Will you please turn to the Gospel according to Luke, Luke 22:20.
And the cup in like manner after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood, even that which is poured out for you.
And then please turn to Hebrews, 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.
Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, as we continue in Your presence, our hearts are open to Thee. Speak, Lord; Thy servants hear. May Thou be glorified in the midst of Thy people. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, we have just taken the Lord’s table. When we drink the cup, do we really understand what we are doing?
When our Lord Jesus, during that Passover day, in view of His death, took up the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, shed for you,” this cup became the new covenant.
When we drink the cup, what does it mean? It means that we have accepted the new covenant that God has made with us. This new covenant is guaranteed by the blood of our Lord Jesus, and it will work. This new covenant has been given to us.
So, when we drink the cup, brothers and sisters, remember: you are in covenant relationship with the Lord.
This is not a small thing, because when a covenant is made, it has legal power. In other words, God will deal with us from now on according to the new covenant He has made with us. All our dealings with God are based upon this new covenant.
We who have drunk the cup have accepted the new covenant God has given to us. So remember: from now on, in our daily life, in everything that concerns us, it is based upon this new covenant. God will not deal with us by anything else but according to the new covenant.
God will not accept anything from us, no matter how good it is, if it is not according to the new covenant. Our whole Christian life, therefore, is based upon this new covenant.
So, brothers and sisters, let us remember: we are a covenanted people. God has covenanted with us. God has made a contract with us, and we are under the new covenant.
I hope that we know where we are and where we stand. Our whole Christian life is governed by this new covenant.
Now, we have already mentioned, last Lord’s Day, that there was an old covenant that God had made with the children of Israel. It was a covenant of law: the Ten Commandments.
God gave the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, and God said, “If you keep My covenant, you will be My people, and I will be your God.”
Now, even though we who are Gentiles were not given this old covenant of law, in spirit we are under this old covenant of law. In Romans 2, we are told that those who do not have the law have the law written in their hearts, in their conscience.
In other words, God has put His law into our hearts and into our consciences. So, in a sense, all the people in the world, whether you are an Israelite or whether you are a Gentile, are under the old covenant of law.
The old covenant of law simply is this: God said, “Thou shalt. Thou shalt. Thou shalt do this; thou shalt not do that.” And if you keep it, then you will be God’s people, and God will be your God. So we call it the covenant of law.
But the new covenant is entirely different, because the new covenant simply says, “I will, and I will.” And then, “You are, and you are.” In other words, God puts all the responsibility upon Himself, and we ought to take whatever He has given to us.
So we call it the new covenant of grace. For this reason, brothers and sisters, we are today living in the new covenant era.
Now, what is the new covenant? The new covenant is very simple. When you read Jeremiah 31:31-34, and then see it repeated in Hebrews 8:10-12, you find that in the new covenant there are only three articles.
In Hebrews 8:10, the first article speaks of how God inscribes His law in our hearts, and He will be our God; because of that, we are His people. It is the power of life.
And in verse 11, you do not need to teach anyone, “Know the Lord,” because every one of you, from the least to the greatest, shall know Him inwardly.
In other words, there is an inward, intuitive knowledge. We are given this knowledge of knowing God’s will inwardly.
And then, thirdly, in verse 12, God said, “I will forgive all your unrighteousness and your sins; and not only that, but I will remember them no more.”
Now, this is the new covenant that God has covenanted with you.
Now, according to God’s purpose, the order is from power to knowledge to cleansing. But according to our experience, it is just the reverse. We start from cleansing, to knowledge, and to power.
You remember, in the tabernacle there are three sections. There is the holiest of all, where God’s ark and mercy seat were. God’s presence was in the holiest of all.
Then there is a veil separating the holy place from the holiest of all. In the holy place, you have the golden altar of incense, the golden table of showbread, and the golden lampstand. This is where the priests serve God.
Then there is the outer court. In the outer court, you have the altar and also the brazen laver for washing. So there are all three sections.
From God’s viewpoint, it begins with the holiest of all, comes out to the holy place, and finally reaches the outer court. But so far as our approach to God is concerned, it is just the reverse.
