Better Covenant

I take you to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish as long as we both shall live.

From primary school pinky promises to the terms and conditions that we definitely did not read but contractually agreed to, to swearing on the Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth in nothing but the truth, to the contract you signed when you took your job, even to the commitment we make to our friends to meet at this place on this day, at this time, to the wedding vows that we made to our husband and wife.

We live by promises, big and small, don't we?

We live by promises.

The story of our lives is dictated by the promises we make and the ones that people make to us.

We live by promises.

Or to use the biblical word, covenants.

We live by covenants.

So what is the covenant that is shaping the story of your life?

For me, when I was reflecting this week, I thought of three covenants that I have made that have most shaped my life.

And interestingly, all three of the most significantly shaping covenants of my life, I have made standing right here in this plot of land in Hornsby.

The first and most important covenant that has shaped my life is when I was baptized in, it wasn't this pool, it was in the old pool, which was, the church was rotated like this.

So, the pool was somewhere over there, but in the baptistry of Hornsby Baptist Church, I declared April 10, 2016, as a 15-year-old, I believe Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, and I will follow him.

That was the most significant covenant I made.

The second most significant was standing right here with my hands out like this, my wife standing on the other side.

I said those words that I opened our message with.

And the third covenant I made, I was standing here, and my wife was standing next to me, and the deacons of our church were standing there, and I was ordained.

I became a reverend.

I made promises to serve the church, to teach the Bible.

Those are the three covenants that have shaped my life more than any other.

So what covenant is shaping your life?

What promises in your life are shaping the way you live more than any other?

This morning, we are in our sixth and final message of the Hebrews series.

We've been working through the letter to the Hebrews, and our subtitle has been Everlastingly Better, because Hebrews tells us Jesus is better.

He is a better revelation.

He's a better priest.

He gives a better sacrifice.

He wins a better victory.

And today we'll finish with the idea that Jesus mediates a better covenant.

Hebrews 8 verse 6, our passage opens with these words.

But in fact, the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises.

Hebrews 8, our passage today, says that we are in a better covenant than the old one.

So, a few logical questions.

What's the old covenant?

What's so bad about it?

What's the new covenant?

And what's so good about it?

That's more or less the broad structure of our message today.

You know the word covenant in English is the same word as testament.

So, we have this Bible in front of many of us which has two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament.

When it says Old Testament, it means Old Covenant.

That means that the first three quarters of this Bible is referring to the Old Covenant that God made with his people.

One collection called the Old Testament, called the Hebrew Bible, with 39 individual books from poetry to wisdom literature, to history, to apocalyptic.

One collection, 39 books and one covenant.

In fact, it's actually four covenants.

The Old Testament has four separate covenants and we're going to go through those four really, really quickly.

It's going to be a lot of content, but then once we do the four, we'll take a breather and see how we're going.

So if you can, hold your breath with me for about 10 minutes and then we'll take a breather.

Four covenants in the Old Testament, the covenant with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses and with David.

Firstly, the covenant with Noah, the Noahic covenant, as scholars call it.

You remember Noah from the Bible?

God creates the world in Genesis 1 and 2.

Adam and Eve are the humans placed in the garden as the image of God.

They have kids, Cain murders Abel.

Adam and Eve have more children, children, children, children.

Noah is born.

And then we read in the early chapters of Genesis that violence was spreading across the earth and it grieved the heart of God.

And so he said, I'm gonna wipe out the earth and start again with Noah and his family.

Remember the Sunday school story of the flood?

It rained for 40 days, 40 nights.

Noah and his family got in the boat.

The boat landed after that time.

And then we read this passage in Genesis 9 verse 8.

After the flood, God said to Noah and to his sons with him, I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you, the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals.

All those that came out of the ark with you, to every living creature on earth, I establish my covenant with you.

And this is the covenant.

Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood.

Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.

That is the Noahic covenant, the covenant with Noah.

