Hebrews - Part 19 It Was Fitting (Hebrews 7:20-28)

All right, Father in Heaven, we come to your text in Hebrews. We are in awe of the glory of Jesus Christ, and we are people who need to be forgiven of our sins. So we pray as we open your word that we would understand what it says, that we would be mindful of our need to heed its warnings as well as apply the truths to our lives. Please help us this morning to glorify Christ.

Amen. Okay. We left off in Hebrews 7.19 and so I'm going to go back to verse 18 to read a little bit of context for this week. Hebrews 7.18 ESV. For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness. For the law made nothing perfect.

But on the other hand, a better hope is introduced through which we draw near to God. And It was not without an oath. For those who formerly became priests were made such without an oath. But this one was made a priest with an oath, by the one who said to him, The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever. this makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant so I'm going to stop there comment on this section first Hebrews 6.16 we already reviewed this verse the apostle writes for people swear by something greater than themselves and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation.

So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of his promise, or the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath. and so in chapter 7 we pick up on that theme of the oath in verse 20 and 21 and one of the points that the author is making is that Jesus was made a priest by the oath by God saying you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek and he's comparing the high priesthood of Jesus Christ in the order of Melchizedek to the high priesthood of the high priest of the Aaronic priesthood, Moses' brother Aaron or the Levitical priesthood. And so we've seen that Melchizedek is greater than Levi or Aaron. He was greater than Abraham, the father of the faithful, in fact. and now what he's showing too is that the priesthood itself the establishment of the high priest by the oath was unique because he's telling us in verse 20 the former priests so all those priests of the Levitical priesthood they were not made priests by an oath they became priests through the through the ceremonial laws through the ways that they had to do it and they had a procedure but it wasn't sworn by an oath by God and so the fact that Jesus was made a priest by the oath is the is another example of how this priesthood is better, and it's better in the sense that it's more established.

It's more perpetual. And so because it was made by an oath, and because it's on the basis of his indestructible life, not a legal requirement from verse 16 of Hebrews 7, because Jesus was made priest by this oath, it's permanent it's not something that we need to worry about he's gonna he's gonna die and he won't be the priest anymore and so we're gonna see the author explain that now but just a reminder as we're reading through hebrews the author goes on a lot of what i'll call rabbit trails or side notes, and they're all important. I'm not saying that in any way to diminish their importance.

What I mean, though, is that sometimes the details of the side notes get kind of interesting. And I think there's a phrase people would understand. Sometimes you can miss the forest for the trees. You can become so focused on the details, like, well, who was this Melchizedek guy? which is important to think about and just forget that he's still making a logical argument here which is that the high priesthood that you have now because of christ as your high priest is better than the high priesthood that you had before in the old covenant and so thus jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant This one better It not the same And so the oath that God gave is important So now verse 22, this makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

So what makes it better? Well, there's a lot packed into the idea of it being a better covenant. For one thing, it's not the same covenant. So you have the old covenant, which is the covenant that God made with Moses, and the Israelites were in that covenant, and they were the only people in that covenant, unless there was sojourners or proselytites that entered through the law.

And that covenant was the old covenant. It is the covenant that God made with the house of Israel when he led them out of the land of Egypt. And that covenant had high priests who continuously had to make sacrifices for themselves and for the people. And that covenant had people who would continually not be washed clean by those sacrifices. And the people had to keep the law in that covenant.

The new covenant is a different covenant. This is important because in Presbyterian covenant theology, the new covenant is a new covenant compared to the old covenant. But in Presbyterian covenant theology, they're both still the covenant of grace being administered in different ways. And so we're going to get into a lot more of the covenant stuff in the next few sessions in chapter 8.

