Will you please turn to Hebrews 8? Just one verse, verse 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.
Will you please turn to Philippians 4, verse 13?
I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me.
And finally, Old Testament, Zechariah 4, verse 6.
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.
Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, as we continue in Thy presence, we bow our hearts before Thee, waiting to hear from Thee what Thou hast to say to us.
We pray that Thou wilt remove every hindrance within us. Give us a heart of humbleness and humility, confessing that without Thee we can do nothing, but praising Thee in the knowing that with Thee all things are possible.
So, Lord, we do pray that Thou wilt open our understanding, reveal Thy heart to us, and bring us into that life that Thou hast covenanted with us. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.
We have been fellowshipping together concerning our new covenant living. We have just had our Lord’s Table, and every time we remember the Lord at His Table, in a sense, we are renewing with our God the new covenant.
Because the cup which we drink is the new covenant in the blood of our dear Lord Jesus Christ. So, through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, God has covenanted with us. God has made a contract with us.
God said, “This is the way that I will deal with you, and this is the only way that you can come to Me. This is the life that I want you to live, and this is the life that I have prepared for you.”
So, brothers and sisters, every time when we come to the Lord’s Table, just remember this: it is a renewing of our acceptance of this new covenant.
So the problem is: since we are in the new covenant time, are we really living a new covenant life? Or do we still live in the old covenant way of living?
What is the difference between new covenant living and old covenant living? The old covenant living is a covenant of law. It means that God has given us His law, and God said, “Do it. And if you do it, then you will be My people, and I will be your God.”
In other words, the responsibility is totally upon us. We need to keep the law of God in order to be His people, and then He will become our God. That is old covenant living.
In other words, you live a life according to the law that I have commanded you, to prove that you are truly My people. Then I will accept you and say, “I am going to be your God.”
Now, what is new covenant living? New covenant living is a covenant of grace. God does not say to us, “Do this or do that, and then I will be your God.” God said, “I will do this. I will do that. I will do everything for you. All you need to do is trust Me, believe in Me.”
Because I am your God, and you shall be My people. So this is the difference between old covenant and new covenant living.
Old covenant living is living by ourselves, trying to prove to God that we are able to keep His law and be His people. Then He will be our God. New covenant living is a covenant of grace. God said, “I will do this. I will do that for you, if only you allow Me to do so.”
Now, if you do, then I am your God, and you are My people. We have been talking about this from the practical side. In other words, how can we live before God?
We mentioned before that God made an old covenant of law with the children of Israel at Mount Sinai: the Ten Commandments. But we, as Gentiles, God had not made such a covenant with us.
Now, is it because of that that we have no responsibility, no duty, before God? No, because Romans 2 tells us that even though we do not have the Ten Commandments written on stones, the law of God has already been written upon our conscience.
So our conscience will tell us what is the will of God and what is not the will of God. Brothers and sisters, is it not that sometimes our conscience wakes up and realizes that we are not right before God?
Especially when a person is going to die. I remember my schoolmate when I was in high school. He was sick unto death, but while he was dying, he was so afraid. He felt there was darkness all before him.
Until finally, he accepted Jesus as his Saviour, and he left in peace.
So we often say, when a bird is dying, its cry is pitiful. And when a man is dying, he is always trying to say something good in order to quiet his conscience.
But, brothers and sisters, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now, how can our sins be forgiven? How can we have a clear conscience? How can we face death and eternal death?
The only way is through the blood of our Lord Jesus. So, in the new covenant, you find in Hebrews 8:12 that God said:
For I will be merciful to their iniquities,
And their sins will I remember no more.
God said, “I will cleanse your unrighteousness. I will forgive your iniquity.” And not only forgive, but He will forget it.
So, as soon as we turn to the Lord Jesus, accepting Him as our Saviour and confessing our sins before Him, He is righteous and faithful. He will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness.
So this is the basis of new covenant living. Brothers and sisters, we who believe in the Lord Jesus now live before God with a cleansed conscience—a clear conscience, without offence either to God or to man.
In other words, we have been justified, and it is all through the atoning blood of our Lord Jesus.
After we are saved, I believe it is supernaturally natural that we want to know our Saviour more. We want to know Him, and we want to please Him. We want to do something according to His will.
But unfortunately, we find that within us there is a darkness. We do not know the will of God. And not only that, but even within us there is a nature that does not like the will of God.
You find in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, because to the natural man they are foolishness.
Then we find in Romans 8:7-8 that the mind of the flesh is enmity with God. It is opposed to God. It cannot subject itself to the will of God.
And then we find in Galatians 5:17 that the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.
So, brothers and sisters, we find that after we are saved, we want to know God’s will, but somehow there is a darkness within us. We are just not able to know the will of God.