And the first and I think most important observation to make about the flood story as a whole, whatever we think about the science and the geography of that event, theologically, in the story of Genesis, the flood is presented as the shadow side of creation.

So, in the story of creation, remember Genesis 1 verse 2, the Spirit of God was hovering over the what?

The waters.

The story of creation in Genesis is the movement from chaotic waters to order.

Remember, God is the one who separates dark from light, the waters from the land.

God separates.

He brings order into chaos.

And then we get to Genesis 5 and 6 and 7, the story of the flood, and it's the inverse.

That creation goes from order back to chaos.

The flood is the shadow side of the creation story.

And then the Noachic covenant comes in.

God has destroyed the earth, and then the waters recede again, and he makes a promise to Noah and his family that he will never again destroy the waters, destroy the earth with waters.

God is going to not move back into de-creation, but he will recreate the planet.

The story is only going to move forward.

That's the essence of the Noachic covenant.

And you remember what the sign of the covenant was?

The rainbow, just after our passage that I read before, God says, when you look up in the sky and you see the rainbow and I see it, I will remember my covenant.

I will remember that I promised never to de-create the earth again.

I will never undo creation, but the story will only move forwards.

God will only move us towards re-creation.

So I want to introduce this visual metaphor, because the sign of the covenant was the rainbow.

But also, because when we look at the Noahic covenant, we see that it is the broadest in scope of all the covenants in the Old Testament.

It is the covenant, it is the promise of planet.

In the Noahic covenant, the covenant with Noah, God promises that the planet will be stable.

This planet will be strong enough to survive God's people, that He will protect this planet.

He will not destroy it again.

The story will only move forward.

And so, the Noahic covenant is the promise of planet.

That's the first covenant in the Old Testament.

The second covenant in the Old Testament is with Abraham.

They call it the Abrahamic covenant.

You remember the story from Noah to Abraham?

Noah has three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Those sons multiply and multiply and multiply.

Then you have the story of the Tower of Babel.

They try and build a ziggurat, a tower to get to the heavens.

God strikes them and they suddenly start speaking different languages.

And the sons of Noah spread out over the whole earth.

And then we come to the story of Abraham in Genesis 12.

And God picks a guy called Abram in this small land called Ur of the Chaldeans.

And then we read this in Genesis chapter 12.

The Lord had said to Abram, Go from your country, your people and your father's household, to the land I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.

I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Now the word covenant doesn't appear there, does it?

It's not technically a covenant, but for now, notice Abraham's side of the equation.

The imperative on Abraham is to go to the land.

God says, go to the land and you will be blessed.

I will make your name great.

I'll make you a nation.

I'll curse those who curse you and bless those who bless you.

But it's not a covenant.

We read the covenant in Genesis chapter 15.

As the sun was setting, Abraham fell into a deep sleep and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.

Then the Lord said to him, know for certain that for 400 years, your descendants will be strangers in a country, remember that, not their own, and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.

But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves.

And afterwards, they will come out with great possessions.

You however, Abraham, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age.

In the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here to the land for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.

If you're confused, we're going to come back to that detail later.

Verse 18, on that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said to your descendants, I give this land from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, Kenazites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Raphaeites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.

What's the core theme of the Abrahamic covenant?

I would say it's land.

Remember, the promise in Genesis 12 was go from your father's land to the land that I will show you and you will be blessed.

And then here in Genesis 15 in the making of the Abrahamic covenant, it's all about the land.

The land is God's promise to Abram.

In other words, it is the promise of place.

In the Abrahamic covenant, God promises Abraham that his family, his posterity will have a place to call their own.

The scripture refers to it as a place flowing with milk and honey.

The promised land, the land of modern day Palestine, Israel, that kind of region around the Jordan River, the family of Abraham will have a place.

So now, if we're stepping back, you can see the pattern that's forming.

Between the first and second covenants, the covenant with Noah is a promise of planet.

God will protect this planet.

And then you see the covenant with Abraham zooms in a little bit.

It's the promise of place.

