Loves her country and loves serving.
So what do we got here? We got any pictures up here
guys? So this is what happened.
We were at the pastors conference this week.
These guys came down with me to Calvary Chapel, Philadelphia.
There was 17150 of us guys down there being taught and
encouraged in the word and worshipping you.
You actually sang a few of the worship songs the day this
morning that we had sung. So we're all overwhelmed.
Thank you for praying for us. It was an amazing time and a lot
of good stuff happened in all of our hearts spiritually.
So hopefully some of that will bleed out the day and in the
weeks and months and years to come through Pastor Lewis and
myself, the day is Memorial Day. And let me just talk a little
bit about that before I get started this morning.
Originally called Decoration Day from the early tradition of
decorating Grays with flowers, wreaths and flags, Memorial Day
is a day for remembrance of those who have died in service
to our country. It was first widely observed on
May 30th, 1868 to commemorate the sacrifices of Civil War
soldiers by proclamation of General John A Logan of the
Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of former Union
sailors and soldiers. During the first national
commemoration, former Union general and sitting Ohio
Congressman James Garfield made a speech at the Arlington
National Cemetery, after which 5000 participants helped to
decorate the graves of more than 20,000 Union and Confederate
soldiers who were buried there. This national event galvanized
efforts to honor and remember fallen soldiers that began with
local observances of burial grounds in several towns
throughout the US following the end of the Civil War, such as
May 1st gathering in Charleston, SC.
And so this this continues to this day.
And Memorial Day is commemorated at the Arlington National
Cemetery each year with the ceremony in which a small
American flag was placed on each grave.
Traditionally, the president and Vice President Lee, a wreath on
the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. So let's just take a moment of
silence as we think about those who have given their lives for
our country and continually do that even as we speak with the
conflicts in Iran right now. Father, we are humbled by the
grace of you, Father, and watching over this nation since
its inception over 250 years ago this year.
We're grateful, Lord, for all those who have stepped up to the
plate and went to foreign lands and foreign soils to proclaim
the fact that you created us to have freedom and not, Lord,
dictatorships that would destroy the freedom that we've been all
given as citizens of this world. One nation, we are called United
States of America under God, with liberty and justice for
all. Lord, we are humbled today and
we thank many of us here today and listening have lost loved
ones in military service, serving actually in war.
So Lord, we commemorate them today.
We honor them. We pray for the families that
remember their loved ones who gave their lives for their
country. So Lord, today we pray you would
bless this time of study together and the word of God.
And we thank you for your many blessings, your many mercies,
and may may we all be blessed to have this extra day tomorrow to
thank. And at 3 O clock, most people in
the country will take a moment to pray.
And once again, thank you for those who have given their lives
again for this country. And we pray all these things in
Jesus name, Amen. Amen.
Well, we are in the book of first Corinthians chapter 3 of
second Corinthians chapter 3. Excuse me.
And before I go there, I wanted to read something from Second
Peter. And I was thinking about this
after being at the conference and then been through some stuff
this week. Our daughter Jessica was in a
serious accident on Monday. So I was at the conference and
my older daughter text me and said that Jessica was in a
accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
A tractor trailer ran into her as a traffic was slowing down.
And thank God she wasn't killed. It could have been a lot worse,
but please pray for her. She's in excruciating pain.
So they had CAT scans, X-rays. They're not sure if a sternum
has been ripped. So she's going to have an MRI on
Tuesday. They were at the ER again, I
think for the third time last night because of pain.
So please hold up Dan and Jess and their family.
But when that happened, I got that news.
I thought, man, you know how quickly life can change, right?
For any of us. And so I was sort of out of it
the first day. I was pacing in the hallway
hearing the message through the loudspeaker, but really not
thinking about it deeply because I was concerned and didn't know
whether I should go home or what.
But, you know, she was stable. So we stayed.
But so that that's been heavy on my heart all week.
You know, when something happens to one of your kids, it gets
your attention quickly. So again, thank you for your
prayers for for her. This Friday, Cindy will be
getting surgery on a disc in her neck.
And so the procedures, they go through the neck and then do the
surgery. It's about two hours and she'll
be there overnight on Friday and come out Saturday.
So pray that it'll accomplish what she needs to have
accomplished for her own health and balance and pain issues and
that kind of stuff. So thank you for for praying One
of the things I was thinking about this morning as I was
tying everything together in regard to the the message today.