And not only are we unable to do the will of God, but we find within us something rebelling against the will of God. To put it another way, in our spirit we want to know the will of God, but in our flesh we rebel against the will of God.
I believe that we have all been going through such a time. So, in a sense, we find there is more defeat in our Christian life than victory.
Now, how do we know the will of God? In Hebrews 8:11, we are told that we do not need to tell our brothers or fellow citizens, “Know the Lord.”
The word know there is knowledge in general. In other words, it is outward knowledge. It is the way that we accumulate knowledge. When we are growing up, we accumulate knowledge from outside, put it in our mind, try to analyse it, and try to understand it.
That is the way we try to know anything, and that is the way we used to try to know God. It is all from outward knowledge.
But in the new covenant, God said that you do not need to tell other people, “Know the Lord.” Why? Because you shall know Him in yourself.
Somehow there is an inward knowledge, an intuitive knowledge. We call it intuitive knowledge because it is direct knowledge. The knowledge that we used to have was gathered from outside, so it was indirect. But there is a direct knowledge, a knowledge that is written within your heart. You know it in yourself.
But sometimes we know it, and yet we finally rebel against it. We try to reason against it. We use our mind to reason with our spirit.
In our spirit, the Holy Spirit dwells there, and He shall teach us in all things—big things and small things, everything. He is such a faithful Comforter.
That is why, when we hear Him, what do we do? We argue with Him. We reason with Him, as if we are rational. Oftentimes, in this way, we try to appease our conscience.
But thank God, after we are saved, He has not only restored our spirit so that we may be able to communicate with God, but He also dwells in us by the Holy Spirit.
So every believer has the indwelling Holy Spirit within him. The Spirit of God is in you and in me. The Bible says that if you do not have the Spirit of God, then you are not His. If you are His, you must have the Spirit of God within you.
And the Spirit of God within you is the anointing. He is anointing you and letting you know the will of God. When He teaches you, we need to learn to obey.
If you obey the teaching of the Holy Spirit, you abide in Christ. Otherwise, there is no way to abide in Christ. We have covered these things in the past.
Now, this morning, we would like to enter into the most important part: the power to live the new covenant life.
When you read Romans 7, it is the experience of the Apostle Paul. He met the Lord on the road to Damascus. He capitulated, surrendered himself to the Lord on the road, and received the Lord Jesus into him.
Because of that, you find his mind was renewed. Formerly, he persecuted the Christians, and he was in such darkness. He thought he was doing God a good service, not knowing that he was rebelling against God’s will.
But after he was saved, you find his mind was renewed. He not only wanted to know God’s will, but he knew God’s will. The problem with him at that time was that he knew what God’s will was, but he could not do it.
So you remember Romans 7. He cried out, “What I want to do, I cannot. What I do not want to do, I do.” So he said, “It is not I who am doing it.” Now, who is doing it? It is the sin that dwells in him.
Finally, after many, many defeats, he began to realize that in him—that is, in his flesh—there is no good.
Now, brothers and sisters, how do you feel about your flesh? Some flesh is pretty good. But no matter how good your flesh is, whatever comes of the flesh is God’s enemy.
Our problem is that we want to deny the bad side of our flesh, but we continue to use the good side of our flesh. By doing so, we still live in the flesh, and sooner or later you find the bad side will come out.
So Paul, after many defeats—that was his experience—said, “Now I discover one thing: in me, that is, in my flesh, there is no good.”
Now, brothers and sisters, have we come to that conclusion yet? If we have not come to that conclusion, it shows that we are still trying to live by the good flesh.
And if we are trying to live by the good flesh, remember: the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. There is no compromise.
Not until one day, when we discover that we—that is, in our flesh—there is no good, then immediately, you remember Romans 7:25:
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
In other words, you find that in you there is a power already dwelling there, but you do not use that power to live. You still use your own power to live. That is our problem.
Brothers and sisters, in Hebrews 8:10, God said, “I will write My law in your heart. I will inscribe it within you.” And not only that, He said, “I will be your God, and you shall be My people.”
God Himself, by His Spirit, dwells in each one of us. The very term God tells you that He is the Mighty One, the One who created the heavens and the earth. That is His power. There is a power resident in you.
But unfortunately, we neglect the power, and we still use our own power, the power of our flesh. That is the reason why we find that we are still living the Old Testament life instead of living the New Testament life.
When we talk about this matter of power, brothers and sisters, among God’s people you find there is a strong desire to know God’s power in service.
“How can I serve God with power? How can I preach with power? How can I do this or do that with power?” Power is what everybody wants to have.
