The transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant brought a shift in emphasis from trust in the system of temple worship and sacrifices to a faith in the efficacy of the death of Christ on the cross. In the going past the emphasis on the temple sacrifices, God was teaching that sin still required a payment. While obedience remains important, the heart of Christianity is simple faith in God’s provision to overcome our sins. Faith is required everywhere throughout the Bible. This faith-centred approach doesn’t negate the need for righteous living but recognises that our acceptance is based on belief rather than perfect conduct. The shift to the New Covenant is a time when God’s ultimate provision in the death of His Son bearing our sins has been made visible in the Gospel message. Jesus, having paid the ultimate price, is the rightful owner and most devoted lover of His Church. As believers, we must be cautious not to let worldly pursuits or self-reliance draw us away from our faith, even while our salvation remains secure in Christ.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] We have on the screen just in front of you an interesting verse which is commentating on the development of what was happening in Jerusalem after Jesus Christ had come and died and risen again and the first church was founded. This is in the book of Acts, detailing how the Christians were getting on and in some cases being persecuted. But the gospel message which is now called the Word of God, the Scriptures of the Word of God, Jesus is the Word, John chapter 1, but the Word of God in the book of Acts is the message of Jesus and the message of how he came into the world and died upon the cross and rose again, went back to heaven. The Word of God continued to increase when I first used to read through the book of Acts. I thought I got a picture in my mind of the Bible

[00:00:58] Society. There wasn’t one back then but some equivalent churning out scrolls, you know, and I had this building in my mind and there were scrolls being heaped up to be taken away because it said the Word of God continued to increase and I only understood the Word of God back then when I was young to be in this book, the Scriptures, the Word of God continued to increase but it wasn’t commenting on how many scrolls there were, it was commenting on the effect of people hearing the message, the central message of the Word of God is the gospel. And when people heard that message and came to know God more closely, something had happened in them which caused them to talk to others and one of the phenomena of the persecution that is recorded of in the book of Acts in those

[00:01:52] early first days of Christianity is how it caused everybody to spread and all the everyday people went everywhere gossiping the gospel and that was why in the book of Acts in these early chapters it says the Word of God continued to increase. The number of disciples multiplied, now they weren’t doing mathematics, they weren’t having babies, I guess they were too but when the number of disciples multiplied it’s talking about the results of the Word of God increasing and one of the phenomena that happens in church life is one which I think we’re very happy to report is happening in us as more and more people get to understand this central message of the Scriptures about Jesus and his life and his death his resurrection his second coming this message about Christ

[00:02:50] and how you can have the forgiveness of sins come into an experience of knowing him so that your Christianity isn’t just a matter of taking on more doctrine or picking up a more refined sort of creed to live by but Christianity is about an experience of knowing him and Jesus himself talked about the fact that this is what it was to have eternal life to know God the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he God has sent for God the Father sent Christ the Son on a mission that when he accomplished it as Joey was explaining to us in the communion time when he accomplished it it brought about an invitation for us to participate in closeness to Christ which is what we celebrate in the communion and this was happening and it was multiplying in Jerusalem then there’s another little

[00:03:49] statement the great many of the priests became obedient to the faith now this is another one that really caught my mind and when I first read through the book of Acts because one of the features in my earlier past was to have to untangle about what it is to be a true Christian because in my earlier years in the church that I went to they had lots of rules it was an era where the Baptist churches had lots of rules they weren’t bad rules mind you but one was when you’re a little kid right I had double-breasted suit but they were short pants and they looked stupid and I didn’t like wearing them but I had to wear them on Sundays and what was more we weren’t allowed to go down to the park but we were allowed to kick the football over the big rose garden that

