God's New Covenant: New Life

If you truly want to be respected by the people that you love, you must prove to them that you can live without them. You are the master of your own destiny. You can influence, direct, and control your own environment. You can make your life whatever you want it to be. Champion the right to be yourself. Dare to be different and to set your own pattern. Live your own life and follow your own star. Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom. Being one's own person is its ultimate reward. The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. These are the words of our society. Five quotations, just taken randomly from the web. Singers, politicians, textbooks, movies, modern philosophers, prosperity teachers. From childhood, we are all encouraged, we're all challenged, we're all expected to make our own way in this world. In a word or a phrase, it's our inalienable right to expect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, self-rule, autonomy, to be free from obligation, to be free from the restrictions of others placed upon us, freedom from any sort of authority except our own choice. This is the expectation of the Western world, isn't it? My way or the highway? And we can understand that desire, it's in all of our hearts, but to have control of our own world means that we're in control of our failures. We own those, but it also means we get all the glory when we succeed. It's all down to us, and we like that. Yet as we come to our passage this morning, we're going to see and define a number of things that challenge that worldview around us. Firstly, we're going to see that as we rule ourselves, we become addicted to evil. and obsessed with ourselves. And all of that leads to our spiritual death. Death in relationships as we isolate ourselves. Death in freedom because freedom simply becomes a mirage of enslavement. Death in pleasure because nothing satisfies enough or lasts long enough to satisfy fully. Secondly, we're going to find that our desire to rule ourselves mean that we become disunited with other human beings and end up little more than a rebellious rebel. And why? Well, because if I'm king of the universe, you can't be. But you think you are, so how can I be? And we'll come into conflict. And thirdly, we'll find that our desire to rule ourselves means that we lose out being ruled by the true king. and not functioning the way we were designed to function. Our passage this morning tells us, as we've heard already, that we are dead, that we are at war with one another, and that we need a new and a true King. So let's turn to Ezekiel 37. If you're using a pre-Bible, it's found on page 724. And as John said, this book, this Bible, contains the words of life, so if you don't own one, Please take it, read it, discover the words of life inside. Ezekiel 37, starting at verse 1. The hand of the Lord was upon me, this is Ezekiel speaking, and he brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley. It was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, you know. Then he said to me, prophesy over these bones and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones. Behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound and behold, a rattling and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked and behold, there were sinews on them and flesh had come upon them and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, thus says the Lord God come from the four winds, O breath and breathe on these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me and the breath came into them and they lived and stood on their feet and exceedingly great army. Then he said to me, son of man, these bones of the whole house of Israel. The whole they say our bones are dried up and our hope is lost. We are indeed cut off. Therefore, prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves. Oh, my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will put my spirit within you and you shall live. And I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. I have spoken and I will do it, declares the Lord. Let's stop there. Ezekiel was a prophet. He was living at Babylon at the same time as Jeremiah was prophesying in Israel. And he was prophesying on the same topic as Jeremiah. Last week, as John already mentioned, we were looking at the New Covenant through Jeremiah's eyes. The circumcision of the heart. God would inscribe His law upon our hearts. Ezekiel has much to say in the New Covenant. And this is his third prophecy. in his book so far. And he's adding clarity to the question. How is this going to happen? How is this going to work? How will this be? So this chapter puts flesh in the bones of the new covenant and is a picture of the new creation found in Revelation. So our first point this morning is that we must let God raise us to new life. We must let God raise us to new life. And that's because ultimately sin kills. Now, most of us don't feel particularly dead. We can see, we can hear, we can think, as much as one thinks on a Sunday morning. And we feel. So how are we dead? Well, do you remember we read in Ephesians, turn back to page five in your bulletins, and we'll just read the very first verse in our corporate reading. Ephesians 2, 1, Paul wrote that we were dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked. following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, were dead in sin. And we need to understand this fully to comprehend, because sin kills. Sin caused Adam and Eve to be kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Sin caused them to lose face to face, one on one time with the Lord. Sin caused