Second Corinthians chapter 3 is a very deep chapter and I don't
want to roam and go through it too quickly.
It's it's all about the new covenant and the new covenant.
I don't know how many in here are familiar with the new
covenant. If you ever thought about it,
you understand what it is. I want to try to to the best of
my ability, explain it a little bit, but second Peter chapter 2,
it says in verse 2, grace and peace be multiplied to you and
the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord as his divine
power has given us all things that pertain to life and
godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by glory
and virtue by which have been given to us exceeding great and
precious promises that through these you may be partakers of
the divine nature future having escaped the corruption that is
in the world through lust. So my question to you and to me
today is how many of us live life every day in our own
strength. Get up in the morning, you get
your coffee, you got this To Do List work, whatever house,
family, the lifts your wife gives you and you just jump in
and you begin to do what you know you need to get done.
And do we stop and say, Lord, I got a big day ahead of me today
and I can't do this without your strength, without your help,
without your enablement. I need you, Lord, to you live in
me and I want you to work in me and through me to accomplish
what it is you want me to accomplish.
And I tune into that sometimes and sometimes I don't.
And so sometimes I get like really exhausted or burnt out or
tired or frustrated or whatever. And then the Lord reminds me,
Clark, you're doing this without me.
You're trying to get through without my strength, my power.
And so this power is available to everyone of us.
Jesus said, I've come that you might have life and you might
have it more abundantly. So abundant life.
What does that mean? It's Zoe, the Greek word, which
means the God kind of life. So when Jesus came to the earth,
he's fully God, fully man perfect.
And we watched and read and, and learned about how he lived his
life and what he accomplished, what he did.
And, and people say, well, how did, how did Christ do that or
how did he get through all that? Well, he's God #1 he's able to
do anything. Nothing prevents God from
accomplishing his perfect will. But God also knows our
weaknesses. And he didn't just come to save
us from our sin, but he came to give us a new life, a
resurrected kind of life, a life of overcoming sin, a life of
overcoming weaknesses, a life of just being humble and realizing
that we need him for everything. And I, I had a good example that
yesterday. So Cindy, we're trying to get
the house together before this surgery on Friday.
Some things getting done and she's all worried about the
garden and all these weeds out there.
She used to go out there and do them and she hasn't been in the
condition she can do that this year.
And we're waiting for some of the grandkids.
Hire someone, whatever, you know, any kids that want to pull
weeds, tell them to call me. I'll hire them.
You know, can't pay you well, OK, This family down here, the
steals. Cindy, call those boys.
They raised me. You'll get paid well, believe
me. So anyway, so she's in there
doing stuff and I, I went outside, it stopped raining and
I'm looking at these like thorn bushes that come up out of the
ground and there's like hundreds of them, literally 100.
And, and so I, I went to the shed and I got a, a glove and I
forgot how to just pull out a few.
And so I'm out there and I'm, I'm pulling them out and most of
them are coming out easy. And then I'm looking around and
the more I pulled, the more I saw needed to be pulled.
So I was thinking I'd do it for maybe 1/2 an hour and Cindy
would be, well, that's, that's nice.
Clark, thanks for doing that, right.
Next thing I know, I'm out there doing like for hours.
And I was so tired after a while, I couldn't keep bending,
bending down because I don't use those muscles like I used to.
So I'm pretty sorted. I had to take some Advil last
night. So finally I just sat in the
dirt. I didn't care about whether how
dirty my jeans were. I'm laying down, I'm pulling
these things out. And I got these three huge bags
of these Jagger bushes. I mean, it's unbelievable.
And when you pull them out, these roots, they're just not
like that. They're like really, really deep
roots. And then I was thinking the
parallel of sin, right? How we all have issues of sin
and we asked the Lord to forgive us.
And he does. But he says sometimes though,
there's some more roots I want to pull out of your heart here.
You think they're out and I just pulled them out superficially or
so by the time I was done work to do more cultivation of the
soil, to get it completely out. So by the time I was done, yeah,
I was exhausted and all that. But when I was doing it, I was
thinking about this subject the day of the new Covenant.
And I said, Lord, in order to do this and do it with a good
attitude, God bless you and not be like totally burnt out, I
need your strength to do this. And he gave me, believe me, he
gave me strength to pull all these things out.