Within this planet, God will provide a place, which brings us to the third covenant, the covenant with Moses, the Mosaic covenant.

Do you remember the story from Abraham to Moses?

Abraham has a son, Isaac.

Isaac has a son, Jacob.

Jacob's name is changed to Israel.

Israel has 12 sons.

The 12 tribes of Israel, and Joseph is neglected and mistreated, goes down to Egypt, but God is favorable to Joseph.

Then a famine hits the promised land, and the whole family of Israel, the 12 sons of Jacob, end up in Egypt, because that's where all the food is.

And then we turn the page from Genesis to Exodus, and the nation of Israel grow and grow and grow and grow and grow.

God is with them, but Pharaoh subjugates them in slavery.

You remember the story?

This is so fast.

I'm getting a lot of like ground rush faces.

This is the story of the Bible.

God sends the 10 plagues on Egypt with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm.

God delivers his people from slavery in Egypt into the wilderness, and then we read this, Exodus 19.

I warned you, I warned you that we were going to have to hold our breath.

Exodus 19, on the first day of the third month, after the Israelites left Egypt, on that very day, they came to the desert of Sinai.

After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the desert of Sinai, and Israel, the nation, the family of Abraham, the people of Israel, camped there in the desert in front of the mountain.

Then Moses went up to God, and Yahweh, the God who met Moses in the burning bush, called to him from the mountain, and said, This is what you were to say to the descendants of Jacob, that's Israel, and what you were to tell the people of Israel.

You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagle's wings, and brought you to myself.

Now if, if you obey me fully, and keep my covenant, then out of all nations, you will be my treasured possession.

Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.

Now just for a moment, put yourself in the mental world of the Israelites.

They have just experienced a extremely traumatic event in Egypt.

Through the story of the Passover, they paint the lamb's blood over the doorpost, and the angel of death goes throughout the land of Egypt, and takes the life of every single firstborn in the whole land.

And the plagues, and God has taken them out through this wild man, Moses.

God has parted the Red Sea so that they could walk through.

And now they're in the wilderness, kind of this amorphous blob of people who were just saved by God.

And this crazy guy, Moses, with the beard is on the mountain.

And they're just trying to make sense of it.

And then God makes a covenant with them.

And it is the promise of people, that they will be, the people of Israel will be God's people, a special possession, a holy nation, a kingdom of priests.

The people of God, Israel, are set apart to be kind of like a model home, displaying what a relationship with God is like to the nations.

So again, are you tracking the pattern here?

We start with the Noachic covenant, the promise of planet.

Then we move in to the Abrahamic covenant, the promise of place.

And now we have the Mosaic covenant, the promise of people.

God has marked out a people for his own.

You can guess where we're going next.

The fourth covenant is the Davidic covenant.

Remember the story from Moses to David?

Moses leads the people of Israel, receives the law.

At the end of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses leads the people to the cusp of the promised land.

They can see the promised land.

And Moses gives his famous last words, and then he dies at the end of Deuteronomy, and Joshua son of Nun comes up, leads the people into the promised land.

You have the whole tricky story of the conquest of the land.

Then you have the time of the judges, Gideon, Deborah, Sampson, those guys lead the people.

And then at the start of 1 Samuel, the people ask for a king.

And Samuel says, you don't want a king.

But they say, no, we do want a king.

So God gives them a king.

And King Saul is first.

And then Saul turns out to be a weird guy.

Then God chooses David.

David was the shepherd boy, who is a musician as well.

And then he slays Goliath and has this 20 year journey through the wilderness.

And then he becomes king.

In 2 Samuel chapter 7, this is the absolute high point of David's kingship.

We read this, this is God speaking to King David through the prophet Samuel, through the prophet Nathan actually.

The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you.

When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you.

Your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom.

He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

I will be his father and he will be my son.

When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by man and with floggings inflicted by human hands, but my love will never be taken away from him as I took it away from Saul, who I removed from before you.

Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me.

Your throne will be established forever.

