The Grace Of God

Now, and I was pondering the possibility of going through the whole chapter here today, because it's kind of the same subject, but it's a little bit long to stretch it the whole way. So I think we'll take it down through verse number 11. And I'm going to read through the passage.

And this is a comparison between Old Covenant and New Covenant. And they're a lot closer here at Corinth to the Old Covenant, probably about 15 or 20 years from the day of Pentecost and us moving into, as you'll see here this morning, a New Covenant covenant. And so teaching on that subject back then was vital because there was a transition between Old Covenant and New Covenant, and we'll see some of that transition here this morning.

I want to read down through these 11 verses, and I'd like you to notice the comparison and the contrast here with, I guess it's contrast with New Covenant and Old Covenant. And so let's start here in verse number one. I'm going to read all the way down through verse number 11.

Do we begin again to commend ourselves or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you or letters of commendation from you? You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men. For as much as you are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God. Written not with ink on pages of parchment in scrolls, but written with the spirit of the living God.

Not in tables of stone, and that's a reference to the two tables of the Ten Commandments, but in fleshly tables of the heart. So you see here the contrast from Old Testament written on parchments with ink, but in the New Covenant written with the spirit of the living God. In the Old Testament on tables of stone, but here in the New Testament in the fleshly tables of the heart.

Verse four, and such trust have we through Christ to God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also has made us able ministers of the New Testament. Not of the letter, but of the spirit.

Here's the contrast again. Not of the letter, not written down on parchment or stone with letters, but that which was written in or written by the spirit of God, and we'll see how that happened just in a little bit. For the letter killeth, that's the Old Covenant, but the spirit giveth life.

But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, that's Old Covenant, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, which glory was to be done away, how shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious, and that's New Covenant. For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect by reason of the glory that excelleth.

The glory of the Old Testament was like a 60-watt light bulb, but the glory of the new is a flood lamp, and it far exceeds the glory of the old. Verse 11, for if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious. Well here's a comparison, and we're going to move down through this chapter because it's going to bring us down here to verse 17 and 18, kind of the conclusion here of how the New Covenant is a transforming covenant.

It is a covenant that will change us from the inside out, and it's this word metamorphosize and changing from the inside out. Now the Old Covenant was an external covenant. It had to do with externals, just like we talked about, that stone over there, those two stones where God wrote the law.

It is not a reference to an internal covenant, and the New Covenant is an internal covenant. If Hebrews chapter 10 verse 16 says this, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord. I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them.

The heart and the mind is internal. Those tablets, those parchments were external, they were outside the body, but the Lord says in this New Covenant I'm going to do things different. I'm going to write my laws in their hearts and in their minds, and we have that privilege here this morning that the Lord is doing a work from the inside out, and He is writing His law in our hearts and in our minds.

Not on tablets outside of ourselves, but that the writing is internal. It is something that God is doing internal. I like that verse in Philippians chapter 1, it says, He which has begun a good work in you will complete it at the day of Jesus Christ.

And God's work is a work here in the New Covenant that is an internal work. And that's why you get to the Sermon on the Mount, and if you've never noticed this, and the Lord is beginning to transition from Old Covenant into New Covenant. Remember He said this is the New Covenant in my blood which is shed for you, but there on the Sermon on the Mount He talks about all the blessed, the blessed, and each one of those blessed are internal.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are the peacemaker.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And all of these things are focusing the hearts to that which is internal, and that which is on the inside, because the Lord is wanting to change man from the inside out, to purify his motives. Blessed are the pure in heart, to purify the motives.

And there's some things I want to talk about here this morning, but our motives, that's important to the Lord. What is the motive for why you do what you do? What is the motive to be here this morning? What is my motive to be down in Columbus on Tuesday nights and ministering down there? What is the motive? You know, the Lord revealed the motive of the Jewish people when He said, all their works they do for to be seen of men. In other words, their motivation is external.

They have a desire to please the people that are outside of them. And that motivation is not a pure motivation. So blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

How about your affections? What's the affections of your heart? When you open up your heart this morning, what do you really love? What do you really love? And we ought not to obviously love the things of this world, but God is interested in that. Your affections, your motives, the thoughts and the imaginations of the heart. And so the Sermon on the Mount is a introduction to New Covenant theology.