I mean, I look back at the ground, I'm thinking, how in the
world did I actually do that? And then the Lord's reminded me
it was me and you doing it through you.
And so I need to be in tune with this subject of, of God's
enablement and his power and everything I do in my life every
day. And you do too.
And so just to give you a little bit of background on the new
covenant before I get into this section of Second Corinthians
chapter 3, Jesus Christ is the mediator of the new covenant.
Every week we take the Lord's Supper, and it tells us in Luke
2220 when I say this cup is a new covenant in my blood, which
is shed for the forgiveness of sins of many.
We celebrate this promise of this new life that's given to us
in Christ, a new covenant, a new way to live.
And this was also spoken by the prophets Moses, Jeremiah, and
Ezekiel throughout the Old Testament.
They alluded to this new covenant that would eventually
come when Christ came. The old covenant that God had
established with His people required strict obedience to the
Mosaic Law. The real law required Israel to
perform daily sacrifices in order to atone for sin.
So you think about the impossibility of the Old
covenant to accomplish what the new covenant supernaturally does
in our lives. The Old covenant was an external
way of trying to please God by following the 10 commandments in
the in the Jewish law. And no matter how hard people
tried to do that, they failed all the time.
And that's why they had to have the daily sacrifices to cover
the sins, not completely eradicate them, but to cover
them until the time of the perfect sacrifice, Jesus Christ
would come. And so you think about the
intensity of what it must have been like to never really have
that deep sense of forgiveness inside, knowing you had to bring
animals to the temple to be to be sacrificed in order to
appease God temporarily. And so Moses, he said in
Deuteronomy 29, four, he was looking forward to the time when
Israel will be given a heart to understand.
In Deuteronomy 30 verses one through 5, the Lord said, your
Lord, your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of
your descendants so that you may love him with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your life.
The new covenant involves a total heart change of heart so
that God's people are naturally pleasing to Him.
The Jeremiah the prophet predicted in the new covenant.
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. This is a covenant I will make
with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God and they will be my people.
Jeremiah 3131 through 33. So Jesus Christ came and
fulfilled the law of Moses perfectly.
The old covenant was written in tablets of stone, but the new
covenant is written in your heart and mine.
If you're born again, save blood, believer.
Entering the new covenant is made only possible by complete
total faith in what Jesus Christ did is shed blood and taking
away our sins at the cross. And Jesus relates us as I said
in the Last Supper, when he said this cup is poured out for you
as the new covenant in my blood. Ezekiel said in verses chapter
3626 through 27. I will give you a new heart, put
a new spirit in you. I'll remove from your heart the
heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees
and be careful to keep my laws. A new heart, a new spirit, the
indwelling Spirit, the Holy Spirit is true holiness.
And so this is really important because if we try to live this
life in our own strength as a Christian, we'll have no joy.
We'll have nothing but guilt should have would have could
have kind of stuff regret, remembrance of past sins and
this living in a a circular motion of of despondency and
depression. So many churches a day can be
Bible churches that if, if the leaders of the church, the
teachers are putting you under guilt trips and under law, you
got to have a conversation with them and say, you're not telling
me the truth in the new covenant.
You're trying to make me feel inadequate and I never do
enough. I can never be good enough.
And you're, you're really depressing me, pastor.
So I pray that I don't do that. I pray that when we come up
here, the message in the power of God's grace is very clear and
evident. And that you are being empowered
in your life through the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome
and to do whatever it is that God's calling you to do in in
your life through the power of the Holy Spirit.
That couldn't have been overemphasized enough at the
pastors conference because a lot of guys go there weary,
discouraged. Some are thinking of quitting or
whatever because it's an impossible calling.
But whenever you get enlightened by the word of God and he begins
to speak to you about the power that we have in Jesus Christ,
that He lives in US, and whatever you are facing in your
life, no matter how challenging or difficult it is because of
Christ being in you, you will get through it because His power
is not going to ever let you down.
If you're relying and depending on His power, if you're
depending on yourself and your own abilities, you'll be let
down because you will fail. That Jesus never fails, right?
He never fails. So we have to continually come
to him and be empowered and be filled so that we might be able
to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit.