The promise of person.

God has promised to this people living in this place, on this planet that there will be a person to lead them.

King David and his line were supposed to administer justice and righteousness, to lead the people under God.

God was king, but the human king, the Davidic king, was supposed to mirror the reign and the rule of God as king to the people.

Now, in this Davidic covenant, we see that it points forward to the descendants of David, which in the first place is Solomon.

It says, your son will build a house for my name, and Solomon did do that.

So as we read the story of the Bible, we're supposed to think, oh, maybe Solomon is the one that the Davidic covenant points to.

And then you turn the very next page and Solomon turns out to be a crazy guy who does a lot of weird stuff.

Ultimately, the Davidic covenant points forward to the person of Jesus, the true king from the line of David.

So again, you know where this is going.

We step back and look at the covenants as a whole.

The Noahic covenant is the promise of planet.

The Abrahamic is the promise of place within the planet.

The Mosaic covenant is the promise to form a people living in the place on the planet.

And then the final covenant of the Old Testament is the promise of person, that there will be a king to rule with justice and righteousness over the people of God in this land that they find themselves in on this planet that God has made.

Those are the four covenants of the Old Testament.

So this is the part where we take a breath and I just ask, how are you doing?

Just pause for a second, breathe.

We've gone through a lot of content quite quickly.

Those are the four covenants that are fulfilled in the Old Testament, the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic and the Davidic covenant.

And what I'm struck by in this moment in the story of the Bible is that by tracing the four covenants of the Old Testament, we have traced the story of the Old Testament.

Remember, the word covenant is the word testament.

The Old Testament is the Old Covenant.

The story of the four covenants is the story of God's dealing with His people in the Old Testament.

But as we come to the end of the Old Testament, I think we see that there's a hole, there's a hole in the middle of the four Old Testament covenants.

If you've seen the movie Knives Out with Daniel Craig, you remember that monologue at the end where he talks about, this whole case has a hole in the middle and then there's a doughnut with a hole in the middle.

He has this kind of Louisiana accent.

That's kind of like what happens, you know, when I tell that story tonight, I think everyone's seen Knives Out.

That illustration will go a lot better.

That's fun.

That's my fault.

Knives Out, there's a hole in the middle, and that's the same as what happens with the Old Testament.

There's a hole in the middle of the covenants.

And the hole is that the people never were faithful to the covenant.

Hebrews 8 says, from verse 7, If there had been nothing wrong, if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another.

But God found fault with the people and said, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.

It will not be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt because they did not remain faithful to my covenant.

And I turned away from them, declares the Lord.

The book of Hebrews says the fundamental problem with the old covenant, the hole in the middle of the old covenants is that they did not remain faithful, meaning the humans.

The human part of the covenant relationship did not remain faithful.

And so, the covenants were left unfulfilled.

We sort of glossed over it earlier, but every covenant in the Bible has conditions and consequences.

Just like every kind of contract that we would sign today has conditions in order to fulfill the contract, and consequences if you don't.

So, the Noahic covenant, the covenant with Noah says in Genesis 9 verse 6, whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed, for in the image of God, has God made mankind.

God is saying that I have just preserved this world, don't kill each other again.

He's placing a high value on human life.

The consequence of the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15, the Lord said to him, to Abram, bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.

Abraham brought all these to God, cut them in two, and arranged the halves opposite each other.

The birds, however, he did not cut in half.

And then down to verse 17, when the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.

On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram.

Now I said that we'd come back to this, and this is the part.

The imagery here of this ancient covenant making ceremony is that just as the animals are cut into and made in an aisle, what the parties are saying is by walking through this line of cut in half animals, if I break the covenant, may my life become like their life.

If I break the conditions of this covenant, let me be cut into and laying on the floor.

That's the imagery that is behind the Abrahamic covenant.

That's the consequence of the Abrahamic covenant.

The Mosaic covenant has consequences.

Deuteronomy 28 verse 15, If you do not obey the Lord your God, and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I'm giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you.