[00:04:43] was in the college where my dad worked my brother and I are the side of you know wearing that little short pants and suit you know running to catch a football and kicking it over the roses and it wasn’t the right thing to be seeing going into a shop on Sunday now these were good things of the culture I’m not being actually critical of what lay behind wanting not to have Sunday trading back then but I am saying that the church as a communicated through at least to me is all the rules that really got me and partly because I’m I have a sort of mentality that doesn’t think of details and doesn’t really want to keep rules and if you put a sign keep off the grass I generally either don’t notice it or I don’t want to obey it if I do that was me as a boy and anything that

[00:05:40] smelled of someone finding a reason to put on you another set of rules I would want to make Mickey out of and not go along with and that was me as a child and and there was one that people kept bringing up it was called the golden rule put your hand up if you’ve heard of the golden rule most people who are willing to put their hands up it also tells me the others of you haven’t read the bulletin because that’s what I put in there but anyway the golden rule was Jesus statement do unto others as you’d want them to do to you it’s actually common sense how to treat other people who are your equals and particularly to recognize the humanity in those other people Jesus told a very famous story about the the man that fell amongst thorns not not thorns that’s another one

[00:06:41] the man that fell amongst thieves meaning that they waited and jumped out on him on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem along came a priest and saw a fellow all beaten up lying there wounded and he got across the other side of the room so he didn’t have to stop he had important things to do to at the temple he left the man unhelped but then along came the Samaritan the Samaritans were half Jews and the full Jews hated the Samaritans because they represented people who compromised they lived up to the north and anyway this hatred or disrespect for the Samaritans Jesus chooses one of them to come down the road in his storyline it’s a story Jesus made up to get the truth across and the Samaritan stops and uses his own resources to bind him up and help him

[00:07:33] better and takes him along to a nearby to the first inn he could find and books him in and pays the man money to have the fellow looked after till he’s recovered enough and Jesus finishes his story by the question who was a neighbor now the Jewish law talked a lot about doing good things for your neighbor and Jesus addressed the Jews and I don’t know whether he well he made up the story of the priest who changed sides and just so he wouldn’t have to bother but their law was one that they’d taken on board in a way that were very picky as to who they’d allowed to be called a neighbor and Jesus picked someone that they didn’t want to be have to call a neighbor a Samaritan but he’s the one and at the end of his talk he says which one was a neighbor to that

[00:08:25] man and he finishes by so you go and do the same now Jesus then introduced the golden rule which has actually come out in his places in the Old Testament where the Jewish religion already had those ideas and it can be found in many of the religions around the world because there’s something about it which recognizes the equality of humans by the way it also underlines the fact that we are different from the animals there is a there is an ontological gap between the animal world and the human world which you might notice that the lefty wing people don’t seem to be remembering very much because we’re just the same as animals and should be treated the same in many respects they don’t know that’s the a part of what they’re implying but Jesus believes in the specialty of

[00:09:23] humanity and wherever there’s a human being and they have a need they’re our neighbor and even if they’re thousands of miles overseas and it’s one of the Christian things where we hear of there to be a need on the other side of the world that we feel for it and when the news comes on and people are hurt they’re our neighbor and we want to help and so this is a part of the Old Testament as I mentioned it’s not something bad and quite contrary to how I used to think as a child the Old Testament is not old hat it’s not old hat meaning well we’ve you know graduated out of that we’re in the new covenant that’s something Joey didn’t bring out that top this time he can’t do everything in one communion talk but that Luke passage he quoted from us

[00:10:18] where Jesus is that the blood shed by Jesus being reminded to us so of the drink that we have is the drink we have of the New Covenant what our Bible is all about is the journey from the Old Covenant into the New Covenant and I’ve been teaching about this a lot in the law over across the last Sundays the last month or so that we’re now in the New Covenant not the Old Covenant but I didn’t want any of you to think that I was saying that the Old Covenant is old hat it happens to be taken further by God but not because the Old Covenant was something that God says that well I didn’t really need to have you do that that was just for a season how I know that of course is that Jesus lived he’s born under and lived under the Old Covenant in order that there might be a