We have to start with the outer court. We have to start with the altar, the brazen altar, the cross. It is through the cross and the cleansing that we are qualified to serve God as priests and also to have the presence of God in our life.
So this morning we would like to begin with the third one, and that is cleansing.
Before we do that, I would like to use an example, because I think probably this will help us to understand the life under the old covenant and the life under the new covenant. It is a difference of heaven and earth.
Practically, we can see it very clearly in the life of one person recorded in the New Testament, and that is Paul.
Before Paul was converted, he was Saul the Pharisee. In other words, he was a young man—an unusual young man. Young men usually love the world, seeking the things of the world, but this young man was very different.
From his youth, he sought God. He was brought up in a pure family of Israel. He was circumcised on the eighth day. He became a son of the law at twelve, and he studied under Gamaliel, the greatest teacher at that time. He became a Pharisee.
Now, today, when we think of Pharisees, we despise them because they were hypocrites. But to be a Pharisee at one time—there were never more than two or three thousand Pharisees. It was a very strict sect.
They studied the Old Testament. They tried to keep all the letter of the law. They were supposed to be the elite of society.
Because of that, you find how they became hypocrites. Outwardly, they seemed to be very pious, but inwardly they did all kinds of sinful things. But this young man was different. He was a true Pharisee. In other words, he tried his very best to keep every letter of the law.
He was zealous for Judaism. He was zealous for the tradition of the fathers. The traditions of the fathers among the Jewish people were the best in the world, and he kept the tradition very faithfully.
He had a real heart to serve God. He tried his very best; he put his very life into it. At that time, being blinded by the traditions of the fathers, he thought that Jesus was an impostor of Judaism, and he tried to wipe out the followers of Jesus.
You find how he was zealous above all his contemporaries. He not only went into houses, seizing men, women, and even children, and condemning them; he even asked for documents from the high priest, permitting him to go to Gentile cities to seize believers in Jesus, bring them to Jerusalem, and condemn them.
He was the young man there when Stephen was stoned. He was the witness there.
Brothers and sisters, he was sincere. He tried his very best, making every effort to serve God. But we all know how he was in the dark. He thought he was serving God with all his power, but unfortunately, he was doing God a great disservice. He was a persecutor of Jesus.
Now, Saul the Pharisee shows us the life under the old covenant—the best specimen of life under the old covenant. What does that mean? It means that everything came from himself, from his own self.
He was serving God. He was keeping God’s commandments. He was doing God a favor. Everything was just “I, I, and I”—and the best “I.” But how he offended God.
Thank God, God knew his heart. His heart was sincere, so God allowed him to go as far as possible. We often say that the longsuffering of God is very long. He allowed Saul to go as far as possible.
When he had the documents to go to Damascus to seize the Christians, God allowed him to proceed. But before he entered Damascus, at noontime, a great light from heaven shone upon him, and that light struck him to the ground.
His natural eyes were blinded, but thank God, his inward eyes were opened, because he heard a voice: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goads.”
Now, brothers and sisters, this is very meaningful. Why? Because in the old days, when you wanted to plow a field, you used an animal. You put the animal under the yoke, and it was tied to the farmer. The farmer would drive the plow.
But an animal has its own wild nature, so it will not follow the master’s order. It will go away if it sees something edible. In order to discipline that animal, the farmer has a goad in his hand, a sharp thing, and he uses that goad to touch the leg of the animal, just to remind it that it has a master.
But the animal does not understand the goad, so it kicks back. By kicking back, it hurts. After a number of times, it learns a lesson.
So the Lord said, “You are not free. You are not a person who can do your own business.” Everyone born into this world has a mission: to do the will of God, because God is our Master, and He has a work to be done.
We are all yoked to His will, but we want to have our own will. We want to have our own mind and do our own things. God will raise up circumstances as goads to remind us that we have a Master, and how we need to learn to know our Master and obey Him with obedience.
Saul thought that he was doing God’s will, and God gave him opportunities to reconsider. Think of that: he was a gentleman, yet for a gentleman to seize women and children and condemn them—that was not a gentleman’s work.
But he was blinded. He thought he was doing the right thing. When Stephen was stoned, Stephen’s face changed as the face of an angel, and Stephen said, “I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing there, waiting for me.”