If you know Deuteronomy 28, it's dark, it's brutal, a massive, massive, massive long list of the curses of the covenant.

I won't read it for you because it's dark, but you can read it in your own time.

I'm just going to read the ending, Deuteronomy 28, 45.

All these curses will come on you, meaning the ones he just told us about.

They will pursue you and overtake you until you were destroyed because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you.

They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity.

Therefore, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you.

He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.

That's the consequence of the covenant with Moses.

And then finally, the Davidic Covenant, 2 Samuel 7, in referring to the messianic king.

I will be his father and he will be my son.

But when he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands.

So every covenant has a consequence.

Yes, it has blessings, but it also has curses as well.

The four Old Testament covenants all have consequences.

And so, when we get to the Old Testament, we think, what is God going to do about this problem?

Hebrews 8 says, the people did not remain faithful to the covenant.

So what is God going to do?

That's the question that we finish the Old Testament with.

Because God is just, He can't just wave away His words.

He can't just say, oh, forget about it.

Don't worry about the consequence.

What is God going to do about the consequence of the covenant?

How is He going to deal with the Old Covenant and bring in the new one that He promised?

The answer when we turn from the Old Testament to the New Testament is that God would enter space and time in the person of Jesus to take the consequence on Himself.

That is the story of the gospel.

Enter Jesus.

We see that Jesus, with reference to the Noahic Covenant, it was Jesus' blood that was shed for all the violence of history, of the Abrahamic Covenant.

In a sense, Jesus was split in two on the cross.

When He stretched wide His hands and the nails went in, He was torn in two.

He was pierced with a spear in His side.

Of the Mosaic Covenant, Jesus went into true exile from the Father's presence.

He went into death and felt the wrath of God.

And of the Davidic Covenant, Jesus was punished with rods and flogged and crowned with thorns.

Jesus took on Himself all of the curses of the Covenant so that we would not have to.

That's what God did about it.

The Covenant has to have a consequence, but God became human and took that on Himself in order that we might have the blessings of the New Covenant.

Hebrews 9.15 says, Jesus has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first Covenant.

In Jesus' death, symbolized on this cross that we celebrated last week at Easter, the Old Covenant is fulfilled.

Every cost, every consequence, Jesus bore.

That is the story of Easter.

Our passage, this one actually starts in a different place.

Galatians 9.15, For this reason, Christ is the mediator of a new Covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance.

The story of Easter.

Jesus takes on himself all of the consequence, the curse, the death of the Old Covenant, that we might live in the new Covenant.

Paul says in Galatians 3, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham, which is shorthand for saying the blessing of all the Covenants, that God would bless them, make them a nation, make their name great.

The blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through faith in Christ Jesus.

By faith, we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

God stepped into history in Jesus and took on himself the old Covenant that we might live in a better Covenant, the new Covenant.

And so that's where we'll finish, with the new Covenant, Hebrews 8 verse 10.

This is the Covenant that I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord.

I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts.

I will be their God and they will be my people.

No longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, know the Lord, because they'll all know me from the least of them to the greatest, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

Do you remember that hole?

The hole in the middle of the Old Covenant?

Jesus fulfills.

He sends his Spirit inside us that we might be found faithful before the Father.

The New Covenant is the promise of presence.

Look at what it says in Hebrews 8.

He will put his law not outside of us in tablets of stone.

He will put it in our minds, in our hearts, by his Spirit.

He will be our God.

We will be his people.

No longer will they say, know the Lord.

Go do this thing to get to the Lord.

Go through this human mediator to get to the Lord, because they will all know me.

That's the promise of the New Covenant, the promise of presence.

That God, on Pentecost, which we celebrate in six weeks, in June sometime, God breathed his Spirit on his followers.

The presence of God in the life of every believer is the blessing of the New Covenant.

The New Covenant promise is presence.

In fact, the New Covenant promise is all of the blessings of the Old Covenant without any of the cost.