[00:11:10] human being who successfully obeyed and qualified to be like the Old Testament sacrifices of sacrifice without blemish or spot and he came and lived under the Old Covenant not because it was something to be pushed aside and to be called old hat but he lived under the Old Covenant that he might be a representative human being that satisfied and fulfilled it why did he want to be a someone who satisfied the law that he might be a sinless sacrifice when he went to the cross and then bore the penalty of our failure of keeping God’s law for the Old Covenant along with the new underneath lies the very law of God that has to do with his character and what he always eternally would require and we had failed the whole human race for all have sinned you

[00:12:05] know the verse and a fallen short of the glory of God and this sin needed a sinless sacrifice that the Old Covenant picture was the pattern God would accept in their sacrificial system it was very much intended by God to have that old covenant to teach the world exactly why Jesus needed to be as he was when he came fully human though he was also God the Son of God he didn’t leave his sonship behind but he left some of the privileges thereof and he came down and took on what it was to walk on earth in a human family to have people that liked him and people that probably didn’t or maybe a lot of other jealous little children in those towns where he grew up like Nazareth because he had something that they didn’t but he was fully human and he suffered under that

[00:12:57] and even amongst his own nation they were annoyed at him because he was the real thing when most of them and all their pretenses were only trying to look like it and Jesus went to the cross and then he bore our sins and in recent Sundays I’ve been trying to bring out the fact that what he cried in those hours of darkness as he bore our sins was a cry that he could only make because he was human as well as divine and he said my God my God man to Father God because Father God was his father though he was the God man I know there’s a mystery in this you’ll never be able to fully tabulated or explain it but Jesus was fully God he was the eternal Son he was co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit the three being the three persons of our one God but when he

[00:14:00] took on humanity he put himself into a relationship under Father God that he would follow the leading of the Father God with the power of the Father God so much so that he says to his disciples that he does nothing but what the Father has given him to do he exemplified the role that we humans either have before Father God one which we’ve broken long ago as a whole race with one which we personally don’t live up to but Jesus came and did and he walked the road and set out the path and the part of what it is to become a Christian is to realize how Jesus has set the pattern again for us to have a second chance as human beings to do what Father God required and he lived under Father God while he was on earth and as a consequence of that he was lifted up at his after his

[00:14:52] resurrection and taken to heaven and he was granted that the name Jesus a name given to him in his humanity when he was born in Bethlehem that at the name Jesus every knee should bow and he was given the power and the authority of the name no longer do you need to call him Yahweh Jesus is Lord and that’s to the glory of God the Father the God the Father doesn’t stop existing or disappear and the way that we relate to Father God is following the pattern that Jesus said on earth it’s why he gave the Lord’s Prayer which is about how we should pray our Father who is in heaven I’m just drawing together some of the things we’ve been touching on in recent months but what’s of interest to me is about something to do with the difference between the old covenant and

[00:15:44] the new covenant has to do with the idea of the necessity of faith now faith was always a part of the deal that was what we need to do because that’s what you do human to God is have faith where we first sin when we disbelieved him Adam and Eve but nonetheless faith is important but faith is far more important in the new covenant than on the old and you could be forgiven for reading the Old Testament and getting a pretty obedient centered sort of type of life to live in fact many of the people who stepped out of line and didn’t obey like King Saul who was given one command about who to kill and who not when they went into warfare I forget the exact details but he didn’t obey and God dropped him as king and he was in favor and till he got out the door because he

[00:16:39] wasn’t fully obedient and in much of the stories of the Old Testament the lack of obedience is the moment people don’t succeed with God just recently we went through the story of lot and his wife and the verse we particularly concentrated on with lot was when she was told along with lot and the others that were going out of Sodom taken by the angels so they wouldn’t get killed when Sodom got destroyed and the last thing the angel said is to go quickly and not to look back and as they were going out something happened in lots wife as she thought of all the things she’d now miss in Sodom and she paused and turned around to look back we can only speculate whether she’d be thinking of how she’d look forward to when there’d be grandchildren or when it wasn’t she