Saul must have been touched very deeply. His conscience must have bothered him. But how he stifled his conscience by doubling his effort in persecuting Christians. That was Saul the Pharisee.
But thank God, God met him. The Lord said, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me? It is hard for thee to kick against the goads.” God was thinking of him.
And he saw Jesus, the Son of God. He capitulated. He said, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” From then on, you find that his life made a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.
You can see this in Philippians 3. There he tells us of his past, his credentials, his success, his efforts—what he did. Then you find a complete change of direction.
He says, “I count all things as refuse.” These are nothing—dirty, rejected. But I seek for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.
How he gave himself totally to the Lord and learned to know that the Lord is his life. He no longer lived by himself, no longer tried to do anything, even serving God, by himself. You find everything is Christ, and Christ alone.
It is Christ’s life in Paul. It is no longer Paul himself. We know that the word Paul means little. Here, this great man was reduced to be little, to be nothing, and Christ became everything in his life.
Now, that is new covenant life.
Brothers and sisters, are we still living under the old covenant? Are we living the new covenant life? Is there a drastic change in us?
Can we say, “It is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me”? This is new covenant life.
As we drink the cup week after week, it is just a reminder that we are under the new covenant.
Of course, we need to know very clearly what the new covenant really is. To begin with, we will start with Hebrews 8:12.
For I will be merciful to their iniquities,
And their sins will I remember no more.
You know, in some versions, you may not have the word “for,” as we find in Jeremiah 31. But when you see the word “because” or “for,” it tells you that this is the foundation of what goes before.
To know the power of God in your life and to know the will of God in your life is based upon this forgiveness. If you have not received this forgiveness of your sins, your unrighteousness, and your transgressions, then you have no knowledge of God’s will nor the power of God in your life. So this is the very foundation.
What is unrighteousness? Who is the standard of righteousness?
You cannot use yourself as the standard of righteousness. The standard must be something outside of you.
In modern society, probably we use the customs of our day as the standard. If you are living in this country, if you eat a person, it is a great crime. But with cannibal tribes, they think that it is a great glory.
So you find that the definition of righteousness varies according to the tradition and custom of the time. The real standard of righteousness is God Himself. God is righteous. Whatever He does is right.
If we measure righteousness according to God, there is none righteous, not even one.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. What is sin? Sin is coming short of God’s glory. Anything that does not glorify God or meet God’s standard is sin.
What are transgressions? Transgression is trespassing the law of God. So when you judge by God’s standard, the Bible tells us very clearly: all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
This is the reason why, before we believe in the Lord Jesus, when the Holy Spirit begins to convict us, we begin to realize that we have sinned greatly.
I remember, when I was a young man in high school, I used to think myself quite righteous. But when the Spirit of God touched me, I cannot say how, but I saw that from the very top of my head to my feet, there was nothing good—corrupt, sinful.
I believe, brothers and sisters, that is the reason why we come to the Lord Jesus, because there is no salvation but through our Lord Jesus, the Savior. He paid a great price for us. He died on the cross for us. He shed His blood for us. There is nothing that cleanses us but the blood of Jesus Christ.
I remember our dear Brother Watchman when he told us that, when he was convicted by the gospel, he knew he must believe, but he would not. Why? Because he was an ambitious young man. He had all his life planned.
He knew that if he believed in the Lord Jesus, he would not only accept the Lord as his Savior, but he would have to take the Lord Jesus as his Lord. He was afraid that all his plans would be gone. So he struggled for days. He could not submit himself to the Lord.
Until, he told us, one day when he was free, he saw the blackness of his sin, and then he saw the redness of the blood of Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, we all have experienced how our sins have been forgiven.
When we come to the Lord and confess our sin, of course nobody can confess everything that he or she has committed. All you can do is confess that you are a sinner.
I remember the day when the Lord saved me. I tried to confess my sin—everything that I could remember, I mentioned before the Lord. Then I told the Lord, “There are many other sins I have forgotten, but You know.”
In other words, we are forgiven not because of our confession; it is because of the blood of the Lord Jesus. Now, confession is needed. Why? Because if you do not confess, then you do not feel your need of a Savior.