But I think that when we start to see all this language about a better covenant, we have to ask ourselves, well, is he talking about the same covenant administered differently? Or is he talking about a different thing entirely that the first one was most surely a type or a shadow of? So, when we say that we believe in Baptist covenant theology, that we believe that the new covenant is the administration of the covenant of grace, whereby God's grace is bestowed through Christ, the high priest and the federal head of that covenant. when we say that he that that covenant is being administered in the new covenant we are we are saying it is different from how god was doing things in the old covenant in a fundamental way in a substantial way in that the actual covenant being administered is different that in the old covenant the high priests were not jesus they were men in the new covenant it's Jesus it's not the same thing the old covenant was not the covenant of grace now Presbyterians will argue that it is but that it was simply being administered differently and now we administer it in a new way and that's where they get ideas like in the old covenant we circumcised our male children in the new covenant we baptize our children and there's a little more to it than just what i you know it's not like they just magically made that connection but that's where they get that idea is that they see a continuity between these covenants the old and the new where there's not as much distinction that we make in what you'd call baptist covenant theology.

And so I've said this before in these sessions, and that is that sometimes we can understand our own theology better by trying to understand others' theology. So, you know, going back to Hebrews 5, if you've trained your powers of discernment for good and evil, and you've trained your senses to be able to understand the scripture, you should be able to read Presbyterians and Presbyterian books, and you should be able to understand what a Presbyterian believes and how it differs from what you believe, and it'll actually help you defend what you believe to understand what other men believe. And so when we start talking about covenants, I'm going to assume what's commonly called 1689 federalism, just that the federal headship of Adam.

He was our covenant head in the covenant of works in the garden. And Jesus Christ is the federal head in the covenant of grace. And if Jesus Christ is your high priest, he's your federal head in this sense. I saw one comment that I read from Calvin, and I didn't write it down, but he just said that the purpose of a priest is to mediate a covenant. And I thought there's more there than in that one sentence that I saw, but I thought, yeah, that makes sense.

That's the purpose of the priest. It's because men innately know that we need to draw near to God. And we're going to see that phrase in Hebrews 7, 25. We know we have to draw near to God. we know that we're unworthy to draw near to God now we deny that in our unrighteousness we make up excuses for our sin and we justify our own sin all the time as sinners but when it comes down to it we know we can't approach God to go in argument from the greater to the lesser every one of us knows that we have some dignity and we have some ability in a sense to say we human and so is the President of the United States but none of us can approach the President of the United States It just that simple If you tried to get close to him you be stopped And you'd be stopped ultimately by, we'll say, the relative dignity or value that our lives seem to have, at least in our status in our society.

And so for me to go to the President of the United States, I would need someone to go between me, Somebody who the president trusts would have to go on my behalf, and that person would have to want to represent me. And so in the case of God, we're taking now the argument from the lesser to the greater. If it's that hard to approach a human king or a human dignitary or a human president, how much harder is it to get to God if you have a sinful nature like we do?

So in order to get to God, we need a mediator of a covenant. And in the Old Testament times, there were mediators. There were priests. In fact, God tells the Israelites that he expects them to be a nation of priests. That was what his challenge to them was, which they failed. And then, of course, the church fulfills that.

And we see that in 1 Peter, that we are a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a people that were called out of darkness to make his marvelous works known to the world. And so in some sense, we're all priests of God mediating on behalf of others. You intercede for others by praying for them. You intercede for sinners. I know that God can save anyone anytime he wants.