[00:17:35] had a group of friends she wasn’t one of the nasty ones in the place but she looked back at what she would lose in that moment what the angel had said don’t look back when she looked back a pillar of salt you know those bombs of volcanic stuff fell on her and she became a pillar of salt so my message I think was last week of how people can get close to being saved and still be lost if there’s a falter in their faith so that they don’t fully come out trusting God now I didn’t give that message in order to put across that you could become a Christian and then do one step wrong and God kick you out the door I don’t believe people can lose their salvation but I do believe people can get close to having salvation but not make it because something draws them

[00:18:35] back from taking that position of faith but what we notice here in the verses I have when verse 7 still it’s up on the screen a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith this is in the book of Acts when Christianity was expanding quickly where it was multiplying spreading everywhere as people gossiped about it and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith what really caught my eye in this verse is the fact that it’s the new covenant people these priests have become Christians who are commended for their obedience did you notice that in the Old Testament in the old covenant obedience was the chief thing you better watch because if you disobedient you know you well what about the whole generation of Israelites who died in the

[00:19:31] wilderness didn’t get into the promised land because they gibbed that oh they have gibbed that having faith so faith has always been a requisite and the priests if they were going to be obedient to the old covenant faith was to recognize that it was pointing to the new covenant in fact it was the promise in Jeremiah about a new covenant coming and the new covenant was for the people of Israel and when at last that new covenant was put into place by Jesus and his life and his death and his resurrection and where this gospel message of there being opportunity to get into this new covenant came there are many of the priests who accepted that position of trusting Jesus as their Savior the idea of this man this God man dying for me and rising again and to be

[00:20:27] their Savior that was a part of the new covenant and they were obedient to the faith I want you to recognize that there’s something about Christianity that the heart of it is simple faith it’s not perfection because Jesus is our perfection it’s not punishment for our failures because those failures Jesus took on the cross he cried out it is finished and those words in the Greek titillestai means paid in full so it isn’t whether or not you trip up and fall that will get you not to succeed as a Christian I’ll tell you what will cause you not to succeed as a Christian is that you falter in your faith and you don’t go on trusting him or you let something of the world draw you aside now I’ve got just a little exercise to demonstrate this from the

[00:21:29] Bible this morning I don’t know how this will go not one that you have to do but just to compare two things the first one is we’ll go to the book of Hebrews and chapter 11 and this is a very famous book of the book of Hebrews which is later on in the New Testament which records a whole lot of people of the old covenant days who had faith and it’s a chapter of called the faith chapter in the book of Hebrews is chapter 11 and it goes through quite a lot of people I won’t tell every story a lot I’ll just say who they were and they include people like Abraham and they include people like Abel Cain’s brother they include a whole long list of people who had faith and that is what the faith chapter is and so if you want to have some examples before you have

[00:22:23] people from the old covenant who had faith and God commended it so you know this new covenant that we’re talking about which calls on us to base it all on faith is nothing strange to the old faith was there too but what’s interesting all the people who had faith like Moses and the moment he exercised faith as when he chose a very stupid thing politically he’d been adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter was a prince person in the whole of Egypt mildly trained in all sorts of things he someone had the best martial arts trained into him he was a person had all the best of their academics that he had he had everything in his character to make him a hero and he was a leader he was actually someone that led in wars mark you know for that period he was

[00:23:12] someone had a brother who was a also a mighty leader was and he and his brother rather gel well the brother was jealous of him but anyway here’s Moses and when he saw but he knew who where his parentage were he knew he was an Israel light and he chose to be known as one of the Israelites which was stepping down from the top to the bottom these slave people that everybody else despised because they were the oppressed but the Bible tells us tells us here he refused I’m looking at verse 24 by but by faith Moses when he was grown up refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter choosing rather choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin I’m beginning to get a bit of a sense of how you could