God to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Sin meant that Moses couldn't enter the promised land. Sin meant that David went to war with his own son. Sin meant that Israel was destroyed. Sin meant that Judah was exiled. Sin meant that the Son of God himself had to come and die. Sin is everywhere in this planet, in this world. And like a poison, it perverts everything into dirty cesspits of bile. And in the human heart, sin runs rampant. It rules supreme. It creates idols and mercilessly drives us towards the eternal grave. So sin kills. A book by Edward Welch calls addictions a feast in the grave. That's exactly what death is. What sin is, it's sitting down at the banquet table of sin and gorging ourselves on the lusts of the flesh and the passions of our hearts. And no one is free from sin. Let me read to you two verses from from Romans that Paul also wrote. For all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. And the wages, what we earn as our right by our sin, the wages of sin is death. Sin is everywhere. It's in everyone and it kills. And as a picture of that, God takes Ezekiel and places him in a valley of bones. These are dry bones. It's an interesting little word in addition to the vision. They've been in the sun for a long time. These were very dead bones. They were bleached white. They probably stank and reeked of death. Perhaps in the distance, he saw Corian birds picking the last semblance of flesh off these bones. This is the world in which we inhabit. a world of sin and a world of death. And if you're here this morning and you're not a follower of Christ, this is your world, this is your life. You're dead in sin. If you've never repented and turned to Christ to seek forgiveness and hope, then you are dead. And this is where we all belong, in the graveyard of sin, feasting on the empty pleasures of self-rule. King of our own lives. King of a kingdom of one, but a kingdom of death. But God, in His mercy, He questions Ezekiel and asks, can these bones live? Now, Ezekiel is obviously very coy. He can't say yes and he can't say no. He says yes, he doesn't sound particularly clever. He says no, he's challenging the Almighty God. only God knows because only God has the power to raise us to life. So how do we get this new life? Well, the book you're holding in your hands or sitting on your knees or looking at on your screens, it contains the living word of God. It speaks about God's plan of salvation from sin, from the creation of the world all the way back in Genesis 1 to the final culmination with the return of the king. God has revealed his character and his nature and his goodness in this book. Through scripture, therefore, we get to know him. We get to know what he's like, what he's passionate about, what he loves and what he hates. We get to know his values and what he expects of his creation. And we get to read about how he always purposed a plan to bring about our salvation. If you remember back to last week, we spoke of the covenant mountain range, the progressive revelation of God's plan of salvation. So we have to remember this is not. A trial and error effort, this is always part of God's plan. So then listen to the words of John, the apostle about Jesus and John one in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything that was made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. God promised to bring about salvation. We saw that with Abraham last week. And it's the Word of God, that's how He acts, to bring about that salvation. Did you hear what we just read? The word of God, that's Jesus. He brings life. He is life. Friend, no matter the depth of sin that you feel you are in, no matter how addicted to your sin you are, no matter how often and frequently you sit down at the banquet table of death, no matter how broken, ashamed, guilty, dirty, ugly, unforgivable that you feel, Your sin is, Jesus is life. Listen to his own words, John 11. Jesus said to her, he's speaking to Mary, sister of Martha. I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die and we're dead, though he die, yet shall he live. And anyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. The word of God speaks new life into you. The words of scripture prepare you for salvation. They show you that you're dead. They teach you that God hates sin and he must punish sin. But they remind you that you're at war with God, that you're dead in sin. And most importantly, as a mirror, they show us the corpse standing there, that we can do nothing to save ourselves. It acts as a mirror that shows us our sinfulness and reveals our heart and therefore shows us our need for a savior. And Christian just notes here that the Word had to be delivered. Ezekiel was commanded in verses 4 and 9, and we see in verse 7, 10 and 12 that the command from God was obeyed. Ezekiel had to prophesy, which is an old-fashioned word for preach, proclaim the gospel, proclaim the Word. So every believer has a purpose and an obligation to preach and to proclaim the gospel into the world in which they are at. It doesn't mean that everyone is a paid preacher. But it does mean that when you, in your sphere, preach the Gospel, no matter how badly you feel it went, no matter how inarticulate you feel you are, no matter how little you feel you know, the power is in the Word of God which lives and prepares souls for the Spirit. God's Word prepares hearts. We are the agent by which that Word is delivered, by His command. It's non-negotiable. And so our response to that command is that we trust the authority of the word and the power of the word to prepare hearts. Even the hardest soil can still receive the seed when