Our sins are forgiven not because we confess. It is because of the blood of the Lord Jesus.
People still think that confession will do the work. I remember very vividly, when I was young, there was an Oxford Group movement coming from England to China.
It was founded by Frank Buchman, and they aimed at a perfect life. Everything had to be perfect and pure, so they used confession a great deal. You had to confess everything in your life.
There was a famous Christian in China, well known at that time. Many upper-class Christians accepted this Oxford Group movement, and he was among them.
During the wartime, I met him in interior China, and we began to talk together. He told me that whenever he was physically weak, all his past sins would come back, and he had to confess again and again and again.
You cannot depend upon confession for the forgiveness of your sin. I told him, I shared with him, that the blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses from all sin and from all unrighteousness. But he could not take it. He thought confession was the way.
We are not out of it yet, because even in our days you remember, at one time, there was what you call mind cleansing. In other words, you search your mind to see wherein you have done something wrong, and you confess it so that you will be cleared.
I do not know if you remember that in this country. Even President Carter’s sister was involved in it.
Then you find people saying, “You are under a curse. You have to confess, and if you confess, you will be delivered from your curse.”
Now, brothers and sisters, have you read Galatians 3:13? Christ was made a curse for us, that we may be delivered from the curse.
We are no longer under a curse, because the blood of the Lord Jesus has already cleansed us. Not only has He cleansed us, but the Lord said, “I will remember no more.” If God has forgotten, why do you remember?
People still depend upon their own work because they think they have to do something in order to have their sins forgiven. But, brothers and sisters, this is going back to the Old Testament life.
We are in the New Testament, and we have to live by faith and not by sight. You know, the enemy is an accuser, and from time to time he will accuse us of our past sins as if they are still there.
You remember the story of Martin Luther. One day Satan came to him and showed him a book. The title of the book was Martin Luther’s Sins.
It was written back and forth, full of sins. Satan tried to laugh at Luther and said, “Dare you do the work of reformation?”
Do you know what Luther did? He took up a pen and wrote upon that book, “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” And Satan disappeared.
So, brothers and sisters, whenever the enemy tries to accuse you of your past sins, answer him with the blood of the Lord Jesus. It is through the blood of our Lord Jesus that He has paid it all. Thank God, He not only forgives, but He forgets.
Now, when you come into this matter of sin, there are actually two areas. One is what we call sinful acts—that is, the things that you have really committed; you have done them. The other is sinful nature.
These are two different areas of our sin. Praise God, when we believe in the Lord Jesus, all our past sins have been forgiven.
Even though we find that after we are forgiven, the Holy Spirit begins to work in our life and may show us that there are some confessions and restitutions that need to be made.
In other words, if we sinned against people in the past, the Holy Spirit will remind us that we have to apologize and make restitution. So people think that perhaps confession is the way for the cleansing of our sin. Not so.
When you think of all these restitutions, restitution is not something with God; it is something with man. God has already forgiven us, but men may not have forgiven us.
For the sake of testimony, the Holy Spirit will remind us—not all things, but certain trespasses in which we sinned against people. People may have some grievance against you, and now you are a Christian.
If you do not apologize and make restitution, then that person will always say, “You are a hypocrite.” So, for the sake of testimony, sometimes you have to make confession, apologize, and make restitution in order that there may be a good testimony for God.
This is what the Bible says concerning the trespass offering. You have to make it good with man, and God has forgiven you forever.
After you have been saved, has the Holy Spirit reminded you of something in the past that you need to pay back or apologize for?
I remember, when I was young, during our time, how we had to write many letters to ask for forgiveness. How we had to do some restitution in order that God might have a good testimony in our life.
But remember, this is not that we are saved or forgiven through confession. Far from it, because it is only the blood of the Lord Jesus that cleanses us from our sins.
But what about sinful nature? We know that our past sins have all been forgiven. But after we have become Christians, do we sin again? Do we fall again?
In our speech, in our actions, in our reactions, do we sin again? I think no one can say that after he has believed in the Lord Jesus, he never sins again. No, we do. Why? It is because of our sinful nature.