[00:24:16] lose getting into salvation in the new he wasn’t going to you could lose it by preferring the associations in the world this world that’s run has its strings pulled the Bible tells by the prince of this age the devil and whose values are ones that try to really get at Christians Brittany’s work that she’s been doing has been one to help legally people who are Christians put into trouble by the world through its politics saying that they couldn’t do really the things that the Bible tells you to do and seeking up for them legally it’s a wonderful thing those groups seek to do but here’s Moses and he had a choice as to whether he’d associate with the people of God which were the slaves who were hated and despised or to enjoy his great position

[00:25:27] of honor as Pharaoh’s daughter’s son one of the future leaders of the whole nation should have been now I find it really interesting this question about faith and obedience and the verse we started with was how many of the priests were obedient to the faith and what that means is they accepted the position of what it is to be a Christian is a matter of trust and belief and faith some of them no doubt when it says many it doesn’t say all some of them you know probably said no I’ll stick to my righteousness as having done all that the law required and that’s one of the hiccups that’s one of the faults of people in religious scenarios a lot of churches have got people like this in them which is not to be Christians at all but they don’t know that but they

[00:26:27] think that’s by the all the right things they’ve done even if the right things are good things the Old Testament laws were good things but if you chose to rest how you’ve got acceptance because you’ve been a pretty good chap a pretty nice person but never shifted across to the new covenant where you just believe God for a free forgiveness knowing that sinfully you are not much different from anybody else but the Jesus makes you clean Jesus gives you his righteousness Jesus gives you a relationship the old covenant could ever bring and many of the priests were obedient to the faith and formed in my mind to ask you are you obedient to the faith that means the requisite of putting your faith in God and trust in Jesus why we have a gospel message is to provide the necessary

[00:27:36] content to believe if you shall confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead you shall be saved the Bible says and the way you get from Old Testament religion of any type of religion really into the new covenant is that you believe in your heart and in many times you’re very aware of your undeserving nature and it isn’t as though you could tidy yourself up enough to get in the door that way it is it starts with I will simply believe the promise and if you’ve been laboring about how to be in order to respect yourself if your labor has been how to not give in to certain temptations when if your labor has been that you’ve always scrambled after the acceptance of the world here Jesus words come to me all you who labor and a heavy laden and

[00:28:46] I will give you rest take my yoke on you the new covenant take my yoke on you and he says that you’ll have that rest at heart Jesus promises acceptance not based on your success but only based on your belief and the interesting thing is is that once you’ve come by the way of believing he steps into the bit and begins to get you to be obedient what could torpedo this is not so much only that you come to Jesus and try believing him for a start then you go back and lean on some of the previous beliefs yeah sure enough that will be make it difficult for your Christian law but what I’ve discovered is that when people of this in the scriptures are listed you know we just had that list of the people who had faith I looked through during the week is their spot where there’s a list of the people who didn’t have faith well actually it’s not all in one spot like Hebrews 11 is for the people who have faith it’s a great faith chapter but

[00:30:01] there’s not a great a chapter of all the people who who fail to stay with the Lord but they’re listed all through the scriptures I’ll just remind you some of you will know them anyway of some of the people who are the other list the list of the people who well Lot’s wife was probably the first well probably you go back earlier to Cain and Abel and Cain but what about when the children of Israel did get into the promised land and then there was this bloke called Achan my pity kids whose parents giving the name Achan because one of his ancestors who had the name did and he was a person who was dedicated to God and a part of the Israeli army and went into the promised land as led by Joshua was in that great moment when people made the song Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down but in the victory of that particular occasion

[00:31:08] I think I’ve got my history right the victory of the that particular occasion he was told by his leaders that they were not to take any of the goodies because all the spoil was dedicated to God they noticed this all the spoil was dedicated to God but when he was doing a bit of a cleanup of things and he came across some things that he couldn’t resist the temptation and he took them and hid them in his tent and they were two two hundred shekels of silver they were a whole lot of special clothing which will be rather glamorous to wear and a whole wedge of gold i’d take the word wedge is like you know bar of gold and he hid these in his tent but God called on the children of Israel through his prophet and until they found who was the person who had disobeyed and and what was his sin was to take that which had been dedicated to God for the victory all the spoils and keep them for himself