So when we look at the chapter 3 of of Second Corinthians, Paul's
writing some some things in here and he says that we are they the
Corinthian believers or the epistle of Christ ministered by
us, written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God,
not untabled tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh that is
of the heart. So when the Holy Spirit lives in
you, God by your response shouldn't be looking at the law
and trying to impress God by your ability to think you're
fulfilling the law by your own righteousness, your own ability.
It's it's ludicrous. You're reminded that what gives
you the compulsion to follow Jesus and to love him and to
love others as he loved us is coming completely from the power
of the New Covenant. It's coming from Christ in you.
He's the one that gives you the desire not to want to sin.
But if you're looking at the law and trying to make promises of
God that you're going to be better and you're going to send
less, you're externally trying to communicate with him that
you're going to do something that he's already accomplished
through his death, burial and resurrection.
That's that's not real cool, is it?
Like, Lord, I know what you did for me, but it isn't really good
enough. So let me let me show you what I
can do. And the Lord is like, come on,
you know, get in the word. You don't you don't even know
what you're talking about. And so the Old Testament
prophets, as I read earlier, they were looking forward to the
day that the new covenant would come.
And so Paul then continues in verses 4 through 6, he says, and
we have such trust through Christ toward God, not that we
are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from
ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.
So that's Amen, all powerful, 100% the God-given truth that
you and me are not sufficient in ourselves to do anything on
behalf of God. That's in marriage, that's in
raising kids, that's in being a, an employee or an employer or,
or looking at the world system and, and, and not judging
people, but praying for people to get saved by God's grace.
All this comes as a result of this recognition that I'm
insufficient in and of myself, but my sufficiency is of Christ.
Each Sunday when I come up here and the pastors, the teachers,
we come up, we're not like thinking.
We got it all together and we got it all figured out.
We're in process too, like you guys.
But we realized when we come here that everything we have to
give you is from the truth of the Word of God.
And it always points to Jesus Christ as being the one who does
this right. All glory to him.
There's no glory to us. We just get an opportunity to be
part of what it is He does through the power of His Word
and changing hearts. He works inside to transform
you, to make him to make you and me more like Jesus Christ.
It's not like the promises. It's not how many more times can
I repent? How many more older calls do I
have to go to to get right with God?
How many, you know, whatever this, this treadmill of, of
inadequacy and trying to somehow make myself feel adequate by
what I do versus what He's done. And that's a big difference,
isn't it? Do we focus on what Christ has
done, or do we focus on our failures?
You and I have a list of failures, right?
We all do Thank God. He chooses to not judge us and
accept us based upon our failures.
He He accepts us based upon Christ's perfect righteousness.
That should give us like a sense of this major relief.
Like that's awesome that I can't be good enough ever to inherit
that righteousness by something I've done.
It's been given to me as a gift of God, right?
For by grace you've been saved through faith.
And this is not yourselves. It's a gift of God, not of
works. So no one can boast about it.
It's completely the tremendous grace of God.
And so Paul talks about this truth in this section of chapter
3, that he's made us sufficient as ministers of the New
Covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit.
For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
The law is good, it's perfect. But what it does, it shows us
why we need a Savior. It's not given to us to judge
ourselves and have this graft. Well, I'm pretty good because I,
I didn't do eight of these things.
I need two of them, right? That doesn't work that way.
I've broken them all. Whether you did it physically or
in your mind or whatever, you're guilty of sin.
We've broken the law of God. And that's why there's
judgement. And that's why the judgement had
to be poured out upon Jesus Christ.
And so God enables us to be servants of the new covenant.
We want to give you guys the truth of the work of the Spirit
in the Christian life, not the letter of the law, which would
be killing and diminishing the work and the power of the Holy
Spirit in your life. So it's a big deal to realize
that we're not sufficient of ourselves.
OK, if you think you have something to give or to offer,
you're going to be seriously disillusioned because you're
going to find out in time that this this won't work.
That's why some people stop going to church.
They fall on Jesus is too hard. I keep making mistakes, I fail.
The pastor makes me feel guilty all the time.
I don't need, you know, I don't need condemnation.
I don't need guilt. Well, the enemy is the accuser
of the brother and the Lord isn't.
Jesus doesn't accuse you, the Holy Spirit convicts you to
continually surrender and allow him to change in your life what
needs to be changed. And so we have to understand
that this new covenant is a glorious, glorious thing that
the Lord has given us to be able to experience.
