Good afternoon, my dear brothers and sisters. I am so blessed to be here among you and to have this opportunity to have some fellowship in God’s Word, in His presence.
Some of you know that I’ve had a real struggle learning Portuguese. I think maybe, in the nine years I’ve been there, I’ve learned ten words. And I want to teach you nine of them today.
Now, these are very simple ones, and I trust that all of you will learn how to speak this sentence in Portuguese. Very simple words, so all of you should be able to learn.
The first little word is eu. We pronounce it with an “el” sound: el. Everybody can say, “El.”
The second one is te amo. Then, em Cristo. “Eu te amo em Cristo.”
Now, do you know what I said? My response to you is, “Também.” So, before I give you the translation, I’m going to say it to you, and you say “também” to me, okay?
“Eu te amo em Cristo.”
Now, you say, “Eu te amo em Cristo.”
We’re not doing very good, are we? But what did I teach you?
You know, dear brothers and sisters, our Lord Jesus, on the night that He was betrayed, said to His disciples:
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
Now, I don’t think there is anything more important in the lives of those who are followers of our Lord Jesus Christ than for us to put this into practice.
And I’d like to encourage us to begin—if you haven’t already begun—in this process of manifesting the Lord’s love to your brothers and sisters, that you begin by simply saying it in Portuguese. Because, you know, when we say it in our native language, we sometimes feel awkward, because you know what it says: “I love you in Christ.”
And também means, “I also love you.” So maybe those of you who may have some reservation about really saying this in your native language—maybe this would help us get beyond that awkward state and begin to say to one another that we really do love one another in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, it needs to be more than words, but maybe this is a good place for us to start. “Eu te amo em Cristo.” “Também.” Okay? May the Lord help us.
Now, as I am here before you this afternoon, and I’ve heard my brother Dana share, and my dear brother Stephen, what I want to do is say, “Amen,” and dismiss you. But I guess that’s not being very responsible.
But I feel, along with my two brothers, how overwhelming this whole matter of spiritual inheritance really is. We saw from what our brothers shared with us last night: it begins in the first book in the Bible, and it goes all the way to the last book in the Bible.
And they shall reign with Him for ever and ever.
That is our heritage. Oh, hallelujah, my brothers and sisters.
So, when I began to think about how I could share what was in my heart with you, brothers and sisters, I remembered an experience that I had—I think it was in 1976 or 1977. A brother in the Lord invited us to come and visit them in Rome, New York.
Now, this was in April. When we arrived there, there was still six feet of snow on the sides of the road, so they had had a very difficult winter.
We had gotten there, gotten our rest, and gotten up the next morning to have breakfast together. I looked out the window of their kitchen, and there was this big pot out in the yard, with a fire burning under it.
I said to my brother, “What’s happening out there?” “Oh,” he said, “we are making maple syrup.”
So I just accepted it. Then I remembered that, as a child, we used to do the same thing. We would drill holes in the maple trees twice a year, when the sap was going up and when the sap was coming down. My mother would take this sap, and she would make some syrup for us.
Then I said to my brother, “My dear brother, how many gallons of sap does it take to make one gallon of maple syrup?” Anybody have the answer? How many?
“Forty-six,” he told me. Forty-six gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. That’s what I feel like. Even after I felt like the Lord made it clear to me that He wanted me to focus just in the letter to the Hebrews, I still felt like there were forty-six gallons of sap in the container.
So, brothers and sisters, I trust that you’ll receive this as a way of encouragement in one sense, because our inheritance is beyond human ability to comprehend—just what we have recorded in the Word of God.
And I won’t be a bit surprised to find out that there is a lot more included than what we find in the Word of God. Now, I’m not going to try to go there. But what I am saying to you is that what we have in our Lord Jesus Christ is beyond human understanding.
Therefore, I hope you will be patient with us as we try to share and fellowship what little bit the Lord has made real to us. We are going to focus most of our time—almost the entire time—in the letter to the Hebrews. This will be helpful, I’m sure, to those who are translating.
Let’s begin by looking in Hebrews 9. This is the verse that caught my heart in the beginning: Hebrews 9:15.
The writer has reference to our Lord Jesus:
For this cause He is the mediator of a new covenant, that a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they that have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
An eternal inheritance. Now, I want us to look at five other places in the Hebrew letter, and then three other places in the Scriptures, in reference to this matter of eternal things.
Let’s go, first of all, back to Hebrews 5. Hebrews 5:9:
And having been made perfect, He became unto all them that obey Him the author of eternal salvation; named of God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
Then Hebrews 6:2. We are picking it up in the middle of a sentence: “Of the teaching of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.”
So, in Hebrews 5:9 it is eternal salvation. Here, in Hebrews 6:2, it is eternal judgment.
Now let’s go back to Hebrews 9. First of all, Hebrews 9:12:
Nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption.
Then Hebrews 9:14:
How much more shall the blood of Christ, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Notice: Hebrews 9:12, eternal redemption; Hebrews 9:14, eternal Spirit.
Now let’s turn to the last chapter of the Hebrew letter and read Hebrews 13:20. This is the writer’s prayer:
Now the God of peace, Who brought again from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus, make you perfect in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to Whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Now, brothers and sisters, when we begin to consider this matter of spiritual inheritance, I find it very, very encouraging to see that this writer frames our inheritance in an eternal way.
It seems to me that when we talk about something eternal, it had to be in existence before there was anything created. Before there was a heaven or an earth, this inheritance was already a reality. That is, it was a reality in the heart of God before there was anything created—before the heavens, before the earth, before the angels, before man. This inheritance was already a reality in God.
Now, you and I, as mere mortals, do not have the capacity to think in eternal terms. Certainly, by the working of the Holy Spirit, we can get a glimpse into this eternal realm. But for you and me to be able to explain it, it is beyond our ability.
And so, it means that this spiritual inheritance that is ours in Christ originated in the heart of God in eternity. I even hesitate to say “eternity past,” “eternity present,” or “eternity future.” This is our way of trying to make some sense out of eternity, but I think sometimes we may create bigger confusion by our efforts to make sense out of eternity.
The fact is, brothers and sisters, eternity is eternity. There are no watches, no calendars, no way to measure time. This began when God began to create. So before God ever created anything, it seems to me that this matter of an inheritance was already something that was deep in His own heart.
So, brothers and sisters, when you and I begin to meditate, think, and fellowship about this spiritual inheritance that is in our Lord Jesus Christ—which belongs to every born-again child of God, no exceptions—remember Romans 8:16–17:
The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God:
And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.
So, brothers and sisters, God had this plan in His heart from eternity. We do not know how long—forever—because our God is an eternal God.
I do not want to go back and look at all those different facets that we mentioned here in the Hebrew letter, but I think it may underline something for us if we look at three other passages in the New Testament regarding this matter of eternal things.
Let’s go first of all—well, I’ll just quote them for you. If you want to turn there, you can. Romans 6:23:
For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now, my dear brothers and sisters, the only place I know of that you can get eternal life is in an eternal Being. And there is only one eternal Being, and that is God Himself.
So when we receive eternal life, in reality we receive the eternal life of this eternal God. It is a gift, not something you have earned. It is something that you are given as an absolute free gift.
And He, the blessed eternal Spirit, brings this eternal life and puts it into our human spirit, and we are born again, born from above. So we now have God’s eternal life dwelling in us.
Again, I say to you, this is the inheritance of every child of God. Everyone who has put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ already has, as an absolute free gift—whether you know it or not—God’s own eternal life placed in them by the Holy Spirit.
When we believe in the Lord Jesus, he who hath the Son hath the life. It is that simple. It is not complicated. Only God can do it, but it is not complicated.
Then we discover in Ephesians 3:11, “The eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The eternal purpose.
Our brother Stephen this morning helped us to see that this matter of our inheritance is connected to God’s purpose. So God’s eternal purpose is related to our eternal inheritance. Hallelujah.
This is not just some off-the-cuff thing that God has done. There was much—I do not know what happened in the Godhead, what kind of counsel They had that caused Them to make this decision about all these things. I am just so glad that we have enough revelation to know that our God is doing something eternal, and He is doing it in you and me.
The last reference that I want to mention is 1 Peter 5:10:
And the God of all grace, Who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, establish, strengthen you.
Who has called us to His eternal glory? Did I hear a hallelujah? Hallelujah.
Now notice: this is all something that God Himself has done. Nothing has been done by any human being. So it is all cast in this dimension of eternal things: eternal life, eternal salvation, eternal redemption, the eternal Spirit, the eternal inheritance, the eternal covenant, eternal glory, and eternal purpose.
Oh, brothers and sisters, may the blessed Holy Spirit write this so deeply on our hearts that when we encounter—and we will encounter—suffering, we will remember what Peter said: “After ye have suffered a little while.”
And when Paul, in Romans 8, says those who are heirs and joint-heirs will be glorified with Him if they suffer with Him, certainly we need to get some clarity about what is involved in this matter of suffering. But we should make it very clear to ourselves: there is no other way.
This inheritance cannot become ours experientially unless we go through some experiences of suffering. We need to look at this very clearly and see that this is the teaching of God’s Word, not just here.
You can go, for instance, to 2 Corinthians 4, where Paul says that momentary light affliction is producing an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. An eternal weight of glory.
Now, I am waiting to sit down and have a conversation with my brother Paul so he can explain to me more clearly what he meant by an eternal weight. But I do not have to understand it in order to receive it as God’s wonderful, wonderful gift to us.
So, brothers and sisters, please do not become so enmeshed, so caught up in what is happening here on this earth, that you lose sight of the fact that you have been brought into something that is eternal. That means it did not have a beginning, it never changes, and it will not have an end.
You remember in 1 Peter 1, I think it is verses 3 and 4, an inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, and fadeth not away. I have forgotten some of the other language Peter uses, but you can look for yourselves.
So, brothers and sisters, I do not know what else I can say to you. The Lord has made real to me that there is nothing more God can do. He has done it all. He has put it all in His Son and given His Son to us as an absolute free gift.
We will never discover anything of any eternal value outside of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we need to get to know Him, and we need to learn how to enter experientially into that which is ours in Him.
You know the chorus we sang: “He is my all in all.” Is that just words, or is that reality to you?
When you go back and are living in your day-by-day existence, whether it be in New York City or out on a beautiful farm someplace, is He your all in all?
How about when you and your wife are having difficulties, or you and your husband are having a disagreement? Is He your all in all?
What about when you are having an encounter with a difficult brother or sister? Is He your all in all?
Oh, it is not difficult for us to sing the song. But, brothers and sisters, may the Holy Spirit underline it in whatever way is necessary to make it clear once for all to every one of us gathered here this afternoon.
I am asking for myself, and I hope you will remind me from time to time. When somehow you hear me saying something that indicates I am not allowing Him to be my all in all, you can say, “Ernie, you remember? You remember?” This is loving one another.
So, brothers and sisters, we have become heirs of an eternal inheritance.
Paul also, in Ephesians 3, said that he had been commissioned by God to go and preach to the Gentiles—not the Jews, not his fellow Jews, but to the Gentiles—the unfathomable, unsearchable, inexhaustible riches of Christ.
Now, is that just a sentence in the Bible, or is this reality? Is there in our Lord Jesus Christ an unfathomable, inexhaustible, unsearchable supply of all that we will ever need?
Starting today, if you have not already entered into it—and I know you have in some way, or otherwise you are not even a child of God—I want to say to you that my little bit of understanding is that we are going to be spending eternity discovering these riches.
How long does it take to measure the unfathomable? How long does it take to find the unsearchable? How long, my brothers and sisters? Eternity.
But we do not have to wait until we are ushered into the age to come to begin this wonderful, wonderful experience. You have already tasted of the world to come by believing in the Lord Jesus, and the Father has given the absolute best to us in the Person of His Son.
So I hope that somehow this will cause us to be hungry and thirsty for all that God has provided for us in our Lord Jesus Christ. That is what I want us to focus some time on this afternoon.
Now, let’s go back to the Hebrew letter. I do not know what your understanding is when you read and meditate about this letter, but in some ways it is an unusual letter. The writer himself calls it a word of exhortation.
Now, I cannot remember meeting anybody who ever said to me, “Ernie, I love to be exhorted. It is just the most wonderful experience for somebody to exhort me.” I have never met anybody. Have you?
Maybe there are a few around who, perhaps for the wrong reason, like this. Maybe it somehow makes us try to overcome our guilt when someone can tell us what horrible, miserable persons we are and how horribly we are living our lives.
But, brothers and sisters, this whole letter, from the very beginning to the end, is the heart of love of our God speaking to His covenant people so that they will enter into the fullness of all the heritage that is theirs in the Lord Jesus Christ.
What we want to try to do is look at this from two vantage points. First of all, to consider together the matter of the covenant, the new covenant that God has made with us through the blood of His own Son. Secondly, if we have time, to fellowship about our great High Priest, our blessed Lord Jesus.
You know, dear brothers and sisters, we do such harm to ourselves when we do not allow the Word of God to teach us the reality of what is happening.
I do not know, but it seems to me sometimes, in my conversation with many of God’s dear people, they think our Lord Jesus has been on a two-thousand-year vacation—that after He finished His work on the cross, was buried, resurrected, and ascended, He has been seated at His Father’s right hand, at the right hand of Majesty, on a two-thousand-year vacation.
It simply is not the truth. I do not know if this is correct for me to say, but it seems to me that He has been more engaged since He went there than He was when He was here. He continues to do a very, very necessary work.
Without His work as our great High Priest, we will never come into our inheritance.
I say to you, I have listened to the prayers of God’s people, and it is very few who ever identify our Lord Jesus as our great High Priest. But, brothers and sisters, no High Priest, no inheritance.
If all our understanding is mental understanding about the finished work of our Lord Jesus and a mental understanding about what He has been doing for these two thousand years after He has been exalted, then we are not entering into our inheritance. All you have is a mental understanding.
But this mental understanding needs to become a revelation. As our brother Stephen mentioned to us this morning, the eyes of our hearts need to be opened to see.
Now, we cannot take a complete, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree look at the whole thing at one time. But we can go degree by degree, with the help of the Holy Spirit opening our eyes and helping us see some of this tremendous heritage, this spiritual heritage that is ours in the Lord Jesus.
As our brother Stephen said, when they went into the land, they did not possess the land immediately. They had to put their feet down. Wherever they put their feet down, even though it was theirs, it was not theirs experientially until they put their feet down.
Now, that is what I have in my heart for tomorrow: possessing our possession, inheriting, experiencing the reality of our inheritance. But today I want us to focus, rather than trying to explain so many of the details, on the relationship between our inheritance and the covenant that God has made with us through His own Son.
Let’s go back to Hebrews 8 and look at what the writer says, quoting from Jeremiah 31, beginning in Hebrews 8:10:
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
After those days, saith the Lord;
I will put My laws into their mind,
And on their heart also will I write them:
And I will be to them a God,
And they shall be to Me a people.
And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen,
And every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord:
For all shall know Me,
From the least to the greatest of them.
For I will be merciful to their iniquities,
And their sins will I remember no more.
Brothers and sisters, this is a word that the prophet Jeremiah spoke. Maybe we ought to add to this just one verse from Ezekiel 36. I think it may help us put it in a fuller light.
Ezekiel 36:26–27:
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep Mine ordinances, and do them.
Now, this is a new covenant. We are not going to try to spend much time comparing the old covenant to the new. If you find that helpful, you can do it on your own. You can take this letter to the Hebrews and diligently search it, and get some clarity about the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant.
Because I am concerned, my dear brothers and sisters, that too many of us are still living under the old covenant and not experiencing the fullness, the reality, of the new covenant that God has established through His own Son.
So, let’s look for just a moment at what Jeremiah says about this new covenant. Four things we find here.
First of all, where is the law to be written? Where is God going to put His law? Under the old covenant, it was put on stone—something outward that men could see with their eyes.
It is not that they could not understand. It was very easy to understand: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” It does not take a Ph.D. to understand that, or any of the other commandments.
But what was the problem? Why did God find it necessary to establish a new covenant? Because they were unable to keep the old.
If God just makes another new covenant but does not find a way for those with whom He is making covenant to fulfill the covenant, it is not better than the old one.
But this is the thing that is so different and so wonderful about this new one. First of all, where does He put the laws? In our minds, and writes them on our hearts.
Now, you see, with Ezekiel He says, “I’m not just going to put My law in your old heart.” What is He going to do? He is going to give you a new heart.
And even with a new heart, that is not enough. What does He do? He puts His own Spirit inside. So the new Spirit is there to convey the law of God to our new heart.
Now, here is what has come to my own understanding: I think this new covenant was not made with the Adamic race. Did you hear me?
This new covenant was not made with Adam and his descendants. This new covenant is made with the new creation that began in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Head of a new humanity.
“If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation.” These are the ones with whom God has made this new covenant—not with Adam.
Because Adam, no matter how good the covenant is, cannot fulfill it. We find in Romans 8 that those who are in the flesh cannot please God, because they have a nature that makes it impossible for them to please God.
So what does God have to do? He has to do something in addition to what the children of Israel had. There has to be a new man, a new human being—the one Paul calls the inner man.
You know, Paul talks about the inner man and the outer man, and Brother Nee mentions the outermost man. But God’s covenant—the heritage, the inheritance that is ours—belongs to the new man, not the old one.
Now, this is liberating, brothers and sisters. Otherwise, where do you end up? You end up in Romans 7.
You are trying to fulfill God’s desire by your old fleshly nature. And if the apostle Paul—if there was anybody who could have done it—it would have been the apostle Paul.
What did God have to do with him? What did the Lord have to do with him? Take him through experiences where his own testimony was:
I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.
Any amens? Not loud enough. I am talking about yourself. Is there any good thing in you, in your flesh, that can do the will of God? How radical are you with this issue? Is this just a nice-sounding spiritual phrase?
No. If you are trying to fulfill, to enter into and experience your inheritance through the efforts of your old man, you are destined for the same place Paul came to. What was his place?
O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?
He did not say “Hallelujah,” but I feel like he wanted to say, “Hallelujah! Thanks be unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It has been done—not the way we would have done it, but God found His own way. And He is the wise One. He did it the right way.
How does He get us to stop sinning, brothers and sisters? There is only one kind of sinner who does not sin. You know what kind? A dead one. That is the only kind of sinner who does not sin.
And our problem is that we are still trying to take that old sinner and get him to do the will of God. I want to plead with you: if you are still in that mode, you can call a halt to it right now, because it is foolishness. It is a waste of time. It will not accomplish it.
You will not enter into the further dimensions of your spiritual heritage by trying to live by your own human energy, strength, wisdom, or whatever else you are proud of and think you can depend on and rely on.
To me, brothers and sisters, it is good news. It is liberating news that God has chosen to make a covenant with a new man who has a new heart, who has the Spirit of God living in him to enable him to keep his side of the covenant.
Why do we think we are different from Israel? Why? It is foolishness on our part. Somehow we have been deceived. I am not sure how, but we have been deceived into believing that somehow we have an advantage over Jews—that Christian flesh is better than Jewish flesh.
It simply is not true. And it is true no matter how old you are.
Dear young brother and sister, you can begin today to enter in, in a rich, rich way, to your inheritance, if you will begin to recognize who you are in Christ. Recognize that new man. Let the Holy Spirit help you understand and bring you into this knowing.
So God’s law under the new covenant is not something outward. It is something inward. It is in our innermost being.
I do not know if you have read the letter to the Romans recently, but it has been a book that has been so precious to me for the last few years.
When we get to Romans 8, you know the feeling I have when I read those first seven chapters? Paul has something inside. He is waiting to get there. He has something he wants to blurt out as loudly as he can.
But before he can do that, he has to tell us about the other factors related to this whole issue. So what does he want to say?
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
That is what he wants to say. But he cannot say it in the previous seven chapters, because we have the guilt of sin, we have the power of sin, we have the law that we are still trying to keep, and we spend much of our time trying to deal with those issues.
Now, they need to be dealt with. But we need to let the Holy Spirit deal with them. How do we put to death the deeds of the flesh? By our own human effort? No. Romans 8:13: by the Spirit, putting to death the deeds of the body. That is how.
You do not have the strength in you. You do not have the wisdom. As a matter of fact, you do not have the courage. Sorry. You do not have the courage to put your old man to death. You love him too much. He means too much to you.
Now, how can I say that about you? Because I know me. And I think maybe you and I are both descendants of Adam. I think you have the same kind of problem I have.
But hallelujah, my dear brothers and sisters, our God has provided a solution. That is to put the Spirit of God inside of us and give us the wisdom, the strength, the courage, and whatever else we need to eradicate from our lives the things that are not supposed to be there.
Then we can enter in, in a full, rich, wonderful, overflowing way, to this new covenant that He has made with us.
So, in Romans 8, after saying there is now no condemnation, Paul tells us one of the reasons why:
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
Think about it. How many laws of the Spirit? One. Our God, in His great wisdom and His great love to us, has taken the whole thing and reduced it down to one law: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
When do you experience that? When does this become yours? The very second you believe in the Lord Jesus. In that life that we have received as a gift is this law. We need to learn how to recognize and obey that law.
It simply means to walk by the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit, by the Spirit to put to death, to pray in the Spirit, to worship in the Spirit—everything to be done out of the energy and leadership of the indwelling Spirit of God in us.
This is a most important and necessary part of this new covenant. And, brothers and sisters, without this new covenant, it is impossible for you and me to enter into our inheritance.
Now, I do not particularly like reading books when I am sharing, but there are two books that I found very helpful as I thought about and considered this whole matter of our spiritual heritage.
I am not trying to sell books, okay? But I am one beggar telling some other beggars where to get some bread. And I am telling you, I found some very precious food in these two books.
The first one is by our brother Watchman Nee, entitled The Better Covenant. I want to read just one paragraph of what he has to say about the relationship between the covenant and our inheritance.
It is under the title, “The Relationship Between the Blood and the Covenant.” Listen to what he has to say:
What is the relation between blood and covenant? We may say that blood is the foundation while covenant is a document. The blood lays the foundation of the covenant, and the covenant reveals the document established in the blood.
Without the blood, no covenant can be inaugurated, nor will it be effective. God enumerates in the covenant all the inheritance He is giving us.
I want to read that again, okay? Listen carefully:
God enumerates in the covenant all the inheritance He is giving us. And this covenant He seals with the blood of the Lord Jesus. It is on the ground of this new covenant of the blood of the Lord Jesus that we come into our spiritual inheritance.
Do I need to read it again? It is on the ground of this new covenant that we come into our spiritual inheritance.
Please, my brothers and sisters, I am just trying to find a way to encourage us. But I discovered for myself, and I am concerned that it may be true with too many of the Lord’s people, that we are ignorant of what is available to us as members of the new covenant.
Even though we have a desire to go on, if we are still living under the old covenant and not fully taking advantage of what God has provided in the new covenant, the result will be failure on our part. We will not enter into or experience the inheritance that is ours because we are members of a new covenant.
Now, you know where this new covenant originated. Well, it is an eternal covenant, so where did it originate? It originated in the heart of God.
But the last night when our Lord Jesus was having the Passover meal with His disciples, He took a cup of wine, held it up, and said, “This is the new covenant in My blood.” Oh, hallelujah.
The Father and the Son made a covenant, and we become members of that covenant when we put our faith in Him. All the benefits of this new covenant are ours.
Because the Father finally found a Man, a human Being, to Whom He could entrust Himself totally. Therefore, through His precious blood, a covenant was made and sealed.
It is an eternal, permanent, never-changing covenant between God the Father and God the Son. You and I enter into it and experience the reality of it through our faith and our obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ.
So He puts His law into our minds and writes them upon our hearts because the Holy Spirit is living inside of us.
But you know what I think, my dear brothers and sisters? Let me try to illustrate it this way. A couple of months ago, my family and I were invited to be a part of a wedding.
A brother lived close to where the wedding was going to be, and he heard that we were going to come. He had two houses on a beautiful lake, and he said, “Why don’t you come and spend the weekend in my house?”
Another brother had to come and translate for me. We arrived there. His name was José Raimundo, a very successful businessman, but a very, very precious brother.
I want you to hear what he said to me and to my brother in the Lord when we arrived. He said, “Ernie, make yourself at home. Anything that is here, any food that is here, anything you need, you just feel free to use all of it.”
Dear brothers and sisters, I would like to encourage us this afternoon to say the same thing to the Holy Spirit: “Make Yourself at home.”
“You have freedom to go into any area of my life. If You find something there that is not pleasing to my heavenly Father, I want to cooperate with You to eradicate it from my life, so that I can enter in, in a fuller way, to this new covenant that God has made with me.”
So if you have not already done it, do not let too many hours go by. Find a place. Find a time. You get alone and say to the blessed Holy Spirit—now, you can do a setting there, but I would encourage you to make it a little bit more serious than that. Go find a time and a place. Put down your Ebenezer.
Say, “This is a day I want things to change in my life. From this day forward, I want the Holy Spirit to have free access to every part of my life. I will seek to be sensitive to Him, listen to His voice, and by His help, I will seek to obey my Lord.”
Now, this sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it, brothers and sisters? But this is new covenant. The only way—the only way—you and I can ever even think about entering into the fullness of this new covenant is if we allow the Spirit of God, Who has been placed inside of us, to be Lord, and if we learn to hear His voice.
Now, the second thing that the covenant says, in the last part of Hebrews 8:10, is:
I will be to them a God,
And they shall be to Me a people.
Oh, brothers and sisters, can you believe this God? We were His enemies. We demonstrated it.
Yet He still says, under the new covenant, when our Lord Jesus shed His blood and took that blood into the Holy of Holies of heaven and sprinkled it upon the mercy seat, that covenant was established.
And that means that God will be your God no matter what. No matter what you do, He will still be your God.
And He will enable us to be His people, to have a living, loving, wonderful relationship with Him.
You remember John 17:3. Our Lord Jesus is praying to His Father, and this is what He says:
And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
Oh, my dear brothers and sisters, we need to give more serious consideration to the fact that God—the only true God, the eternal God—is our God. I think we take this for granted too much.
There is no way that you can enter into life in any meaningful way unless you have a god. Now, the problem is that we have had the wrong one.
Who has been our god? Well, in some ways we have been serving Satan, whether we knew it or not. We find it in that passage in Acts: “To deliver them from the dominion of Satan unto God.” So, in one sense, we could say that the god of this world has been our god.
We did not know it, maybe, but that did not make any difference. We were still serving him.
But do you know who else is often our god? I have a book in my library entitled The Kingdom of Self.
You know the biggest obstacle to us entering in and fully enjoying our inheritance in Christ? It is that person you look at in the mirror every morning.
It is not your husband or your wife. It is not even Satan. You are the only one—I am the only one—who can prevent me from fully experiencing all that is mine in the Lord Jesus Christ.
In that sense, I have become my own god. He needs to be dethroned, and you need to let God be God in your life. You need to serve Him, honor Him, reverence Him, and have a great respect for Him. He is God.
Sometimes we forget that even though we can call Him Father, He is God. I have two sons. They are five years apart in age. But when they were ten and five, one of the things they enjoyed doing was getting down on the floor and wrestling with their dad.
But you know the problem? Sometimes they forgot it was Dad they were wrestling with. Because it became so common, so ordinary—just something kids do—they began to do things and take advantages of Dad that were not appropriate.
Now, I want to encourage us not to do that with our God. He is God. He is Almighty God. He is the eternal God. He is the holy, righteous, sovereign God.
And even though we can call Him Father, we should never, ever, ever forget that He is God. He is our God. We ought to rejoice that we have a God Who is full of compassion, Who is merciful, Who gives grace upon grace upon grace, and never stops giving.
But that does not give us any liberty at all to somehow think wrongly about Him, say things that are insulting about Him, or in any way show any kind of disrespect. We are His people, hallelujah, but He is our God.
The third thing that the new covenant tells us is that we shall all know Him, from the least to the greatest.
My young brothers and sisters, hallelujah, I want to tell you: you do not have to wait until you get gray hair to grow in your knowing of the Lord.
As a matter of fact, some of us who have gray hair still have miles to go before we sleep. Some of us wasted a lot of years going the wrong direction. But I am saying to you, it is not necessary.
You can start right now. From the least to the greatest, from the youngest to the oldest, the day you come to know the Lord—you can begin to know Him.
Isn’t that interesting? We use that language: “The day I came to know the Lord.” But it seems like the knowing stops there. How long do you think it is going to take us to know Him? Eternity? I think so. But you can start now.
The Holy Spirit, the blessed Holy Spirit of the eternal God, the eternal Spirit, is living inside of you. If you are a child of God, if you have had a real experience of believing in the Lord Jesus, then He is already there.
He will help you in every conceivable way to bring you into a fuller and richer knowing of your God in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The fourth thing He says is:
I will be merciful to their iniquities,
And their sins will I remember no more.
Now, when you read what different people have to say about this, there are different ways of looking at it. There is no question, my dear brothers and sisters, in my understanding of the Scriptures, that the only way we can come into our living relationship with our heavenly Father through our Lord Jesus Christ is for us to be justified.
Something has to be done about the sins we have already committed. Well, hallelujah, the blood of Jesus Christ answers for all those sins.
But here is what I get from this: just because you are forgiven, does that mean you have stopped sinning?
Anybody here? Is that your experience—that as soon as you knew God’s forgiveness, from that day forward you never sinned again? Is that your experience?
Then what do you do with the rest of the sins? What do you do with the sins you committed afterwards? They accumulate. Well, they can, but it is not necessary.
Because 1 John—listen, 1 John 2:1:
My little children, these things write I unto you that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
Brothers and sisters, our God is not playing games with us. He could never say to us, “I write these things to you that you may not sin,” unless it were possible.
How is it possible? What is the only kind of sinner who does not sin? A dead one. So you need to go to Romans 6:
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin.
You should be able to say, “Hallelujah! I do not have to continue trying to improve him anymore. God’s solution was to execute him through crucifixion.”
What do we need to say? Amen. No, amen. Amen. But it needs to be an amen followed by reckoning the old man to be dead when the opportunity comes—and it will come many times every day.
Romans 6:11:
Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.
So, brothers and sisters, it is not necessary. That does not mean you will not sin, but a provision has been made in this new covenant. You do not have to continue to sin, because Someone is living inside of you for Whom it is impossible to sin: Christ living in you.
“Christ is my life.” “No longer I who live, but Christ liveth in me.” If He is living in me, then you cannot sin. It is impossible for Him to sin. If He ever sinned, the whole universe would collapse, and you and I would not be here talking about it.
So when we obey His life, then we will not sin. But you remember in 1 John:
My little children, these things write I unto you that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
And if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us. I am not saying this does not include what happened previously, but, brothers and sisters, you and I need to know experientially that this is our inheritance.
You do not have to go on feeling the guilt and weight of unconfessed sin. It does not give you a license to sin, but hallelujah, in the new covenant a provision has been made, and you and I are to be living in the good of it.
It does not need to be just a teaching. Certainly, we need to be taught, but it is something we need to practice.
When the Holy Spirit makes it clear to us that you have done something displeasing to your Lord, do not be so stubborn. Learn to repent. Learn to face reality. Learn to turn your back on it. Learn to ask for forgiveness and take the cleansing, so you can go on fully enjoying your inheritance in a fuller way.
Well, brothers and sisters, the time is gone. But I want to say to you: there is no excuse. I am sorry—there may be reasons. Maybe you are not informed the way you ought to be. But I want to say to us this afternoon, in my understanding of the Word of God, there is no excuse for us to go on living lives that are dishonoring to our Lord.
A provision has been made. We have Someone living inside of us Who can enable us to overcome in any and every situation.
Now, are we going to live in it one hundred percent? I am telling you, I cannot. I will say I cannot—if I do what the Lord requires. But I do not always do it.
That does not mean you and I should not have it as our goal, our destiny: to have this as a reality in our lives.
I do want to fellowship for a few moments about our Lord Jesus as our great High Priest. But before we do that, what is this inheritance that God is looking for in us?
Our brother Stephen this morning pointed out to us that there are two dimensions to this inheritance: our inheritance in Him and His inheritance in us.
I think what our brother said was absolutely true. To me, it is the same: it is Christ. Christ is our inheritance. But what is God looking for in you and me?
Our own self-righteousness? Our own human effort? Our good platitudes? Our having memorized whole books of the Bible? That could help, but that is not what He is looking for.
There are some verses in Romans 8, and I think we find the same thing in the Hebrew letter. I think this writer of the Hebrew letter had a deep heart burden to find a way to help these dear brothers and sisters enter into the fullness of this eternal inheritance in the Lord Jesus Christ.
What was happening? They started, but they did not get very far. They had a wonderful experience—read about it in Hebrews 6. Would to God that all of us had a beginning experience like what is described there.
But what happened? They fell away. They started going another direction. Their inheritance was no longer beautiful to them.
How did our brother Dana write that song? “My inheritance is beautiful to me.” It was no longer beautiful to them.
But, brothers and sisters, there is no reason why it cannot be beautiful to us. It should be, because it is the Person.
What can we find wrong with our Lord Jesus? Have you found anything in Him that you could put your finger on and say, “I do not like that. I do not want to be like that”? Have you found anything?
Then why? What happens to us, that somehow it no longer remains something so precious, so beautiful?
Somehow we get distracted. We allow other things to get in the way and blind us to the reality of what is ours, and we settle for a counterfeit.
The enemy is an expert on counterfeits, and you and I become satisfied with counterfeit.
I want to plead with you: for the sake of what God wants in you—to have the character of His Son fully formed in you—do not let yourself get involved in things that are going to somehow invade your life and prevent you from allowing the Holy Spirit to complete His work in you.
If it could happen to these dear brothers and sisters whom we find in the Hebrew letter, brothers and sisters, it can happen to us too. It has happened to thousands and thousands of God’s dear people—not because He wants it that way, but because we are foolish, very foolish at times.
Paul says, “Do not be foolish.” I would underline that, saying it first of all to myself: “Ernie, do not be foolish.” And, my brothers and sisters, do not be foolish.
Do not sell out. Do not be an Esau who sold his heritage for a bowl of soup. Oh, brothers and sisters, how foolish.
Do not forget: you cannot make these kinds of decisions and not have consequences. We think that because our God is a God of mercy and grace, somehow there will not be any consequences to the foolish decisions that we make.
Were there consequences in the lives of the believers to whom this letter was written? You better believe there were. Read Hebrews 10.
I do not want it to become negative, but you need to face reality. What an exhortation is, is honest, sincere warnings on one side, and on the other side, strong encouragement.
Brothers and sisters, there is no human being in the whole world today who has more reason to be encouraged than those of us gathered here in this place this afternoon.
We are in covenant with a living God—a new covenant. Everything that is needed for life and godliness has been abundantly supplied. There is never an emergency in these situations.
Do you want to know what you can do to bring great joy? Enter in and be a full participating member in this new covenant.
Now, the amazing thing is that we are so hopeless as descendants of Adam’s race that, even if the covenant is there, we still need a lot of help.
So what did our heavenly Father do? He chose to make His Son not just our Savior, not just our Redeemer, not just our Shepherd, but our great High Priest.
Do you know what He is doing for you right now? Are you aware? I mean, is this reality? Do you know what He is doing right now on behalf of all of us who are gathered here?
He is interceding for us.
He is pleading with the Father that we will find a way to hear what He has to say, that we will find in this new covenant the supply we need.
This is what He is praying: that you and I will become those who enter in. If we have to say “radical,” okay, radical. But for some of us, we have to become radical in some of these things. We have been playing games so long.
We need to take some radical moves to enter in and begin to possess what is ours. We need to recognize where the hindrances are and what prevents us.
Who is the number-one culprit? That person you look at in the mirror every morning. He is the one.
The Lord Jesus, from the very beginning, said, “You are going to be My disciple.” Now, if we are His disciples, what does He want to teach us? How to live in the new covenant, how to enter in and experience our inheritance.
What does He say?
If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
Say no to yourself. Deny yourself the privilege of being the boss in your life. Take up your cross and follow Him.
Now, this is a possibility because of the new covenant, so that we can enter in in rich, full, and overflowing ways.
Can you imagine, my dear brothers and sisters, what happens in the Father’s heart when He sees us as His dear children taking full advantage of everything He has provided for us in the Lord Jesus? What do you think His response is?
His heart is full of joy.
You know, in thinking about this time, John 15 came into my heart. I never thought about John 15 in light of our spiritual inheritance.
Our Lord Jesus says, “I am the vine, and My Father is the husbandman.” What is the Father most concerned about? What is the thing He is looking for? Fruit.
Our Lord Jesus says, “Abide in Me, and I in you,” and you will bear much fruit.
John 15:8:
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be My disciples.
Now, what is this fruit? I think it is Romans 8:29–30:
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Do you know what I think the Father’s inheritance is? When He looks at you and me and sees His Son in us—being conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ—so that He will be the Firstborn, and we will be the many sons He is bringing to glory.
Brothers and sisters, can you imagine? I do not think we have the capacity. I do not think, as human beings, we can even think in terms of what would happen inside the heart of God when He looks at you and me and sees His Son formed in us.
Remember what Paul said to the Galatians? “I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.”
Being formed, transformed, conformed.
Now, I do not know what it does to you, but I tell you what, my brothers and sisters: my heart is full of worship—not because of me, but because of the God Who has made a covenant with those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
He has predestined you. I cannot call out all your names. If I knew all your names, I would call you by name and say, “God has predestined you to be conformed to the image of His Son.”
My dear brother Dale King, God has predestined you to be conformed to the image of His Son. I would like to repeat that to every one of you: predestined.
Who is going to prevent Him from doing it? Nobody. But He would like to have our full cooperation.
When He says to us in His Word that you have been predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son of God, what would He like to hear from us? “Amen.”
Get it started, if it is not already started. Let’s finish it. Let’s go on.
When we say that, oh, my dear brothers and sisters, this is why we need to see this new covenant. The Holy Spirit—the moment you say that—has all the freedom He needs to finish this job.
One day, by God’s doing, you and I can stand before this holy, righteous God and hear Him say to us, “That’s My daughter, in whom I am well pleased. That’s My son, in whom I am well pleased.”
He is working to conform us to the image of His Son. He was able to say that about His own Son, and He wants to be able to say it about each one of us.
What is your response? What do you think? Hallelujah? This is our destiny. This is part of this inheritance that we have: being fully conformed to the image of the Son of God.
Now think about it. Where did God start? What was our condition when He started? Humanly, totally impossible. No way.
But God has His ways. He puts the life of His Son in us. The Holy Spirit comes to bring that life. Then, as we submit to the discipline of the Holy Spirit, He arranges all kinds of situations so that the character of the Lord Jesus Christ gets formed in us.
It is all God’s doing. It is part of our inheritance. I hope you want it all. I want it all, my brothers.
I know that when I say that, the Holy Spirit is listening. But I want you to know: it brings joy to the heart of our heavenly Father for you and me to be hungry and thirsty for all that God has provided for us.
This is our inheritance. Let us pray together.