you throw the seed in the ground. But you'd notice that even in that little passage, the word proclaimed by Ezekiel, it didn't bring about new life. It got everything in the right order. Put all the bones together, flesh was there. These bones are still useless, but they're much more attractive than they were. They may have smelt less as well. But in verse eight. We read, I looked and behold, there were sinews on them and flesh had come upon them and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. They're still dead. These bones are still dead. These bodies are no doubt much prettier. They're still useless, right? But what happens next from verse nine? Then he, God said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army. See, the word prepared the bodies, but the application of the word, the power of the spirit gave life to them. This is a new description of the New Covenant. We didn't see this in Jeremiah. The New Covenant is like a very precious, very expensive diamond. And the Old Testament prophets shine light on different facets of it, different faces of it. And here we're seeing that Ezekiel is promising that under the New Covenant of Jesus, The Spirit would come to his people and bring about new life. We will all receive the new life of the Spirit who breathes new life into dead corpses. And Paul makes this clear in the New Testament as well. Listen as I read from 1 Corinthians. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Do you hear what Paul is saying? We're all dead in sin. Everyone. But by the name of Jesus and the Spirit of God, we can be washed clean. The toxic poison of the sin that is in our system, it can be flushed out and instead we can be infused with the life of the Spirit. So unbeliever, we beg of you to repent. Turn from your sin and run to Christ. At the cross where he bore the punishment for our sin, he made a way for you to be raised with him to new life. You don't need to be enslaved to sin anymore. Be free. Let his word and his spirit flow through you like antivenom to the poison of sin. Be raised to spiritual life. Christian, no doubt you hear that great truth and in your heart, there's a joy that you are raised to life again. There's pleasure there, there's delight. The gospel has released you from the grave and we rejoice at that truth. And yet, too often we still occasionally sitting down at the table of sin and eating and drinking our hearts fulfillment. For most of us, there are sinful patterns and pleasures and desires and idols in our hearts that we still feel enslaved to. We still feel dead. Not because Christ hasn't saved us, we know that in our heads, we grasp that intellectually, but we don't feel like we've experienced any freedom from the sins that control us, torment us. The allure of pornography still grips our hearts. The pain of offense and unforgiveness still burns brightly. The lack of self-control occasionally remains unchecked and uncontrollable. The bitterness inside refuses to go away. The shame of the past stands over us, condemning us, and we cannot accept the grace. that God has offered. The fire of fury still wins out. The icy pleasure of gossip, too often it goes unnoticed in our hearts. The resentment of punctured pride haunts us at every opportunity. The ironic delight of complaining is a habit we cannot kick. The need for identity in our belongings, our wealth, our status, our achievements, that desire for recognition remains. Sin, despite what we know to be true, remains a foe that we cannot stand against. Christian, you have been raised to new life. You have the Spirit dwelling within you. So why is it that we feel and follow the lies that we're told and we continue to fight sin on our own? The power to defeat sin is not inside us as human beings. It never has been and it never will be. The power to defeat sin resides in the Spirit of God working in us through His Word and with the help of His people. When temptation comes, standing on your own two feet is like standing on quicksand. Occasionally you'll stand tall, but we're still sinking. But when you grab onto the spirit and that the word of Christ dwell richly in your heart, he fights for you and he fights with you. Cling to him in the midst of the trial, in the midst of the temptation, and he will hold you fast. Sin has no legal claim on you anymore. Do we recognize that sin is no claim on us? And so then when therefore, when we sin, it's not that we are owned or enslaved or living in the grave again. It's that we have believed the seductive lies of Satan, that Christ is unable to save us from that sin at that moment. That's what sin is to the believer. It's choosing not to believe that Christ is stronger than our sin. And that is wrong. All sin can be defeated by the power of the spirit working in and through you. In temptation, call out to him. Seek people with whom you can be accountable and you can ask for strength, for accountability, for help if you need it. We dare not stand alone, but in his strength alone. Dear Christian, we're not called to stand alone. And so we must come to our second point this morning and see that we must let God reconcile us in covenant community. Let God reconcile us in covenant community, let's pick up Ezekiel 37 at verse 15. Verse 15, the word of the Lord came to me, son of man, take a stick and write on it for Judah and the people of Israel associated with him. Take another stick and write on it for Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and all the house of Israel associated with him and join them one to another into one stick that they may become one in your hand. And when your people say to you, will you not tell us what