folks who are Mennonite or Amish and they're not allowed to use any technology that is newer than when their sect was started. were invented before their sex was started. So they show up downtown Union Station, and it has got to blow their minds to see the hedonism that's on the 16th Street Mall. They can't get on the bus, but they can walk down the street and see that crazy gnarliness that goes on down there. They don't have liberty because of their legalism.

But we have liberty. including the liberty of bells and sirens and buzzers in the middle of church. So we have this liberty principle. The Spirit guides believers. We saw that in Galatians 5.15. Number 15, the Spirit intercedes in prayer for the believers.

And Roger taught on this. last year, right? So if you didn't hear that lesson, was it the year before? I don't know. I've been meditating and thinking about some of the things you said since then, so my sense of time is a little off. But the Spirit intercedes in prayer for believers, and Roger did a phenomenal job teaching that. It's on the website. You should definitely go back Heck, if you were there, you should still listen to it again. One of the things Roger said that has really still resonated with me is that God wants to answer prayer.

Otherwise, why would the Holy Spirit be praying? Wow. If he'd have stopped right then, I think we could have just said, OK, let's just everybody go home and have some quiet time because you're going to have to think about this. Because God is praying to God. And God only does that because he answers prayer. Wow.

So the Holy Spirit is interceding for us. Number 16, the Spirit is the guarantee of God's promise to believers. He's a seal. He's a guarantee. If you read Ephesians 1, 13 and 14, you'll see that there. The Spirit is the agent in the believer's sanctification. We're going to take a look at that even further. It's not on this list here, but in 318. 2 Corinthians 318. The Spirit assures believers We need that for sure. We need to be assured by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit glorifies Christ through believers.

The Spirit can be grieved and quenched by the believer. If we decide to walk in the flesh and we're not abiding, we can quench the Spirit. That's a bummer. I've never done that before, but it sounds like a real drag. That's heavy sarcasm. The Spirit is the means by which a believer walks, Galatians 5.16.

The Spirit perfects the believer, and that's, again, 2 Corinthians 3.18. But also, when we look at Romans chapter 8, 28-30, there's a promise of this sanctification and this growth that's supposed to happen, that we're being conformed into the image of Christ, and the Holy Spirit is the active agent in that. There's pretty high contrast between the law and the Spirit, isn't there? It's pretty substantial. There's nothing in the law that enables and empowers compliance, besides fear. Right?

If you can call that enabling and empowering. But by God's provision, we're made adequate positionally through Christ's work on the cross, and by the empowering of the Holy Spirit, we're made adequate conditionally as we abide. We're adequate to do his works. And when we say adequate here, let's not think of that in just a sort of okay way. No provision in the law allows for anything equivalent to this for Old Testament saints.

We have a new life in Christ through the Spirit unto God. All three parts of the Trinity are involved in making our lives complete in Him. All three parts of the Trinity. all of them in our lives. God wanting us to be boldly close to Him. Christ having sacrificed His own life so that we would be His bride, so that we could be in Him. And the Holy Spirit moving in us and empowering us and bringing us liberty.

It's not too bad for three verses. Is it anywhere close to say that a new covenant is the lack of a covenant? It's clear that there is an agreement between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It doesn't appear to be articulated specifically here in its relationship with the church in some codified way. I think that's the best way I could describe it. Roger, I don't know if you have any, I would love your thoughts.

Well, there's something we call, you know, in Hebrews, there's something called the Eternal Covenant. We shouldn't confuse that with the New Covenant, because that's something that was between God the Father and God the Son, and we were, we benefited by that. So, there are some things that are called covenant, So it just isn't the idea of a new covenant as Israel has as in Jeremiah 31. We just don't have that now to be to be, you know, there are other.

Some people teach this. His third point back on page two, some people teach there. There's a new covenant for the church and to come from Israel. That has been. Some people actually have changed their minds. In fact, Vern and Mike and I have discovered that some people change their minds about the, you know.

So this idea of a covenant is not, I want to say, there is still some disagreement among godly believers about the new covenant, but the best we can, as elders, the best we can understand is that there's really no new covenant for the church in the sense of Jeremiah 31.

So that's helpful. I'm going to talk more about that when I teach. But still, yeah, it's I think Vern is talking about this, too. And I can point something out if you were to go to his lesson on this same passage. In fact, I found out the MP3 link is broken and I have the correct MP3 and I'll fix it. Oh, that's it. That's a skill set I have. And I have access. I will fix it, but if you listen to the MP3, you can go back. So now that I've said this and it's on recording, I better go fix it. He articulates this a little bit better.

Roger, you mentioned Hebrews 13, it's verse 20. He says, Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord. That's one of those places where some have said that the covenant Paul is referring to is this Ephesians 13 20 statement.

Again, it's not really explicit, which is partially why we're not trying to dance around the issue. It's more that if we had a solid answer, we'd have already said it. And we have probably best guesses or our best understanding, guess is a pretty dangerous word. But that's partially why I didn't make any explicit statement, but if Roger made one, he's the elder, so he could say, okay, he doesn't speak for my flag's cathedral. But anyways, so any other questions? Otherwise, I was a second back. fish or not.

Alright, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we ask that you just continue to teach us through your word. Lord, we do pray that you would open our hearts and minds to what this new life is in the work of the Spirit, that we would continue to grow in these things, and that this list of 22 things would constantly be a reminder in our own lives of the liberty that we have and the life that we have in you. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.