And certainly there are people that God has simply chosen he's going to save apart from the prayer of the saints if that's the way he's chosen it. But nobody is saved unless there's somebody interceding on their behalf in prayer, because Jesus Christ prayed for his people. and I would dare say that most of the people that you know that have been saved, everyone on this call we may not know who it is but there's probably a human element who is not divine, so Jesus is also human but a non-divine person acted as a priest on your behalf and beseeched God to save your soul at some time before you were born and God heard that prayer and honored it and so we're priests as well but Jesus is our high priest and he's the guarantor of a better covenant it's guaranteed and why because of his indestructible life so in Hebrews 7 23 he takes us down another one of these paths where he's going to try to he's going to explain to us why this is a better covenant why his indestructible life is so important Hebrews 7 23 the former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office but he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever in the old covenant you had many priests and the reason you had many of them was that they died okay so this this is I don't think this is necessarily a reference to the fact that there was a lot of priests at any one time give me a moment please I don't think this is a reference to many priests I think this is a reference to the fact that there was many high priests that if you look back on Israel's history there would be high priest after high priest after high priest after high priest and the reason there had to be so many high priests even was that they would die you you could not trust that the same high priest that was there today would be there tomorrow thus it was a unstable covenant in that sense where you weren't sure in any way that your side of the Covenant was being kept if you if you thought you could keep it at all in that case because the priest couldn't even be there tomorrow maybe but in Jesus's case he continues forever he has the power of an indestructible life he holds his priesthood permanently and so now the author he's related these two priesthoods he's compared and contrasted them so we've seen comparisons we've seen enough similarity to understand that Jesus is a legitimate high priest for people and we've seen enough of the contrast to see why he's a way better high priest for his people and in fact I argue he's the best possible high priest for his people and so now the author says consequently which one of the things I point out in my family worship in particular especially for kids sometimes it's good to vocalize these things consequently is a transition word and we are so used to reading words that we sometimes can just read through a passage really quickly and we get the general meaning and we don't think about the fact that that's a transition word. It's meant to describe something.

And when you're with your kids, maybe ask them what these words mean. Consequently pretty much means as a consequence of what I previously said. It almost the same as therefore I like the old saying what is the therefore therefore It gets the kids thinking He says consequently he Jesus Christ who continues forever and has the power of an indestructible life, consequently, he is able to save, and then it says, to the uttermost, those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

That one statement is so packed with theology, but it's also packed with so much comfort. Jesus Christ is able to save to the uttermost. That phrase can also be translated like, He's able to save perfectly. Or he's able to save completely. So he's able to do all that is necessary for you. Because, since, he always lives to make intercession for you.

So the idea being that the high priest of the former covenant, of the obsolete covenant of the covenant that did not give a better hope those high priests were not able to completely do anything they were able to do temporarily what they were called to do by God in the covenant they were in a covenant that had a particular goal in mind which was not the salvation of souls by grace a covenant whose goal was primarily to set apart a nation for God and to keep the bloodline of the Messiah available those priests didn't always live to make intercession for their people and so Jesus Christ is able to completely and totally make intercession for each and every one of his people because he always lives. He is the infinite God who has died and rose again, and he holds the keys to death and Hades, and he is the one who will live forever, and he is able to do all that his will would have him do. and if he makes intercession for a sinner because he is inseparable with his father his prayers are heard his mediation is honored and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and this is really important particularly I just mentioned I met a person who was raised in a Nazarene tradition and I realize there's differences in a lot of these denominations and from even church to church but in general nazarenes would teach that you can lose your salvation and and i'm i know they have passages you know and we even looked at a couple in hebrews already where it reads like a person could be a christian and then no longer but you cannot lose a salvation that's been begun in eternity past, before the foundation of the world, and that is mediated by the intercession of an ever-living, perfect, never-dying high priest. And so, in Hebrews 7.26, the author wants to kind of expand for us how perfect Jesus is.

And he says, for it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest. Okay, Jesus Christ. This is the kind of high priest we need. Not the ones from the old covenant that some of these people were still relying on. He says, we need this kind of high priest. Holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. now if you're going to memorize a verse of scripture this year Hebrews 7.26 and I'd say 7.25 and 26 it's a nice pack of verses to memorize there's a lot of good there for you to meditate upon Jesus is holy holy is a word that we use to describe God it's a word that's used to describe the different elements of the worship in the tabernacle In general, it means set apart.

It also has the implication of moral perfection in it. Jesus Christ is holy. He was not like the other priests who they themselves were unholy, but in the old covenant, God honored what they were doing because it was a picture and a shadow of the things to come. Jesus Christ is innocent. He was not guilty of any sin. So when, and we're going to see this, when he came to bring sacrifices, or when the Old Testament priest came to bring sacrifices, they needed sacrifices for their own sin.