you mean by these? Say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I am about to take the stick of Joseph, that is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel associated with him, and I will join it with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, that they may be one in my hand. When the two sticks in which you write are in your hand before their eyes, then say to them, thus says the Lord God, behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone. And we'll gather them from all around and bring them to their own land. So we're moving from what happens when we receive new life. Under the new covenant of Christ, and now we're having this new covenant community established. And it's going to be different than Israel was. As we saw last week with the covenant of Moses, The law of Moses was to be a temporary thing, to point to our need for a savior. And that there was the covenant of Abraham that pointed to Christ as that savior, who fulfilled the punishment that we deserved. Now, Ezekiel is adding to the vision of Jeremiah by explaining further what this new covenant community is to look like. Historically, the northern kingdom, the 10 tribes had split from the southern kingdom, Judah, in the south. And these two nations now called Israel and Judah, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, typically fought and went to war. They played power games against one another. Despite being brothers under Moses, they were no longer united. And both Ezekiel and Jeremiah warned the Jews that Babylon was going to come and destroy Jerusalem completely, splitting the Israelites apart forever through exile. Yet in this passage, God says he will take the two sticks of the two kingdoms and reunite them. Their exile, it will end. There will be a restoration and they will be joined together as one nation once more. So the question that comes to our minds naturally is, was that prophecy fulfilled in 1948? That's our question. With the Israeli state, did God finally bring about the restoration of these two sticks? Well, no. Ezekiel is a book, and the key chapter for this is chapter 16, makes it very clear. I'm going to quote from a guy called Gentry, that the renewed Israel is no longer based on ethnic parameters, but is defined as those who are reconciled to the Lord and believing in him. The key chapter is chapter 16, where Sodom and Samaria, two evil nations, are grafted into Israel. The two sticks, therefore, are not the uniting of the twelve tribes. It is the uniting of Gentile and Jew. And we see, therefore, that the New Covenant community belongs to Christ. When we look at scripture through the lens of the cross, we see that at the cross, all the barriers to God's grace were completely torn down. And that's demonstrated by the tearing of the curtain in the temple, the Holy of Holies, from top to bottom, access to God. is open to all through Christ. And Christ ascended. But on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended. And the Holy Spirit has been resurrecting sinners ever since by the power of the Word. The cross is the definitive action. definitive act of God in history, that reconciles Jew and Gentile under one covenant, just as God's covenant with Abram had intended all those centuries ago. And the cross is a definitive sacrifice that reconciles God and mankind. Sin has been atoned for. The sinner can be reconciled to God because of Jesus. So therefore, when we read in Ezekiel that these two sticks are reunited, we must have a bigger vision than simply ethnic Israel. We must read these words in light of the Abrahamic covenant and the coming of Christ. And therefore, because of Jesus, we know that God will call a nation to himself, a people to himself from every tribe, from every tongue, from every nation, and he will bring all of those people into covenant community, covenant relationship with himself. Again, let me just read from Ephesians 2, which we read corporately earlier. For he himself is our peace, verse 14, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two. So making peace and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross. thereby killing the hostility. So what is this covenant community to look like? We've already seen that it's found in the cross. You don't enter the covenant community unless you accept the sacrifice of the cross. And it's a covenant of peace. Ezekiel calls it that in verse 26. We haven't got there yet, but we saw it twice in that little section from Ephesians 2, that the cross brings peace. He ends hostility through the cross. And so therefore, we know that it's a place where we, as covenant members, are to be united with one another. We've been reconciled to God, and now under the new covenant, we're to be eternally bound to one another. So let's get awkward. Just look around you for the moment. The believers that you see around you, they're closer to you than your family. Biologically, of course, you look more like your family, you sound more like your family, for good or ill, depending on your perception. But in Christ, you are eternally bound with your fellow believers in a covenant relationship that cannot be broken. Death breaks the bonds of family, but Christ has broken the power of death so that eternally Your spiritual relationships, your covenant relationships in Christ can never be broken, can never be destroyed. Our bodies will not last forever. Our children will grow up, they'll move on, they'll start families of their own. Not so the believer. Whilst we may not be physically present, we are eternally bound together here right now at Jefferson Park and all the way back to beyond Abraham. We are