[00:32:27] so what does he represent if you transform transferred that failure into the new covenant era will be somebody who gets in the door by faith but though they’re in the door by faith they get tempted to take that which is now dedicated to God which is your life and your future and everything and use it for your own greediness i don’t think that in the new testament era of the new covenant someone loses belonging to God for that but they do get severely punished i don’t think people do lose their salvation once they have it but there is a moment of judgment when Jesus comes again of Christians and some Christians are going to be saved in a sense of getting into heaven by the skin of their teeth but some of them will have lots of the Lord speaking against the fact that they took that which was redeemed at great price that which should be dedicated to God and use the years

[00:33:38] of opportunity just for themselves and i’ve met people who’ve done that and some of them have been ministers who know they’re Christians some of them have been in lofty positions of authority in denominations but have said quietly on the side to some that they felt needed to hear that they’d never got to do what the Lord really had told them to do and they took what was redeemed by the blood of Christ and what had been led to them as to what their life was to be about but they instead gave it to making money or having comfort or something that was never in the purpose of God and they were doing what Achan did now the punishment the old testaments were severe so i think Achan and his family all got killed but in the new covenant if you’re saved you stay saved but there is such a thing as being called not to dedicate that saved life to the one who has paid for it are you hearing me or more importantly can you hear

[00:35:07] another voice this morning the God wants you to understand that you’re someone who’s been paid for it the greatest of costs and that cost was Jesus paid and that triumph was his life and death and resurrection and that owner of you that’s why the previous couple of weeks i’ve been preaching on who owns the church church isn’t owned like a democratic process by the people who come and put the money in the plate it’s not owned by the people who do the jobs it’s not owned by any special set of pastors or whatever who may think that they own the church it’s one of the things that pastors have to learn that they don’t own the church there’s only one person who owns the church and it’s Jesus who paid for the church to belong to him and who loves the church and if you want the reasons make a good sermon actually now that i think of it as to why Jesus owns the church i’ll tell you the biggest reason is because he’s the one that loves loves it most

[00:36:38] sometimes i run into people who are in religious circles who are always got negative things to say about the church and some of what they say are probably correct because we have lots of good and bad things the only thing i got an apologetic to say to them i said you shouldn’t criticize a hospital for having sick people inside we’re the sick people and we’re glad that it’s got Jesus medicine coming to us so you don’t criticize the church for its faults but the major reason why not to criticize the church is because he loves it and he’s the one who loves it more than any other person and there are people who argue about how to apply different verses one of them being one that joey quoted this morning where Jesus says behold i stand at the door and knock and some people use that to lead others to christ i’ve done that let Jesus come into your life it’s only part of the meaning of the verse it actually is about you really don’t understand

[00:37:51] that i’ve said this a few times i just hope it lands home Jesus owns the church and if he has to stand as he does in revelation 320 which is a bit of a picture of the church in the last days and certainly seems to be true of us in general in the west today and he says behold i stand at the door and knock politely he’s knocking at the church he died for he’s knocking at the church the Hebrew owns he’s knocking at the door of the church that is his home more than even ours you get that more than even ours and he says if any individual can hear my voice and we’ll get up and over the door i will come into him and as joey explained in the communion the purpose of the communion is to dramatize how Jesus wants to be with us and have fellowship with us and that’s the purpose of the church but he’s the one that owns the church don’t ever think that you own the church be glad to be welcomed to join the fellowship of Jesus in the church