But when we think of power, we usually think of the power to serve, to do something. It is true that in Old Testament times, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come to dwell in their hearts, when the Holy Spirit came upon them, they received power to do great things.
But in New Testament times, when we think of power, people always think of Pentecostal power. Because after Pentecostal power came, Peter stood up and spoke, and three thousand were saved. We like that.
But do you know that when our Lord Jesus was risen from the dead, before His ascension, the disciples were together in John 20?
The Lord appeared to them. And what did the Lord do? He breathed into them and said:
Receive ye the Holy Spirit.
Whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them;
Whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
Usually, people interpret this incident in a symbolic way. They say it is only a symbol: when the Lord breathed into them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” they had not received the Holy Spirit. It was just symbolic, and it was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost.
But if this is the way you read the Bible, then I am afraid you are greatly wrong.
First of all, you find that John never deals with anything outward. His whole book emphasizes things inward. So when John wrote and said that our Lord Jesus breathed into them and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” it must be real.
In other words, they must have received the Holy Spirit after our Lord Jesus was risen from the dead. Otherwise, how could one hundred and twenty people—not weak people, but strong people—gather together and pray with one accord for ten days? How could it be possible?
It is impossible unless the Holy Spirit was within them. But the indwelling Holy Spirit deals with life, with living.
Now, on the day of Pentecost, people usually think that in Acts 2, when the one hundred and twenty gathered together and prayed for ten days, the Holy Spirit suddenly came upon them.
The Bible says there was the sound as of a rushing mighty wind filling the house. Then they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire, resting upon each one of them. They began to speak in tongues.
People usually think Pentecost is only the outward power that came upon them, like tongues of fire, enabling them to speak other tongues. They forget that when they heard the sound like a wind blowing, actually it was the breathing of God.
It was as if God breathed mightily, and it filled the house. That is inward. Then the fire appeared upon their heads; that is outward.
In other words, on the day of Pentecost was the consummation of the coming of the Holy Spirit. People take it only for power instead of life.
Now, brothers and sisters, that is the problem among Christians today who are seeking for the Holy Spirit. Because they do not see the inward side of life, they look for the outward side of power, and it causes many problems.
You know, power is like a knife, like a sword. It is powerful. But if you give that sword to a child, what will be the result?
His life is so young that he does not have the understanding to know how to wield the sword, and the result is hurt.
You need to have the life to wield the power. So, not only in the Word of God, but in our experience in China, we realize that Calvary precedes Pentecost.
We need the life of Christ in us growing up in order to handle the power of God upon us. Otherwise, it will be disastrous.
So, brothers and sisters, unfortunately we are all taken up by Pentecost, but we forget that when our Lord Jesus was raised from the dead, He breathed into us, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit.”
As you read the Gospel of John, whenever the Holy Spirit is mentioned, it is inward: the Comforter. He will dwell in you. He will not leave you nor forsake you. He will teach you in everything.
Brothers and sisters, we forget what the power of God for living really is. Our whole emphasis seems to be on the outward power of service.
So we want to emphasize, according to the Word of God, that the new covenant promises power, but the power there is the power to live.
How can we live a victorious life? A Christian life is supposed to be victorious. Why? Because Christ is victorious.
When He was on the earth, He was tempted in all things. He went through all kinds of circumstances—opposition, persecution, misunderstanding, everything.
How was He able to live above all these things and live according to God, to do God’s will? It is because, when He was baptized, the Holy Spirit came not only upon Him but dwelt in Him.
It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that our Lord Jesus was able to overcome the enemy. So, brothers and sisters, what happened to our Lord Jesus actually has happened to us.
The same Spirit is in us, and He is the power of God.
But again, how can we enter into that inward power? We need to be initiated into it. When you experience something, you need to be initiated into it first, and then it becomes almost like a habit, a life.
To me, I feel probably Paul was initiated into this inner power of life. He proved in his life that God is God. I think he was initiated, probably—I say probably—in 2 Corinthians 12.
You know, he told us that God gave him great revelations. He was caught up to the third heaven, and then he was caught away into paradise and heard things that no one could tell.
But God gave him a thorn. It came from the enemy. He said, “I have a thorn in my body.”
It was not just a tiny little thing, but it was like a stake had been driven into his body.
He prayed to God, “Lord, I am preaching the mighty work of God, and now I myself am so weak.” We say probably it was malaria, because he travelled in a malaria area and perhaps caught malaria.
If you have malaria, then the eyesight will be affected. So he said, “When I write, I have to write so big.” Not only that, if you have malaria, you shake. Perhaps that is what happened to Paul.
For a preacher to preach the mighty work of God and shake before the people, that would be a contradiction. So Paul asked the Lord to take away that thorn, and he prayed three times.