bound by the covenant of faith. That's a glorious thing. And this is how the new covenant differs from the law of Moses. Under the law, the family was the primary disciple maker. The covenant was passed from father to son through circumcision and through the training up of under the law. But not under the new covenant, the new covenant. Under the new covenant, discipleship falls to the church, to the fellow covenant relationship, fellow covenant believers. And let me be clear, there is a role for teaching and training your children through scripture, but that responsibility is primarily evangelistic. As we saw last week, the best that we can do is to raise moral little pagans. No matter how much we preach at them, the spirit must apply the word to their hearts. for salvation to be brought to bear. We cannot circumcise the hearts of our children. We saw that last week. And it is the church that is the covenant community. So if your child does come to faith, praise God. That's an amazing thing. And then seek out the church to help disciple them as a covenant member. You can and you should participate in that discipleship as a believer. Yet you also must remember that your role as parent is temporary and that will change as they get older, but your role and your responsibility and obligation as a fellow believer in Christ, as a brother and sister, that's eternal. That's a bond that you will have long after this world ends. Every child should have a parent, but every believer does need a pastor. does need biblical Christian role models to disciple, to train, to guide, to encourage, to rebuke. The New Covenant community is the Church, and the Church is founded on the Word of God. And so it's not a state like Israel, though we are called a holy nation. It's a nation that is not simply ethnically bound to one people group. And so the Covenant is not passed from father to son. but it's given to us, given to us by the work of the Spirit and raising us from the dead. This also means that the primary place, therefore, that we go to get spiritual advice, to get training, to get wisdom, is from our fellow covenant members. They are to be our primary disciples, and we are to be discipling others. There's no place in the New Testament where family worship is explicitly commanded. But you can barely read an epistle from Paul and not be commanded to worship with the church. Now, that's not to say we shouldn't worship as families. Don't hear me say that. Of course not. But we need to reorient our thinking. to recognize that the church, that you and I as believers, we are citizens of the covenant community and we worship together. When we gather here on a Sunday morning or Wednesday night or whenever else a covenant body decides to gather, we are declaring the glory of Christ and we are declaring our covenant bonds with one another. Family worship, therefore, it can never and it should never replace meeting together with the church. We pray for our children and for our teenagers. But unless they personally accept faith in Christ, they are not part of the covenant community. And Christian, that means that although you are raised from the grave individually. To be a Christian, you are not an individual Christian. You are saved individually, but you are not saved to be an individual. You are saved to be part of a kingdom, to be part of a community that requires service, that requires discipleship, requires participation, requires being present, requires the willingness to be discipled and to disciple, to be rebuked and to rebuke. We come to church with the desire to worship with our brothers and sisters, because that's what we're going to be doing for eternity. So, seek out covenant relationships that you can be fed from. Be disciples. Seek out others older than you, who've gone through life before you, who've made mistakes that you can learn from and avoid. Mature believers. Seek out mature believers who have a greater knowledge of the glory of the gospel and can teach you and train you to know and experience the love of Christ more and in a real and deeper way. and seek out covenant relationships where you can feed others. And just note that the word, the verb, is to seek out. It's not passively wait until someone talks to you. It's to seek out people with whom you can feed into and whom you can feed from. Be a discipler of singles, be a discipler of the teens, a discipler of the new mothers, of the mature folks, of the newly married. We are in this together. Our lives are intrinsically linked to one another by the bond of faith. We might as well get to know each other because eternity is a long time. Our calling as Christians is huge. It's more than simply avoiding hell. It's to model heaven here on Earth as best we can while still being sinners. You may know that I'm a history nerd. If you don't, now you do. One of my favorite eras of history is the Roman period, particularly the Republic. One of the things the Roman soldiers did when they went to war was they had big, long shields. So they had longer shields than the enemy. That's a good start. And what they did was they stand like this, side by side, holding a shield. The guy on the left held his shield there. The guy on the right held his shield there. The guys in the second row put their shield above you. So you basically created a tortoise shell. And together, not going too fast so there were stragglers, not going too slow so you didn't make any progress, you took a step forward. Do another step forward. Together, in unison. The arrows of the enemy couldn't penetrate the tortoise shell. You slowly made your progress towards the enemy. And they couldn't do anything