And we have this indwelling spirit in our heart that he
tells me and you how to live. He tells us the wisdom that we
need to have in order to live a life that is honorable and
pleasing to God through the power of the Holy Spirit.
He tells us how to treat one another.
He tells us how to respond to issues in life and a godly and a
Christ honoring way. It's all the Spirit of God.
God the Holy Spirit, third person of Trinity, lives in you.
Christ knew that you and I could not do this without help.
And that's why he said when he was leaving, he was going to
send another helper, the Holy Spirit, who, who would not any,
you know, come to you, but live in you and be in you and live
through you. And, and I think the enemy, he
loves the fact that if we don't understand the work of the Holy
Spirit and we're not depending on the Holy Spirit and we're not
walking in the Holy Spirit and we're not overcoming in the Holy
Spirit, we're trying to do it ourselves.
And he's smiling because we will have no impact, no power are the
change anything, let alone see us change and anybody else
change. It's got to be the the work of
the indwelling Holy Spirit in all of our lives.
So then he continues, if this ministry in verse 7, the the if
the ministry of death written and engraved on stones was
glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look
steadfastly at the face of Moses because of the glory of his
countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the
ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?
For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the
ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory.
For even when what was made glorious had no glory in this
respect, because of the glory that excels.
For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much
more glorious. So you guys know the, the story
Moses went up on the mountain. He's, he spoke with God.
The reflection of God's glory was all over Moses face.
And whenever he came off the mountain, people were freaking
out because of the, the, the Shekinah glory of God was being
reflected off of Moses. And so he had to put a veil on.
And and this, this glory that Moses had because he was
speaking with God was a diminishing glory.
It wasn't a glory that would stay because it was rooted in
the teachings of what Christ initially started with the
requirements of the Old Covenant and the sacrifices of animals
and the responsibility for them to follow the traditions and the
law and all that kind of stuff. And so nonetheless, it was
glorious because God was speaking.
He was speaking to the servant Moses.
And his law is perfect and holy, but the whole human race is
imperfect and unholy. And he knew when he gave it to
Moses, his servant Moses learned real quickly that this is an
impossible situation. These people can't do this.
And he was so frustrated when he cracked the rock with the, the,
the rod because of frustration, the rebellion of the people that
God had to say, well, you're not going to, you know, have the
opportunity to go into the promised land and we send Joshua
and those other ones in there. And he, you know, he departed.
He was with the Lord. But because of his
misunderstanding of trying to dictate self righteousness
through obedience to the law, everyone failed.
Someone said to me this morning, I visited churches here and
there and, and they were nice churches and they taught the
Bible, Bible churches, but it was too much religion and not
enough grace. We need 100% grace and 0%
religion, right? And it's not my job or anybody
else's job to make you like Jesus or or more in love with
Jesus or more follower of that's up to the Holy Spirit in you.
You responding to what the Spirit wants you to do what I
think is inconsequential. It's what what the Spirit needs
to do in your life and mine. And so you have loved ones,
family, people rebelling, doing whatever you get frustrated.
They should do this, they should do that.
Why are they doing this? Why aren't they doing, you know,
we got all these like ideas of how people should live their
lives. That's the wrong way to approach
relationships with people. We need to pray for them, and we
need to ask the Holy Spirit to do in them what needs to be done
in order for their lives to be changed.
You can't change them. You can't Guild them.
You can't do anything but love them and share the word of God
with them. Share your own story of what
you're learning. Maybe share your own
embarrassing sins and how you did stupid things.
And you realize it wasn't until Jesus came and saved you that
you began to understand that you needed to be saved from yourself
so that Christ can live his life in you fully and you can have an
overcoming life and you can become more Christ like because
Christ is doing the job, not you anymore.
So Moses went through that process of, of with these
people, the, the glory was passing, but the glory of Jesus
Christ lasts forever. And it doesn't have to be this
reflective light or glowing on our face.
It's it's the salt and the light that you and I have become as we
live our lives, People get a fragrance that there's something
beautiful is something significant in US and, and
through US. It's different than what they
experience with with other people that don't have the Lord
in their lives. And that's, that's really what
my prayer is. And and, and, and, and hopefully
yours too, that when you're out and about, people recognize
something different in you because you, you're acting
different, not because you're some holy role or self-righteous
person. You're just like full of the
Lord and full of his joy. And you bless people when
they're around you and they begin to notice that there's
this, this God you say you follow must be real and must
have power because you're not normal.