Jesus Christ didn't have to do that. When he brought a sacrifice, and in fact became the sacrifice that he brought, he had no sin to atone for. He had no mediation of his own to do. He didn't need to intercede on behalf of himself. He's already one with the Father. So when Jesus Christ brought a sacrifice, that sacrifice couldn't be for him.

It could only be for others, for those for whom he was mediating. It says here he's unstained. Okay, so when you think about the comparison between the priesthoods, in the Old Testament, these priests had a lot of rules they had to follow to remain ceremonially clean. Because, remember, they couldn't touch a dead body. They couldn't touch all sorts of things.

I don't remember all the details. It's part of the beauty of being a new covenant. I'm really a Gentile, for lack of a better phrase, who's been brought into the fold of God. I don't have all the old covenant ceremonial laws memorized. And one of the reasons is I don't really need to know them to be a Christian. Now, are they profitable for me to learn and study?

Sure, but I don't memorize them. I don't know them like these guys had to. These guys had to spend every day concerned that at any moment they could go near somebody or touch somebody or do something that would make them ceremonially unclean because they needed to stay unstained from all these things. Jesus Christ is unstained by nature. Jesus Christ could touch the woman or be touched by the woman even we'll say unintentionally on his part he could be touched by the woman who had the issue of blood and instead of it staining him it cleanses her so that's the difference in the power of this priest and the other priests he cannot be stained by the world whereas the other priests were so easily stained that they had to have all sorts of rules to keep themselves from doing things that would stain them, so that they could come in the presence of God.

We have a high priest who's holy and innocent, he's morally perfect, and he's unstained. When he goes to God and intercedes for you, he's not made dirty by his association with you. he's very different from what we are. Most of us can't be around the world and sinners without ourselves finding ourselves even just sinning in our minds. Even thinking thoughts we shouldn't think.

Jesus was unable to be stained. I don't know, you just imagine like a white shirt and you spill red wine on it, and we all know what would happen to that white shirt. and maybe there's a way to clean it, maybe not sometimes. And in Jesus' case, it's like there's a white shirt and people are slinging mud and dirt and red wine and all sorts of things at him and then none of it sticks because he's the that separated from us.

And then he says separated from sinners. It's indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest. What kind of high priest? One that's holy, one that's innocent, one that's unstained and then separated from sinners. Jesus Christ is altogether different from sinners, while still being human in his nature, so that he can go to God and actually be a high priest on behalf of his brothers, other humans.

But he is separated. Just like priests were supposed to be separate, and just like we, as priests in the New Covenant, we believe in the priests of all believers, just as we are to be separate from sinners in the world, and we are to live a distinct life. We're to be a peculiar people, a called-out people. But Jesus Christ is the zenith of that. He is separated from sinners in such a way that he's not in the same class as other sinners.

So when I go to God and I pray for one of you guys, or if I go to God and pray for my non-believing family member, I'm going as a fellow sinner. And I'm interceding as a priest, but I can only do it through Christ. There is no prayer that God is interested in except the prayers of His Son. And we thank Him that His Spirit prays for us because we don't know how we ought to pray.

And so although your prayers are important, and although your prayers are heard and God values our prayers, he values them on the basis that they are made through the interceder, Jesus Christ. Every other prayer that a human being makes that is not through the mediation of Jesus Christ is an abomination to God. That sounds harsh, but it's true. God is only pleased with his son. we're stained, we're dirty.

But Jesus Christ is separated from sinners, so when he goes to God as your intercessor, making intercession for you because he always lives, God hears his prayer. So if you read the High Priestly Prayer in John 17, and if you read that prayer, and you read it and think, he's talking about me. Now, I know we're not supposed to inject ourselves into Scripture, but he's talking about his people.