Because in the story of the Bible, we see the promise of planet is fulfilled in Jesus.

That not only will he not destroy this world again, but he is making all things new.

He is recreating this world.

One day, the day of the Lord which is coming, he will unite heaven and earth and we will live on the new creation.

The promise of planet, the promise of place.

The Bible ends in Revelation 21 and 22 with the people of God living in the new Jerusalem, the holy city, the place, the promised land, the place that God has for us.

And the promise of people is fulfilled in Jesus.

We will be his people and he will be our God.

We are the holy nation, the kingdom of priests, God's special possession, no longer just the nation of Israel, but including the Gentiles, all those who would come to the Father in faith.

And it's the promise of person that we will have a king, someone who will reign over us with justice and righteousness forever.

And his name is Jesus.

The promise of person is fulfilled in Jesus.

And it all comes down to the promise of presence.

God will be present with us.

You know, the picture in Revelation is that there's not even a son, as in that, you can't see it, it's cloudy.

There's not a son in the new creation because the presence of God himself will be our light.

There's no temple because his presence is everywhere.

That's the picture that the Bible ends with, the promise of presence.

The new covenant is a better covenant because it's all of the blessing of the Old Covenant without any of the cost because Jesus has taken on himself the cost in order that we might get the blessing, the blessing of his presence, his person, his people, his place, and his planet.

In a word, grace.

Remember the old acronym, God's riches at Christ's expense.

That is the new covenant, that he has paid it all on the cross in order that we might get the riches of God the Father.

That is the good news this morning.

So as we finish, what does this mean?

What does the better covenant mean for you and I when we wake up tomorrow?

I think it means partly, in the spirit, I pray would bring this truth to life in a way that is meaningful for you.

It means that the story that shapes our lives the most is not the one that we are writing.

We're not that good at writing the story of our own lives.

And it means the promises that bring the most blessing in our lives are not the ones that we keep.

Because again and again, we break our promises.

We fall short of the vows we have made.

But it means the promise he kept is the one that defines our life.

His faithfulness, his mercy, his grace, his kindness defines our life infinitely more than the promises we make.

So for me, I made three covenants, standing here, standing here, standing here and in a pool that used to exist over there.

And by God's grace, I intend to keep those covenants that I made.

But infinitely more valuable and important is the covenant that he made to me, to you.

And that is, I have forgiven your sin.

Nothing stands between us anymore.

So come home, receive the blessing of God by trusting in the finished work of Jesus on the cross.

That is the better covenant that we have.

That is the story which shapes our lives.

So yes, God loves marriage.

Yes, he loves baptism and the contracts we sign for our jobs.

But the covenant that he has made with us is infinitely better because it is all the blessing of the Father with none of the cost.

So what do you need to trust God in today?

Where are you trying to secure the blessing of God by trying and trying and working?

Maybe this morning that God might speak to you to say, you just receive the blessing.

That's why it's grace.

You can't earn the blessing or it's not grace.

The better covenant is that the blessing is yours because the cost fell on Jesus.

So trust him this morning.

Receive his blessing and worship him in his goodness.

As I pray, let me pray the words of Paul in Ephesians 1.

And then we'll sing together.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves.

We thank you Father for your incredible grace shown to us in our Lord Jesus.

We confess God that we did not live up to the covenant.

There's no promise we've ever made that we have lived up to.

We confess we could never earn your love, earn your blessing, work hard enough to get ourselves out of the hole that we find ourselves in.

But we thank you Lord for our Lord Jesus, who came down to us and he took our place on the cross.

He took all of the curses of the covenant on himself in order that we might have the blessing.

So we thank you for your faithfulness God, that you never break your word.

And so I pray for my brothers and sisters and for myself here this morning.

Would you be faithful to us God?

Remind us of the promise you made to each of us.

And that you will be faithful to carry it out.

We thank you for the better covenant that we live in Lord.

And we want to give you thanks and praise.

Amen.

‍