The way you live is not normal the way everybody else lives.
Some people say to you, how can you forgive or how can you do be
gracious to this person who did this to to you.
You tell them, well, this is what Jesus did for me and he
wants me obviously to let him do that for other people too and do
it through me and for me. So it's, it's exciting and and
it's something you got. I have to meditate on more.
I have to think about it more in my in regard to my own life.
How do I live this this out and listening to the Lord whenever I
I let my wife down once in a while, more than once in a
while, we'd be honest with you. It's because I'm living in my
own strength. But if I'm living in the power
of the Holy Spirit, she's blessed when I pulled those
weeds out. That's not Clark.
That was the Lord yesterday. Believe me, that was definitely
the Lord. And then when I went in, she had
this glow about her. She had that.
She said I wanted to be out there but I couldn't, you know,
she said what you did for me was nicer than roses.
I don't know how many times I brought roses home to try to get
on her good side and bless her, but doing that was like a self
sacrifice thing. So Lord's patting me on the
back. You're listening, Clark.
That's good, you know. But anyway, so this, this power
of this new covenant is, is, is really, really exciting to begin
to, I guess, begin to comprehend at a different dimension.
Maybe if I noticed at the conference this year, maybe it's
because I'm getting older. I've been been there many times,
but there was so much love there and grace and, and this joy of
being around the brothers, you know, meeting new brothers,
seeing guys you've known for years.
Joe and I sort of look a lot alike.
We're the same age and Gray hair and glasses.
I'm walking on a hallway and this guy comes up to me.
He goes, did you start this church from nothing?
And it became this church, this huge church.
I said, no, my name's Clark. That's Joe.
I have a small church back in Greensburg, PA.
But he's a what? Can I get a picture with you?
I don't know why he thought it was some kind of famous person
or something. But anyway, it was his first
time to be there and he was excited to be at the conference.
So, so when Paul had this understanding of this new
covenant, the Judaizers at the time would come into a church as
I spoke last week, trying to say they were sent by Paul and they
would begin to tell these Gentile Christians and even the
Jewish Christians that they had to live and fulfill the law
along with having faith in Jesus Christ.
And that's another gospel. That's a distortion of the
gospel. And so Paul said, if I, or an
Angel from God, an Angel from heaven, bring unto you any other
gospel than that which you've received, let it be accursed.
Never let anybody any teacher you're listening to reading
about, if they're putting the law on you and they're putting
guilt on you and they're putting pride and self-righteous on you,
self righteousness on you and not grace and thankfulness and
gratitude for who Jesus is and what he's done for you.
Shut, shut it, turn it off, run away from it.
It's it's poison to your freedom in Christ.
So, so therefore in verse 12, Paul says, since we have such
hope now this guy is is preaching in places that don't
want them. People are saying bad stuff
about him. They're slandering him.
If it wasn't for Christ in him, he would have just quit.
He would have gone back to this making tents, which he did to
help his livelihood. He says because of this hope in
Christ, we use great boldness of speech.
In other words, he can come and speak to anybody with a glorious
gospel, knowing it's going to have power and lies for those
who believe, he said. Unlike Moses, who put a veil
over his face so that the children of Israel could not
look steadfastly at the end of what was passing away, but their
minds were blinded. But until this day, that same
veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament
because the veil is taken away in Christ.
So all these Jewish folks that are still going to synagogue and
they're listening to the Torah and they're being told about
kosher and this and that, all these rules and regulations
they're trying to do not most Jews don't even go anymore, But
the ones that are trying to be faithful to their heritage, they
got to be exhausted because what they're doing doesn't bring life
at this brings death. This brings a sense of like this
is impossible to them if they really understand.
But underneath the Holy Spirit can take the veil away not only
of the Jewish person, but of the Gentile to make us see our need
of Christ. I can't do that for you.
You can't do it for me. It's a mystery.
It's a work of the Holy Spirit, how He moves in people's lives.
Why did He move in mine? And a lot of people that I grew
up with, they still can't see what the Lord has given me grace
to see. That's a mystery.
But God, that's God's sovereign. He, he does things according to
counsel, His own will, not my will.
But you never give up on giving the gospel to people, no matter
how many times the veil was over their eyes.
One day that veil may be lifted. The thief on the cross, the last
seconds of his life, he realized Jesus is the Messiah.