He's talking about his bride who he came to save. So you are allowed in those cases to read it as, no, he's talking about me. When it says he's able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, well, you're one of those if you're a Christian. So you're allowed to, and I'm not saying change the scripture and put your name in there, but you're allowed to read it as, yeah, no, this is written to me.

This is a personal thing. This isn just a book God gave to reveal truth about himself so that people with no personal relationship whatsoever toward him are supposed to just exalt him Okay, like if you drive to a new city that you've never been to and you see a big building that somebody made that's great architecture, and maybe for a minute you think, oh, that's beautiful. I praise the creator of that because he did a great job and it's a really nice building.

That's not how our God is. Our God deserves worship because he's so great and so glorious. But he mediates his relationship with us through his son so that we may actually know him personally. So that when you see what Christ has done on your behalf, instead of it just being, wow, it's a really great thing that this guy did, it's, what a wonderful thing he did for me.

There's a personal relation to it that is important and that fuels your worship. Now we should worship him even when we don't feel some of the feelings we get. But we should always recognize that if we're his children, that's a very special position to be in. It's a very meaningful position to be in. It's a better position than every other created thing. all of the holy angels who have never sinned, who have enjoyed the presence of God, they know nothing of sonship.

So being separated from sinners is such an important aspect of Jesus Christ's mediation for us, because although he's separated from sinners, which we are in Adam, he actually makes us saints. And it means that you are separated from sinners. your union with Christ is actually so perfect that everything that can be said about Christ is also said about you. And so you're holy, you're innocent, you're unstained, you're separated from sinners, you're exalted above the heavens in Christ.

But you're separated from sinners as well. You're a different person. This is why you have conflict with sinners. This is why simply being yourself in this world, trying to raise the kids the way the Bible tells you to raise your kids, trying to work the way the Bible tells you to work, trying to vote the way the Bible would tell you to vote, trying to govern a society the way the Bible allows leaders to govern societies, trying to love a wife the way you're supposed to love a wife, for a wife trying to respect her husband the way she ought to respect her husband, this is why sinners hate you.

And I will argue, if you don't have some sinners that hate you, maybe you're not quite as separated from them as the Bible would call you to be. They hated Christ, and they'll hate you too, if you imitate your master. And then finally in 726, this priest, it was fitting that he would be holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and he's also exalted above the heavens. okay and we remember in the in the chapter four we're where we started talking about high priests in 414 he says since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens jesus the son of god let us hold fast our confession this jesus is he's a heavenly high priest.

He has gone into the heavenly places to make intercession for us. In Hebrews 9.24 we're told, for Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands. So he's not that kind of high priest who goes into the tent made by hands, which are copies of the true things. Ooh, so now there's a true thing. So the tabernacle's not even a true thing. He says, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

He's interceding on our behalf in Hebrews 9, 24. In Hebrews 10, verse 12, he says, but when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Hebrews 10, 14, For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. So this Jesus is exalted above the heavens. He is the exalted Son of God.

He has gone into the heavenly place to do all that was necessary to save completely those who will draw near to him. And there is no more work for him to do. In fact, somewhere in here, maybe in other parts of the Bible as well, it says he sat down at the right hand of the Father. He's finished working. And so he is exalted above the heavens. He has gone to the place where the real tabernacle is.

He's gone to the place that isn't just a copy of the true things, and he's made the real atonement for sins, not the earthly, fleshly kind of thing that the Old Covenant could only picture. And I will argue that only being able to picture it is evidence that it is not the covenant of grace. It's not an administration of it. It is simply the covenant that God made with Moses.

And so Jesus has no need, in verse 27 of Hebrews 7, he has no need, like those high priests, the ones who die, to offer sacrifices daily. He doesn need to repeatedly offer a sacrifice to God first for his own sins because he doesn have any So that why we established he holy innocent unstained But he had no need to offer sacrifices daily for his own sins and then for those of the people. He doesn't have to daily even sacrifice for his people that he intercedes for, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.