[00:39:05] well i had a list of people who turned against and some of them i think will be in heaven i’m looking forward to going to heaven to do some rather interesting interviews i don’t know whether you like watching interviews on tv i do actually i used to like watching some of our Australian interviews and we had some pretty good ones in Sydney who interview people and somehow know how to ask the awkward questions as well as the ones that get to the historical facts and there’s a bloke who’s come out from England just recently and he was on tv interviewing but he also was on tv where the Anglicans had got him to speak at one of their big churches and my goodness did he give us Australians a serve what he gave us a serve about was just how much a wonderful country we have and how we denigrate ourselves fail to realize what we’ve got and he was a wonderful interviewer and i think you would find that when we get to heaven there’ll be some people who are

[00:40:08] going to have an interview and i’m looking forward in heaven i think he’ll be there to interview uh Anna Niasse and Sophia who had some property and the trend at the time and their local church or the church in Jerusalem was to sell some of your assets and give it to the poor the disciples would use the money to help people in need and they sold some land and they didn’t tell of the whole money that they got they pretended they were giving it all into Peter’s hands and they kept back some and in keeping her back they were pretending that they were giving more than they were and Peter calls the men and the punishment that he lets happen in front of him it’s god that does it is that Anna Niasse drops dead the young men have to come in and take his his body out and then Sophia comes in not knowing what has happened to her husband and Peter asks her i asked her is it this much you got or he asked her did you give you know

[00:41:15] the money and she backed up the story her husband had lied giving and she drops dead the young men are called again to carry out the body there can come punishments in this life but i still expect to see Anna Niasse Sophia in heaven and i’m going to have a go at being an interviewer to see what they’ll say i think i know they’ll be full of sorrow at the fact and what i’ve discovered just this is a tentative thing just during the week coming to read the bible on topic for today that you can read a chapter a faith chapter in hebrews 11 the list of all the people who believed but what about the chapter of those that whose faith faltered as Christians they’re not lost but they include someone like Lot’s wife who looked back what she lost was getting out of lot and not getting sizzled by the volcanic stuff but if we’re Christians in the new covenant you don’t lose your salvation because of your failures

[00:42:26] because we’re all sinners and we all have failures but the opposite of not having faith as you go through the list of them and i haven’t gone through the whole list i had a list of them here that i was going to go through but when you examine what caused the failure wasn’t necessarily a lack of belief about Jesus it actually was money and riches and security and getting your life so you feel secure by your own resources and if you go through the story and i’m going to finish now so i won’t tell it but just to name them not only Ananias and Sophia but Demas who was in love with the world yet he was actually a minister or someone traveling with Paul with the gospel but he ended up in a wreck of a Christian life and i think there are lots of people for whom as Christians what can wreck your Christian life is that you don’t cling to going on having faith and you put your trust in something else like the acceptance of the world

[00:43:43] or like something that is less than trusting Jesus i don’t think you’ll lose your salvation because i think Jesus gives that and doesn’t take it back you can lose getting it if you haven’t got there in the first place but these things often are things of the world that draw us away and take our rest rather than Jesus but then his second coming we will suffer a loss of acceptance but we’ll still get into heaven more about that sort of question another day but let me have a word of prayer heavenly father i thank you for the word of god lord boy is it rich father it’s wonderful what you’ve given us in your word and when we study it i thank you for the holy spirit who teaches us and the word of god and and also the holy spirit helps us to realize about where the truth lies and there are many challenges that we have but your word can answer and there’s many helps that we can receive from it and also from the

[00:45:01] presence of the holy spirit thank you that Jesus said that your spirit when he was going to send him after he got back to heaven he’s going to send the holy spirit to his people that he would guide us into all truth and lord this is a pretty big one this morning that faith is what’s needed but when people make a mess of the life of faith it’s often to do with money or to do with something to trust in other than Jesus much of his teaching and the attitudes about trusting in him and not anything else lord save us from listening to the world too much save us from all the things that we naturally rest in instead of you and lord do what you have to do to get us back don’t let us have volcanic ash fall on our heads don’t let us father have things have to fail so badly that we cause lots of damage but come and speak to us and let us know that we might be chastised enough to come back close and walk with you thank you lord Jesus that you are the one who loves us most and the one that we should trust completely in thank you for being our savior in your own name we pray amen