until you got close enough to throw your javelins. That's how we as Christians operate in the covenant community. We have each other's back. We hold our shields, protecting each other. When someone falls behind, we don't walk on. We grasp them by the hand and we meet them where they're at and we walk with them. We fight side by side. We face the enemy bravely and courageously. We march further into the kingdom of darkness, bearing the banner of Christ, the word of Christ, and we reach in and we proclaim the gospel and watch the spirit save souls from the grave of death. And make no mistake, friends, we are living in a battle. Society has no comprehension of what it means to follow a crucified Messiah. And why should it? As they remain dead in sin, the idea of following Jesus, it does sound ludicrous if you haven't personally met and experienced him and his power. But if we understand that they can't comprehend, why do we ask questions like, how could this happen? Or why would anyone do that? If we understand that sin kills and that we feast in the banquet hall of sin and death, then we should realize with horror that without Christ, that's us, that's you, that's me. We're fully capable of the most heinous actions given the right circumstances. Unless Christ and his mercy and his grace interrupts our world. Horrors and atrocities, they will continue each and every day. But that doesn't mean that God is not in control. He is. He is still king over this world and he will send his king again. Let's turn to our final point. Let God rule you. Let God rule us through his king. Let's read from verse 22. And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king over them all. And they shall no longer be two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms. They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. Just note, in that verse we see that God is the one who does this. We don't. We cannot. Verse 24. My servant David, he shall be their king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever. And David, my servant, shall be their prince forever. And I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. Just note again, that's an everlasting covenant. The law of Moses was not an everlasting covenant. Never call that. And I will set them in their land, and I will multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore." So the first thing we need to recognize here is that rules are good. We started off by talking about the idea that rules were bad. Society tells us that rules are bad, right? Well, that's a lie. You're not a musician because you own an instrument, as much as we might like that idea. You're a musician when you learn and obey the rules of music and follow them and allow them to guide you as you play. Yes, you can use your guitar as a golf club, you can use your violin as a tennis rack or your mandolin as a baseball bat, but you'll not use it like that for long. And like those instruments designed for a purpose to make music and melodies, we are designed for a purpose. We're designed to worship God, but our idols get in the way. Our hearts are filled with idols. It's money, power, sex, education, control, anxiety, possessions, food, family. You name it, we as human beings have made an idol of it. Good things and bad things. But we were not made to worship them. We diminish God's gifts when we worship them. We make them less than what they actually are when we worship them. And so rules, therefore, are given by God for our good because he knows us best. He knows how we're meant to operate. We are his product. He knows the manual to make us work right. And he's given it to us. Therefore, rules given by God are good. They are not there to constrain our fun, or to make us hate our lives. They're there to ensure that we live life properly. And when He sends His King, He will destroy our idols. In verse 23, we just read that when the King comes, the covenant people would not be enslaved to sin anymore. Nor would idols rule in their hearts, nor would they commit the transgressions that they had been committing. This is exactly what Jesus achieved at the cross. He achieved our cleansing. The work of Jesus' death and his resurrection cleanses us from all unrighteousness. And when our idols are taken away, his King comes and his King rules over us and rules in us. He should be a king like King David. We know that means Jesus. And so we come back to society and we look outside these four walls and we realize that, yes, society looks like it's a mess. It's out of control. We're a society that sells baby parts. We're a society where we kill people over scraps of food. We're a society where some parents are more concerned their kids drink soda than are having sex. But we're not a society outside God's control. Christ has come once, and He will come again. He ruled in heaven. He ruled from the wooden beams of a blood-stained cross. He rules now at the Father's right hand. His Word rules over His Church, and He will come and rule in the New Jerusalem. Christ is still in control. And as Christ is King, so long as you remain outside His authority, His rule, you're a traitor to the King. The king will return and he will judge those who remain at war against him. So as the covenant community here at Jefferson Park, we beg you, we beseech you. Listen to the words of Ezekiel, listen to the word of Christ and let your heart be softened. So that the spirit of God can resurrect you and introduce you into the covenant community and save you from the slimy pit of despair. You don't need to be dead in your sin, you can be raised to new life. You can be reconciled. You can be ruled by God, no matter