And then he wanted him to be his Savior.
And Jesus said truly this day he shall be with me in paradise.
So therefore he has his boldness and he's able to preach the
gospel with power. For until this day, the same
veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament
because a veil is taken away in Christ.
But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies in their
hearts. Nevertheless, when one turns to
the Lord, the veil is taken away.
So if you're here today and you can't see or understand
anything, I'm saying, ask Jesus to take the veil away so you can
see the truth, so you can believe, and He will take that
away. And when He takes that away, you
pass from death unto life. You realize you were a Sinner
and you need a Savior and he's the only one that can change
your life. It says if anyone's in Christ,
he's a new creation. Old things are passed away.
All things have become new. The new covenant, Amen.
All things have become new Now. The Lord is the Spirit in verse
17. And where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty, not bondage, not guilt, not
condemnation, but freedom in Christ.
But we all with unveiled face beholding in a mirror as in a
mirror the glory of the Lord. And back in those days those
mirrors were not real clear like ours today.
So it was sort of a distorted view, but they knew that they
were being changed by the glory of the Lord.
They were being transformed into the same image from glory to
glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
And that's what's happening in your life when you come to to
Calvary or any Bible church or you're, you're reading a good
commentary that's based on truth and the Bible and you're
listening to Grace FM or whatever.
You're hearing this word over and over again of the grace of
God, the new covenant, the freedom we have in Christ.
It's just awesome, isn't it? We don't have to walk around
with her back bent down and, and oh, look at things are terrible.
Look at those going on here and there.
Look what they're doing here. Look what?
Don't look at that stuff. Look at what Christ has done,
what he continues to do as he saves one person at a time
throughout the whole earth, right?
We have good news, right? We have the best news ever.
And when people get a hold of hearing this good news, it
changes their life. They're never the same again,
and you can go deeper the more you want to experience the power
of the new Covenant. You send time with Jesus, read
his Word, praise him, thank him for who he is, what he's done.
You know, allow the Lord to help you fall deeper in love with
him. As you fall deeper in love with
him, you're not going to be doing the stupid stuff that you
normally would do when you have an intimate relationship with
the Lord. You care about honoring him
because it comes from him in you that new covenant giving you
that desire to go deeper with him and to praise him so that
the worship team can come forward.
And this allow the Lord to open your hearts and your minds to
this. I I trust that this is something
that will enable you to experience your faith in the
Lord in a much more glorious and wondrous way, to be excited
about all that the Lord has done for you and how much he loves
you and how much he continually forgives you and continually
cleanses you from all unrighteousness and.
There's nothing like this. There's no other message like
this in the face of the planet. No other quote religion out
there can give us and do for us what Jesus Christ has done for
us. Amen.
Well, let's pray and allow the
Holy Spirit to get our eyes on the Lord as we remember what
he's done for us. It's Memorial Day remembering
all these men and women have given their lives for Jesus, for
the for the USAI mean, but the one that we really memorialize
today more than anyone is Jesus. Every Sunday we remember his
death and his sacrifice on behalf of us, not only saving us
from hell and giving us eternal life and forgiveness, a sin, but
living in us to help us. And every situation of our
lives, every relationship, every conversation, every temptation,
anything that's coming against us, He's with us to show us the
way through it. Lord Jesus, we're so grateful
for you giving us this new covenant.
We're so thankful that we can walk out of here today with our
heads held high, looking at you, looking unto Jesus.
You're the author and finisher of our faith.
The good work you've begun on us, the Word says you will
perform it and fulfill it in the day of Your coming or the day
that we enter into Your presence.
Lord, we pray if there's any here today and the veil is on
their eyes, that Lord, by Your sovereign decree and grace she
would lift that veil and cause them today for the first time
ever to see who You are and recognize what You've done and
come to You for forgiveness of sin and to be given new life.
On the night that Jesus is betrayed, He took the bread in
his hands and he broke it and He gave thanks.
He said, this is my body which is given for you.
Eat this in remembrance of me. The same manner in that cup and
same manner in that night He took the cup.
He said, This cup is a new covenant in my blood, which was
shed for the forgiveness of sins of many.
Drink this in remembrance of me. For as often as we eat this
bread and we drink this cup, we show forth the Lord's death till
he comes again. Amen.
Good news, right? Amen.
Be blessed.