So Jesus died one time for his people, And his sacrifice, being perfect, being better than the old covenant, because of his indestructible life, was sufficient. And so, you have a refutation of the Roman Catholic error, whereby in the Eucharist they offer Christ's body as a sacrifice, repeatedly. and that's not the only false religion that will do those kinds of things Jesus Christ doesn't have to offer sacrifices repeatedly because he himself wasn't sinless is not sinless still I'm sorry, because he himself was sinless and he is still sinless and because his sacrifice was sufficient to completely save those who draw near to God because of his indestructible life and his perfect priesthood, God will perpetually, we'll say, listen to Jesus' intercession. He doesn't need to make more sacrifices because his sacrifice of himself was perfect.

And so in Hebrews 7, 28, kind of close it up. The law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, so a totally separate thing, Right? The law does one thing, but the oath is a different thing. The old covenant is one thing, the new covenant is another thing. The covenant of works that's based on legal requirements can enact one way, but God's word and the covenant of grace through the federal headship of Jesus Christ is something different.

And it says, the word of the oath, which came later than the law, the law was given first, and we read the oath later in Psalm 110. the law was already there. We already had a priesthood before God announced the priesthood of Melchizedek in Psalm 110. God revealed these things in the order he wants us to understand them so that we can see the pictures of the things that are to come.

Then we can see the heavenly priesthood where a son was appointed who has been made perfect forever. So Jesus is perfect forever. He has completed all his work that he was supposed to complete and there's nothing else for him to do to accomplish anymore. It is finished. So I will stop there and open up the floor for comments or questions or just praises of our Lord, because I don't know how you could listen to this and read this passage and not simply want to exalt Christ somehow. we're going to start um yeah i follow questions but i mean you talk about some amazing revelation um is this passage of scripture i mean seven leading into eight and describing this new covenant it's just it's like it's like if i'm a jew if i'm one of these Hebrews sitting here listening to this and I'm born again, I mean, I don't know how I would be able to contain like so many emotions and thoughts and feelings because this is like, this is the climax.

This is the buildup. This is what you have been waiting for and your ancestors have been waiting for for centuries. Yes. all of these prophecies, all these psalms that were written, all in this monumental climax to this one man, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's just, every time I read this, and you did a really good job, Michael, just talking it through, and just every time you read it, just receiving these things and understanding them by faith and understanding, I mean, just the patience of God for centuries with these people that were so rebellious to him.

He explains the covenant, and, you know, the covenant couldn't make him obey him. There had to be another covenant to come that, you know, would in fact. I know that's more getting into chapter 8, but, yeah, it's just a phenomenal thing to just sit and just bask in the glory of what God did in Christ and how it's our comfort. I mean, for a Christian, you cannot read this and not walk away with some level of comfort.

And that comfort only increases and gets better and better and better the more that you dwell with Christ throughout your life because the more sin you see in yourself as you're sanctified and you think to yourself, wow, he's still my high priest. He's still interceding for me. Yeah, there's just so much that could be said and that's praiseworthy to the Lord in this passage.

But it's just praise the Lord. What else can you say but give him glory and give thanks to his name through Christ. Amen. And you brought up the comfort that we can't possibly not have after reading this. And that's what the author says in 618. He says we who have fled for refuge because of all these unchangeable things the oath and God can lie he says that we might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us You know, we're encouraged that we have an anchor for our soul.

Amen. Anchor in the veil. Yeah, I remember, you know, it's kind of like you said, if you were a Jew sitting there, even when I got saved, I thought, well, great I'm saved I was an uneducated person when I got saved when it came to Christian doctrine and when I started learning that there is this robust logic and development of things and redemptive historical truths that have been revealed and I mean this is mind-blowing like this is so well thought out I just thought well you know Jesus died for me like and that was enough I mean I got me saved but yeah this is so so beautiful yeah I distinctly remember that not quite the exact day I was born again but I remember the time period of which I was born again and everybody kind of has that feeling.