Adam sinned. This sinful nature we inherit from Adam. Even though we are saved, our past sins have been forgiven before God, and yet the sinful nature is still with us.
If I may put it this way: to a believer, in his spirit there is a new spirit, there is a new life. Christ dwells in our spirit as our new life, and we want to do the will of God, to please God.
But in our soul, the life in our soul is still the fallen nature of Adam. We have it until we die. As long as we live, this fallen nature is there, and this fallen nature wants to take over our Christian life.
When it does, we go back to Old Testament living.
Now, how do we overcome this fallen nature? Again, we find that this is the work of our Lord Jesus.
We usually think that when Christ died on the cross, He bore our sins in His own body and died for us. In other words, He paid the penalty for us.
God is righteous. If there is sin, God has to judge. Instead of judging us, God judged His own beloved Son. So He died for our sins, that we may become the righteousness of God.
But this is only part of the work of our Lord Jesus on the cross. The Bible tells us that there is another part which our Lord Jesus accomplished on the cross.
He not only died for our sins; He died as us. He was the last Adam. He included all the sons of Adam, all the children of Adam, in Himself. He died as our representative.
So when He died, the Adamic race came to an end. This is a marvelous work of our Lord Jesus.
In Romans 6, we are told that our old man was crucified with Christ. When Christ died, we died. It is by His death on the cross that we are delivered from that sinful nature.
We know that Brother Watchman told us that, after believing in the Lord Jesus for years, he was already serving God, and yet he found that he could not overcome his sinful nature. He struggled against it.
He read Romans 6:6: “Our old man was crucified with Him.” Then he read Romans 6:11: “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God.”
Now, reckoning simply means accounting. Because our old man was crucified with Christ, therefore you reckon it as dead by faith. So he tried to reckon himself dead, and the more he reckoned, the more alive he was.
He struggled for years about it, until one day, one morning, as he was reading the Word of God, suddenly God opened his eyes.
He said, “Why is it that when Christ died, I died also? How can that be? He died two thousand years ago. How could I die with Him at that time?”
Then he remembered. He said, “It is because I was in Him.” He used an illustration: if you put a piece of paper in a book and you throw the book into the river, where is the paper? The paper is in the river.
So we have to believe in the death and cross of our Lord Jesus. Not only His blood—His blood cleanses us from all our sinful acts—but it is His cross that delivers us from our sinful nature.
If you believe, you find it works in our life. When the Lord gave him that revelation, he was so happy. He ran down and met a brother. He took hold of the brother and said, “Do you know I died?” The brother looked at him and said, “What are you talking about?”
Brothers and sisters, have we experienced this grace—this forgiveness and forgetfulness by God? Have we solved this sin matter before God?
If we do, then you find your Christian life is different. You can really say, as Paul said:
I have been crucified with Christ;
And it is no longer I that live,
But Christ liveth in me:
And that life which I now live in the flesh
I live in faith,
The faith which is in the Son of God,
Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
Yes, I live in the flesh, but I live by faith—not my faith, but the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.
So, brothers and sisters, this is the first article in the new covenant that God has covenanted with you and me, and it behooves us to live under that new covenant.
So, if you come in and live it, put it in your own words: what is new covenant living? Not I, but Christ. This is new covenant living.
Are we today enjoying it? Or are we still struggling? Can we let go and let God bring us out of ourselves and into Himself?
That is the way to experience Christ. That is the way to live our Christian life—the only way to do that.
So may the Lord open our understanding, give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation, and bring us into this reality.
Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. We cannot make up our faith, but we can look to the Lord, pray, seek, and we shall find.
One day, you will find what a glorious Christian life it is. Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we want to thank You once again for making this new covenant with us.
We know that You made it with us in order that we may live according to the new covenant. Forgive us, because again and again we return in our lives to old covenant living.
How we trust ourselves. How we struggle by our own self. But, Lord, You know it is all in vain.
We pray, Lord, that Thou wilt open our understanding, give us wisdom and revelation, and bring us out of ourselves and into Thyself.
O Lord, how Thou dost long to live in and through us, and how we hinder and block Thee.
Lord, we pray that there will be great release among Thy people, that we may truly say, “For me to live is Christ,” to the glory of God. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.