how far gone into sin you think you are, no matter how low you think you've sunk, you can be raised to life again, you can't get better than dead. We want you as part of the covenant community. Please repent. Christian, be encouraged. In this world, in this age, in this life, the King is coming back. He will return. But the question, so the question, therefore, it's not, will he come back? And if you're following the news this week, you'll also realize that it's not, when will he come back? The question is, are you ready for his return? And in fact, the question might even be, do you want him to come back? Brothers and sisters, we must let Christ rule over us. Even right now. He rules over his church by the power of his word and the indwelling nature of his spirit. But that means that we have an obligation to obey his commands. And that does not mean that salvation depends upon our obedience. That's not the case at all. But we use our obedience as a gauge to see how much we love the king, how much we serve the king, how much we want the king to return. It means that if we truly worship the king as we were designed to worship, we will desire his return and we will desire to do what he wants us to do. So just take some time this afternoon. Home groups are meeting today. There's some questions here that might be helpful for you to think about. Think through what it would mean for you if you were to truly give up your own self-rule as a Christian and to bow the knee and obey the words of Christ. Would your TV show choices change? Would the books you lose yourselves in, would they change? Would your diary look vastly different if you decided to obey the command to disciple others and be discipled by others? Would your bank account be much smaller because you were giving sacrificially to the advancement of his kingdom, not your own? Would you spend as much time doing the things you currently spend all your time doing? How would your work effort? How would your diligence at work, how would that change? Would your times of confessing your sins with other fellow believers be more real? Would it be more true? Would you confess the real sin that no one else knows about or keep it superficial as always? Would you spend time reading scripture, not simply to take a box, but to interact and engage with the living author of the living word? Would you be so quick to speak? Men, how would you lead better, wiser, more sacrificially, giving up your own preference for the woman you've chosen to be with? Ladies, how would you encourage and help your husbands better, more affectionately, wiser, encouraging? Church, how would we honor our leaders more? Teens, how would you respect your parents, children, How would you honor your mother and your father? We all know the sins that grab our heart, we all know what it is that we enjoy eating. In the grave, even if the closest people to us don't. But we must let the word of Christ dwell in our hearts richly, it must rule in our hearts. I can only do that through his spirit. And he must let it do that until he comes again. And one of the ways in which we can we can feel safest that we're doing that is when we obey and be discipled and and and disciple others, allow others to confess their sins to us, even as we confess our sins to them and seek forgiveness from them. As we do this, he is glorified and we are preparing himself for the return of the Messiah. So the new covenant, it was it was inaugurated at Calvary when Christ died and rose again. But it will be consummated when he comes and rules once more in the New Jerusalem. Did you notice the covenant tagline is repeated twice? He will be our God and we shall be his people. Where God rules, therefore, is where we will be. And we should be his prized possession, marked on the heart with his own law, by his own hand, raised to new life by his own spirit. Let me read to you the words of Revelation. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. The spirit and the bride say, come. And let the one who hears say, come. And let the one who is thirsty, come. Let the one who desires take the water of life without price. Jesus is the promised king in Ezekiel 37. And the church is the promised covenant community, the bride of Christ. And it is full of resurrected sinners. Saved by faith alone, in Christ alone, by His work alone, applied to our hearts by the Spirit alone. And when He comes again to rule over this world, those who have fallen asleep will be resurrected just as He was. new creation beings in the new creation world, living with Him forevermore. And so when we gather together as His people, united together, each Sunday and at every baptism at the Lord's Supper, we're boldly proclaiming to the world's end, to one another, come Lord Jesus, come quickly. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we acknowledge in our hearts that we too often seek to rule ourselves. Too often we seek to listen to the lies of Satan, listen to the lies that tell us our sin is something that Christ cannot save us from at that moment. And we ask your forgiveness. We pray that you would help us to take your authoritative word seriously, to let it rule us and guide us and teach us as we proclaim to one another the glory of the gospel in relationship and friendship and discipleship. As we seek to evangelize our friends and our children, that your word would be the guiding line. We ask these things not for ourselves, not for the advancement of Jefferson Park, not for the advancement of our own little mini kingdoms, but so that your name is glorified in Charlottesville, in America, in the globe, that your kingdom marches ever forward. Amen.