And I had a similar experience, you know, when you're introduced to, like, Calvinism. But then, like, to understand this federal headship teaching of Christ for his people is almost like that same experience. Like, you feel born again, again. Yeah. It's so glorious. And you never lose that love of that doctrine.

He's our federal head. It's just awesome. Well, now you have a reason for your hope. Yeah, exactly. Because I had hope before, and it was a good hope, I guess. But now I actually have a reasoned argument for why I can't lose my salvation.

Why I can, you know, I'm not trying to be antinomian, but why I can continue to sin and I will sin on occasion and I will sin internally more than on occasion probably and yet I'm still going to make it and that's motivation for that holy living that we desire internally but we can't seem to muster up right? and so now when when difficulty comes, when suffering comes, when persecution comes, because I'm separated from sinners, because I'm holy, innocent, unstained from the world, united with a priest who's exalted above the heavens, rather than see my circumstances as my reason for starting to doubt whether I'm one of his children, I actually have the anchor of my soul that's already in the right spot. And then the storms can come, the winds can come, you can hurt this earthly body, but I know where I'm going, I know where my soul belongs, right? Yep.

And that's what we want for other Christians, and that's why we teach some of these things, it's why we teach the sovereignty of God, it's not because we're cage-stage Calvinists, this is because we want Christians to have the security and the assurance that God actually desires that they have. Mm-hmm. Amen. It's a reason to pray, especially pray. It's a reason to take part in all the means of grace because he's the guarantor of a better covenant.

I mean, can you think of a better guarantor than Jesus Christ? Yeah, exactly. yeah that's the thing it says a better but you know what is it Molinism where they have like the best of all possible world don't poison but it is this is the best possible scenario you know what I mean yeah it's not why God picked it it just is but but yeah you couldn't even conceive of something better exactly I heard that as a good definition of God the other day that God's God's gotta be better than whatever you could conceive God to be so Charnock or somebody said something similar yeah the guy might have been quoting Charnock yeah just that you know he's so great and we can't even he is the superlative of everything and we just can't imagine some of the other guys I know are on phones and so they may not be may not be able to speak much so why don't we would you pray Jason Roberts and then we'll close out the meeting. Holy Father, we are so thankful and delighted to be able to come before you this morning through your son, Jesus Christ.

Lord, we are just so grateful, so thankful, and such was your will, Lord, that you would save a people that would offer to you sacrifices of thanksgiving and praise and adoration to you, Lord. And Lord, we are just so thankful to be able to meditate once again to hear teaching of your son the Lord Jesus Christ that he is the guarantor of a better covenant and more we are so thankful that in your wisdom and in your mercy and your great love that which you loved us brought us into this covenant it's it's just remarkable Father, the work that you have done for us. And so we are thankful to our triune God for this wonderful work that our God has done for us.

So I pray that, Lord, you would help us today as we go about our day to not lose this zeal of our love for you, but that, Lord, everything that we encounter today would make us love Christ all the more, and that we would be able to, even in trials today, Lord, be able to bask in the fact that Christ is our mediator. He is our high priest. He's our king.

He's our prophet. He's the one who has guaranteed that we will be in this covenant of grace. And so we pray, Lord, that come what may today, that by evening time we would still be singing your praises and that we would still be completely in a state of thankfulness unto you for what you have done for us this is every reason Lord not to pursue anything sinful but this is every reason to be putting off sin and pursuing Christ our Lord and learning what it is to be righteous and to obey your commandments And it's every reason, Father, to follow Christ.

And so help us today to do that, Lord. We cannot do it without your Holy Spirit. So, Father, grant us your Spirit and grant us a willing heart. Grant us contrite hearts. Grant us broken spirits, realizing our weakness, but realizing that Christ's grace is sufficient. So please, Lord, bless us with that grace.

In Christ's name, amen. Amen. Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us, and I also have a personal website, michaelcoughlin.net. you can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures