Will you please turn to the book of Hebrews, Chapter 8? We will read three verses: Hebrews 8:10-12.
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.
Please turn also to Philippians 1:21. This is the declaration of the apostle Paul:
For to me to live is Christ.
Dear Lord, once again we gather together in Thy name. We thank Thee for being so gracious and merciful to us.
Again, Thou hast gathered us together. Lord, we do pray that Thou wilt quicken each and every one of us. Deliver us not only from our fatigue, but also from our complications, that we may be simple and open before Thee, that Thou mayest speak to us and reveal Thy heart.
Lord, we pray that Thou wilt deliver us from our complicated self and bring us into the simplicity that is in Christ, that we may be able to see in our hearts that it is Christ Who lives in us. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
Well, dear brothers and sisters, we do thank the Lord for gathering us together again this afternoon.
Now, if you were there yesterday, you know that our burden for this time is just one thing: the new covenant is life and ministry.
We know from the Word of God that, out of the many covenants that God made with man, God mentions especially two of them. These two covenants have much to do with us believers, even though they were given to the nation of Israel.
Yet we find that these two covenants actually show us how we live and how we serve.
I think it is common knowledge that we are today not living under the old covenant. Today, we as believers have been delivered from the old covenant of law, and He has translated us into the new covenant of grace.
It is under the new covenant that God wants us to live and to serve.
Now, yesterday we shared briefly on what the new covenant is. The new covenant, as we find in Hebrews 8 and also in Jeremiah 31, is very simple. We call it the covenant of grace because it does not say, “Thou shalt,” and, “Thou shalt not.”
On the contrary, God says, “I will,” and, “I will.” If it is, “Thou shalt,” and, “Thou shalt not,” we know that it is law, and the responsibility actually lies upon us—whether we are able to do it or not able to fulfill it.
But when we come to the new covenant, we call it the covenant of grace. Again, it is an unconditional covenant. That is to say, God does not demand anything from us and then promise to do something. He does not require us to do anything.
On the contrary, He consistently says, “I will, I will, and I will.” That is the reason why we call it the covenant of grace. Grace is what God will do; law is what we must do.
It has been proven that we cannot do the will of God. So our God is so gracious and says, “Now I will do it for you.” Well, now this is grace, my brothers and sisters.
How are we going to receive grace? You remember in Ephesians 2, the apostle Paul describes how once we were under sins and transgressions.
Outwardly, we followed the fashion of this world, but actually we were under the control of the power of darkness. We lived according to our flesh and became enemies of God.
But thank God for His mercy, how He provided grace for us. The Bible says, “You are saved by grace through faith.” You are saved by grace—but how?
How are you going to receive grace? The Bible shows us that the only way you can receive grace is through faith. And this faith is not from you; it is the work of God. Therefore, there is nothing we can boast of.
So, brothers and sisters, what is faith? We often hear such a term as, “So-and-so lives by faith.” Now, when you hear it, what does it mean?
Probably you mean, well, this is a person who does not live by any profession of his own, but he lives by God.
Now, brothers and sisters, may I ask you a question? If living by faith is limited to those who depend upon God for their living, then how are you going to live your Christian life?
If you are not living by faith, how do you live by grace? I think that is the reason why we find we have problems: because we are not living by faith. And if you are not living by faith, how can you receive grace?
If you are not able to receive grace, then how do you really live? I think it is evident: you are living by yourself. You are living by your own work, and you are trying to be a good Christian.
Now, that is the reason why we find ourselves getting into trouble. So first of all, I will emphasize this: if the new covenant is the covenant of grace, then the only way you can have new covenant life is through faith.
Now, what is faith? Is it something that we work out by ourselves? How often, when we are faced with a situation and we know that we need faith, do we say to ourselves, “I believe, I believe, and I believe”?
Now you try to work out faith. But you know it is not workable. You cannot hypnotize yourself and then think that you have faith. It is false; it is not operative.
So, what is faith? I think in the whole Bible, the clearest way of explaining faith is found in Hebrews 11:1. Will you please turn to it?
I am reading from the Darby Version. The Darby Version will never be popular. The reason is that he tried to be accurate, and he sacrificed fluency. You may prefer another translation, but I think this is a better translation.
Now I will read it from the Darby Version:
Now faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
What is faith? Faith is a substantiating. It is not saying that faith is the substance. It is the power to make that substance real and living to you.
There is something you hope for. There is a substance there, though you do not see it. But faith is the power to make that substance into your experience.
For instance, there is a piano here. Now, a piano is a substance. When you enter into this building, how do you know there is a piano there? Because you have eyes.
If a blind person comes into the room, he cannot see this piano. Now, it does not mean that because he cannot see it, it is not there. But he cannot experience the piano.
So far as he is concerned, he does not have the power of substantiating the substance. Because he cannot see it, he says, “There is no piano.”
And we who have eyes will say, “No, the piano is there, but you do not have the power to substantiate the substance.”
Suppose you go on a trip and you can see the mountains and the river. You can see all the scenery. These things are always there, but how can you appreciate them?
It is only because you can see them that you substantiate these substances into yourself. So they become real to you. This is what faith is.
Here is a substance. Now, what is the substance? The substance is the finished work of Christ on Calvary’s cross.
When our Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, something real was accomplished. There, the power of sin was broken. There, the punishment of sin was removed. There, a new life was released.
Brothers and sisters, these are accomplished facts. Before God, this is substance—spiritual substance. Spiritual substance is more real than physical substance, because physical substance passes away, but spiritual substance is forever.
What Christ has done on Calvary’s cross—when He said, “It is finished”—we know that salvation is finished. Everything has been done. You cannot add anything to it.
Now the problem is, how can the substance become your experience? If you only know it mentally, because you have heard people tell you there is a piano, brothers and sisters, even though you know it, and what you know is right, it does not operate in your experience.
But one day, when the Holy Spirit opens your inner eyes, He gives you faith. Immediately, you find that you see it, and it begins to work in your life.
Faith is the conviction of things not seen. Something that you have not seen with your naked eyes, yet you know you have already seen it. You know it is a substance. You know it is real, and you really enjoy it.
Now, this is what faith is. Faith has a basis. Faith is not something floating in the air. It is based upon reality, and faith is the power to make that reality your own experience.
Now, brothers and sisters, how are you going to live a new covenant life? That life is already there, because Christ has already finished His work. But how can you live that kind of life?
You have to have faith, because faith is the substantiating of the substance. I think the problem we find here is on this matter of faith.
We are being distracted, thinking that only a few special ones live by faith. My brothers and sisters, this is a wrong application.
I think every one of us needs to realize that the reason why today our Christian life is not lived in the new covenant is because we do not live by faith. Every believer lives by faith.
By faith simply means it is not by your own work. It is by relying on the accomplished work of Christ.
So, dear brothers and sisters, we need to correct our concept. We need to see that every one of us lives by faith. And by faith simply means we live by grace.
By grace simply means, “It is not I, but it is Christ Who lives in me.” Now, I hope this is clear with everyone.
Now we will go to the application. We already know what the new covenant is, but now we want to know how to live according to the new covenant.
We have already said that the new covenant is very simple: only three articles. When you read the Bible and look at the tabernacle in the wilderness, the tabernacle is the means by which God lives with His people.
The tabernacle has three divisions. If you read Exodus, you will find that first of all it mentions the holiest of all. There you find the ark. There the presence of God rests, and there God spoke with His people.
Then you have the holy place, where the priests serve. They light the candlesticks, put on the showbread, and burn incense on the golden altar. This is where they serve God.
Then you have the outer court. The outer court has two things: the brazen altar, where they offer sacrifices, and also the laver, where the priests wash their hands.
That is the order you find given in Exodus. Brothers and sisters, as we said before, this is God’s order. It is from God’s eternal purpose gradually coming to the forgiveness of our sins.
But so far as our experience goes, it is just the reverse. In other words, you first go to the outer court. There you offer at the brazen altar, and because you are a priest serving God, you wash at the brazen laver.
After that, you are able to go into the holy place, where you do your service. But the holiest of all was entered only by the high priest once a year, and he had to bring the blood and the incense into it.
Then he would quickly retreat, because in Old Testament times the way into the holiest of all was not yet open.
But in the new covenant, in the New Testament, we find that the veil has been rent. When Christ died on Calvary’s cross outside Jerusalem, in the temple God rent the veil.
It shows that the way to the holiest is now open. So when we talk about experience, how do we experience new covenant life?
We will start from the outer court into the holy place. The outer court has much to do with the matter of justification. The holy place has something related to sanctification. And then, in the holiest of all, you have glorification.
God’s purpose for man is that we may be glorified. And by glorification, I mean that we will be like Him.
Let us look at this from the viewpoint of experience. Of course, we already know some of it, because once we were dead in sins and transgressions. When our conscience was awakened, especially when we met something very special, we became conscious of our need.
For instance, there was a story about an atheist. He did not believe in God, and he was lecturing to people. It happened that a missionary was there.
After his lecture, the missionary said, “May I say something? Yesterday in the wilderness, I heard a cry of, ‘Help! Help! God, help me!’”
“So I ran to the place, and I saw a person drowning. I pulled him out. Who was this man? This was the one who is lecturing.”
The moment your conscience is awakened, you will cry to God for mercy because you know you could not face Him. You will be condemned.
How can we be delivered? How can we be saved? Of course, we try to do something good. If we accumulate merit, then we may be able to go to heaven after we die.
According to Catholic teaching, there are a few saints who have more merit than they need. So you can pray to them and ask them to share some merit, so they will get you out of purgatory more quickly.
Now, of course, all these notions—there is only one way that our sins can be forgiven, and that is according to the new covenant.
The Lord said, “I will forgive your sins, and I will not remember them anymore.”
So, I believe, brothers and sisters, we all have experience of it. If you do not, I would advise you to do it right away. There is no salvation aside from Christ Jesus. His blood is the only way for your forgiveness.
Now you are saved. After you are saved, I want to ask you: How do you feel? Of course, you feel good. You feel thankful to the One Who saved you, and you want to do something that will please Him.
Before you believed in the Lord Jesus, you could do no good, because all your righteousness is as filthy rags. But now you are saved, so you expect to do something good, and you want to please God.
Maybe in the first few months, you actually are riding in the air. But gradually, you begin to fall down. The old way of life begins to return.
You are not living by the life of Christ. You are saved, but the same person still lives by the power of his own life. Your mentality is still, “I will, I will, I will. I will do it.”
Before I was saved, I could not do it. Now I can do it. But by what life? By the new life of Christ in you, or still by the old Adamic life in your soul?
You do not know that not only are your past sins forgiven; you do not know that even the power of sin has been broken on Calvary’s cross. Because you do not know it, you still continue to live your old life.
So you find that you fail and fail again. Instead of a joyous life, you live a very miserable life. Only when you sin are you glad, but after you sin, you are grieved.
You cannot do what you want to do, and you always do what you do not want to do. “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” Brothers and sisters, is that not our experience?
Long ago, I met a man. He was a famous Chinese Christian at that time. He was a very moral person.
At that time, there was a movement called the Oxford Group Movement. It was not the Oxford Movement, which was a return to Catholicism. It was the Oxford Group Movement, and later they changed the name to the Moral Re-Armament Movement.
In China, lots of upper-class Christians joined that movement, because that movement emphasized absolutes—absolute purity. Everything was to be absolute.
This man joined that group. During wartime, I met him in Chungking. He was in my father’s church, and we knew each other.
He began to tell me how he was bothered by his sins, because according to that teaching, you had to live such a pure life. Everything had to be confessed, and he did it again and again.
But when he was physically weak, all his past sins would come back, and he had to confess again. There was no peace in his heart.
I tried to help him. I tried to tell him the efficacy of the blood of Jesus Christ—how the Lord says He will forgive our sins and remember them no more.
Why do you just get all these things back? They are all under the blood. But he could not do that. His sins bothered him.
Brothers and sisters, I wonder if this is your case. This is because you do not live by grace through faith.
It is true that God does not want us to sin. He is able to deliver us from the power of sin. But if we sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
He will forgive our sins. Not only does He forgive, but He forgets. Now, if He forgets, why do you remember?
Dear brothers and sisters, as you now walk with the Lord, whenever we fall, do not lie there. Do not roll back to the beginning.
Stand up. Confess your sin. Trust the blood of the Lord Jesus, and go on with the Lord. That is new covenant life.
Now, brothers and sisters, we not only have this problem of sin. We have another problem, and that is the problem of light.
Now I am saved. I want to do the will of God. But how do I know it is the will of God? This is the second article in the new covenant.
In Hebrews 8:11 we are told:
And they shall not teach every man his fellow-citizen,
And every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord.
Now, the word “know” here is an objective knowing. That is to say, you know it by being instructed.
In the old covenant time, they did not have the Holy Spirit within them. How did they know the will of God? They had to be taught. The priests would teach them, and when they were taught, then they knew.
But their knowledge of God was objective. It was not something from within; it was a knowledge that came from outside.
Now, if knowledge comes from outside, it may give you some knowledge, but there is no power within it. So knowledge, instead of saving you, will kill you.
That is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge is good, but if there is no life there, it kills you. That is old covenant knowledge.
Is it not true that when you are a young Christian, as you are walking with the Lord, you sometimes find it difficult to know what is the will of God?
So what will you do? The easiest thing is to ask somebody—somebody who is more advanced in knowledge than you are, what we consider is a good gesture.
As young people, you try to be humble, and you ask some older ones, “Can I do that? Can I go there?” If you do, you find there are plenty of teachers around.
I often say every Christian is just a theologian, because as we read the Bible, we try to explain it. So you expect people to ask you, and you are glad to be a teacher.
If you are a good student, you have been taught. All right, you try to do it, or you try not to do it. It seems as if the problem is solved.
But may I ask you one question? Is there any personal contact with God?
You may be taught right, and you may follow right, yet there is no personal contact with God. If that is the case, your spiritual life does not grow a bit.
Your Christian walk is an outward walk, not an inward walk. You may be correct, but it is not spiritual.
So, in the new covenant time, what will you do? It is said that you do not need to do it in the outward way, because all shall know Me in themselves.
Strangely, in the new covenant we find there is a knowledge that is within you. And “know” here is different from the first “know.”
The first “know” is a mental knowledge. It comes from outside. But this “know” is experiential knowledge. It is what I would call epignosis—the full knowledge of God.
It is an inward knowledge. It is an intuitive knowledge. And you find that it begins from the little one to the great.
As soon as you are saved, your spirit is renewed, and the Holy Spirit dwells in your spirit.
Why does the Holy Spirit dwell in you? In 1 John 2, we are told that you have the anointing within you, and the anointing is teaching you. He teaches you all things—big things and small things.
If you listen to the anointing within you, you abide in Christ. Now, how can I abide in Christ? I know I am in Christ, but how can I live permanently in Christ?
It is very simple. Listen to the teaching of the anointing within you. Whatever He says to you makes you abide in Christ.
If you do not listen to the anointing within you, then in your experience you are not living in Christ. Instead, you have come out.
So this is the way that we know the will of God.
Now, if this is the case, let us throw all the teachers out of the window. I have to jump out of the window. You do not need me.
Thank God for that. Brothers and sisters, your soul is so precious to God. He will not trust you to anybody. He Himself will take care of you.
It is by the working of the Holy Spirit. But where are the teachers? The Bible mentions teachers.
Remember, teachers are not to govern your life. They are only there either to correct or to confirm what the Lord has already spoken to you.
But you may not be clear, so you need others to confirm it. Because you are still young, you may be wrong, so you need to be corrected. These are the works of teachers.
But you are in the hands of the Holy Spirit, because you are too precious.
Now, brothers and sisters, there is still another question. I know it, but I do not have the power to do it.
Just like the apostle Paul said in Romans 7, “I know what is the will of God, but I do not have the power to do it. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me?”
In the following verse, Romans 7:25, he says, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
So here you find the first article: “I will put My laws into their mind, and on their hearts also will I write them. I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people.”
You remember, in the Old Testament, in the old covenant, God said, “You be My people, and then I will be your God.” If you keep My commandments, you will be My people, and then I will be your God.
But in the new covenant, it is the reverse. He says, “I will be your God, and then you will be My people.”
In other words, what you cannot do, He will do it for you. He is the power of life. You cannot do it, but He will do it for you.
Now, let me use a story to make it clear. There was a man greatly used by God. He was connected with the Keswick Convention and was one of the important speakers there.
When he was on vacation, he brought his children to the seacoast. While they were vacationing, his little girl got sick and died.
He took the body back to England. It was Saturday, and on Sunday he had to speak to his people.
He was in his study, waiting upon the Lord. “What should I speak?” He struggled because he felt that the grace of God was not sufficient.
Then, accidentally, he raised his head. He saw a packet which had been put there by his mother. It said, “My grace is sufficient for thee.”
He told the Lord, “Your grace is not sufficient.” He could not get over the tragedy.
But as he struggled before the Lord, gradually he began to believe that God’s grace is sufficient, because the power of God is manifested and perfected in human weakness.
He could not overcome the real tragedy and the pain. He was weak. But when he was weak, God was strong.
So he just turned his eyes to the Lord, and immediately he was comforted. But he forgot the sermon he should prepare.
The next morning, when he went to preach, he had no sermon. He just told the people what had happened.
You found tears all over the building. The grace of God is sufficient.
Brothers and sisters, our problem is not our weakness. We try to hide our weakness. We want to be strong.
But, brothers and sisters, that is where our problem is. You are too strong. Because you are too strong, you think you can do it.
And by that, you go back to old covenant living. If one day we can boast of our weakness, then we will find God’s grace is sufficient for us.
So this is new covenant life. It is very simple.
The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, reveals the secret of his Christian life. In Philippians 1:21, he simply says:
For to me to live is Christ.
He does not say, “I am Christ,” as some people do. He does not say, “I live for Christ.” He says, “For to me to live is Christ.”
How? Because I have been crucified with Christ. No longer live I; it is Christ Who lives in me.
I live in the flesh—I am still living—but it is by faith: the faith of the One Who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Brothers and sisters, this is new covenant living. The simpler you are, the better. We are too complicated.
My prayer is that He will make us simple. He will bring us back to the simplicity of Christ.
Do not try to analyze too much. Just trust the Lord, and you will find He is more than sufficient.
The apostle Paul could say:
I can do all things through Him that strengtheneth me.
This is new covenant living. What a glorious life it is. May the Lord lead us into it.
Dear Lord, deliver us from our complicity. Teach us how to be simple before Thee, that we may be able to declare, “For to me to live is Christ.”
This is the way that Thou canst be glorified.