But the Lord said:
My grace is sufficient for thee: for My power is made perfect in weakness.
In other words, Paul wanted to be strong himself, but God said, “You will be weak, but I will be strong in you.”
So what did Paul say? He accepted it. He said:
I will therefore glory most gladly in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Now, brothers and sisters, are you boasting in your weakness, or are you hiding your weakness, mourning over your weakness?
How can you boast in your weakness? Not until you really see that in you—that is, in your flesh—there is no good. You give up yourself, and you allow God to manifest His glory.
So I think probably that was the time Paul was initiated into it. There you find in Philippians 4 that he said, “I can do all things.” My, what a boast!
But he said, “I can do all things through Him who empowers me.” I cannot, but He can.
So we need to be brought to the end of ourselves. We need to be brought to the cross. Calvary precedes Pentecost. That is how the power of God is manifested.
Finally, I would like to use Zechariah 4. You notice in Zechariah 4 that a remnant of the children of Israel returned from Babylonian captivity. Their reason for returning was to rebuild the temple of God.
During that period of captivity, God had no testimony upon this earth. Jerusalem was destroyed. The temple was destroyed. The Jewish people were in captivity.
So God was known during that period only as the God of heaven, not the God of earth. He had no testimony upon the earth.
But thank God, after seventy years of captivity, God in His mercy allowed His captive people to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.
But only a few, only a remnant, were willing to sacrifice everything to go back to a barren land, a destroyed land, surrounded by enemies, and there to rebuild the house of God.
It was a difficult task, but they went there. It was so difficult that they were threatened by the enemy. They stopped the building for a number of years, until finally God raised up prophets: Haggai and Zechariah.
Haggai was an old man, and Zechariah was a young man. God raised them up to encourage the people to resume the work of rebuilding the temple.
Here you find Zechariah saw a vision. He saw the vision of a golden candlestick. You remember, in the holy place there was the golden candlestick of light.
In a sense, this represents the temple because it gives light. That is a testimony to the world. So he saw a golden candlestick there, and there were two olive trees standing on the right and on the left.
Olive trees produce olives. These two trees poured out gold to the candlestick.
The gold that came out from the olive trees, when it entered into the candlestick, became oil. It was by this oil that the candlestick was able to give light.
When Zechariah saw this vision, he did not know what it meant. Then he was told, “This is the word of God: ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.’”
Not by any human force, not by any human power; it is by the Spirit of God that it can be done.
In other words, how can the temple be rebuilt? How can the light be kindled? How can the testimony go out that God is not only the God of heaven, but also the God of earth?
Not by human power, but by the Spirit of God.
Now, how does it work, then? You find two trees, two olive trees. At that time, the two olive trees also represented Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua the high priest.
But anyway, you find that these two stood up, and they were olive trees. In other words, there was oil within them, full of the Holy Spirit. These were people full of the Holy Spirit.
But when they poured it out, it was gold. Why? Because it was of God. It was the power of God that gave the oil to the candlestick and made the light shine in a dark world.
So, brothers and sisters, how is the work of God to be done? How can the testimony of God be recovered? It depends upon brothers and sisters who are full of the Holy Spirit.
You remember during the days of the early church, they had problems within themselves. How did they solve the problem? They chose seven full of the Holy Spirit to serve the tables. That is how the problem was overcome.
So, brothers and sisters, here you find how we need brothers and sisters whose lives are full of the Holy Spirit. How can one be full of the Holy Spirit? What does it mean?
It means that they are under the full control of the Holy Spirit. They allow the Holy Spirit to take over their life, fill them, and use them to supply the oil to the golden lampstand, that the light—the testimony of God—may shine abroad upon this earth.
So, brothers and sisters, the important thing is that we need to learn how to be initiated into the inner power of God in our living.
God has promised it. That is the way He has ordained for us to live. No other way will please Him, but this is the only way that will please Him and fulfil His eternal purpose.
So, brothers and sisters, thank God that He has made every provision for us: for our cleansing, for our knowledge, and for our power of living.
We need to submit ourselves totally to Him. Nothing of us; all of Christ.
So Paul could declare, “For to me to live is Christ.” How does it happen? Because I am crucified with Christ. No longer do I live; it is Christ who lives in me.
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.
Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, how we praise and thank Thee, for Thou hast made every provision for us. Thou knowest our frame. There is nothing good in us.
Open our eyes and our understanding, that we may really be willing to lay down ourselves and allow Thee to take charge over our life.
Oh Lord, our prayer is that it may be all of Christ and none of ourselves. Initiate us into this secret of the power of new covenant living, that Thou mightest be glorified in the midst of Thy people. We ask in Thy precious name. Amen.