Let's go to the heart. I'm going to write my laws in the heart. I'm going to do a work in the heart and start there.

And so the New Covenant is an inside out transformation. And that word metamorphosis is used here. And we'll see it in the next message, probably next week.

But in verse 18, it says this. But we all with an open face, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord are changed. And that word change is actually the Greek word metamorpho.

We are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord. In other words, this is a transformation from the inside out. And that's the work that the Lord is wanting to do here in the New Covenant.

There's two different ways to change people. One is to conform them. You know, you put pressure on them from the outside and you make them conform to a system that's conformation.

Bible says, be not conformed by the world, be not conformed to the world. The world is pressing from the outside upon us and saying, do like us, be like us, act like us. It's all coming from the outside.

Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed. Now, the word transform is is not coming from the outside. It's coming from the inside out.

And that's what the New Testament is bringing to us, a transformation. And so it's important what's on the inside of us and what's happening on the inside. And that's really the important thing regarding the New Covenant.

I want to read to you something that Paul wrote in Romans chapter two to the Romans with regards to this very thing. He says, for he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly. Neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh.

Again, outward things in the Old Covenant. It was circumcision. It was an outward thing.

He is not a Jew, which is dealing with this outward stuff. But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly. And circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter.

Again, it's not written. It's not. The answer is not out there written on tables of stone, but that which is written by the spirit in the heart.

And here's something that we'll really find out where everybody is, whose praise is not of men, but of God. You know, if you're truly being transformed from the inside out, and that's your heart, to have a purity of heart, a purity of affection, a purity of motive, you're concerned most of all with he who knows the heart and you're preoccupied with pleasing him because he's the only one that knows the heart. And so in your life, the most important thing to you is I need to please him because he sees me internally.

But if that's not your heart and you're more concerned about pleasing men, then you're concerned about outward things, because that's what men see and they see those outward things. And you can please men by doing certain outward things. The Bible says man looks upon the appearance, but God looks upon what? The heart, the heart.

And so the new covenant, God brought the new covenant because he wanted to move inside. He wanted to change man from the inside out. And so the new covenant, if you read it and we've been preaching through it, but the new covenant moves away from an outside emphasis to an inside emphasis, an internal emphasis.

And really, if you're living new covenant Christianity, you're preoccupied with those things that go on inside that nobody sees. What's my motive? What do I really love? How are my thoughts, my imaginations? And that's where most of your time is in confession. And your heart is broken before the Lord because of the internal things.

And that's a good thing. That's a good thing that our hearts, our minds are preoccupied with the internal. And I want to have you turn with me back to Matthew chapter 25.

And we'll go somewhere here in just a minute. We're talking about why God is writing in the heart, in the new covenant, why he is concerned about the heart. In Matthew chapter 25, a very familiar verse, or excuse me, Matthew chapter 23, I'm sorry.

Matthew chapter 23 in verse number 25. It says this, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you may clean the outside of the cup. And of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

Now, I think the Lord wants these men and even all the Jews because they don't have the grace to change themselves from the inside out. I think he's wanting these men to say, God, be merciful to me. Lord, I am wicked on the inside.

I am corrupt. And everything you say about me is true. God, be merciful.

And I think God would have changed them. They'd have been saved and they'd have been delivered. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you may clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within.

And that's the problem with the old covenant. It didn't get within. It didn't get down to the heart of man where God wanted it.

But within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup. And here's the here's the new covenant cry from the Lord here.

Let us cleanse first the inside of the cup and the platter that the outside of them may be clean also. Priority. Priority in the new covenant is getting down to the heart, getting down to the things that I don't see in any of your life, getting down to the things that you don't see in my life.

Getting down to the things that only the Lord knows and sees. Amen. Pleasing him and not being a men pleaser.

And that's what the new covenant is all about first. Cleansing that which is within the cup and you know, I think we should we should all be more concerned about things like pride. That's inside the cup.

That's big. That's what caused Lucifer to fall. I will exalt myself.

It was in his heart and it was the sin of Lucifer. Pride. Envy.

I've listed some of these and what what's interesting is these are the things that are that as we preach to the Bible verse by verse, these are the things that are coming up over and over again. Pride and envy and strife, attitudes of the heart, lust and anger, fear and anxiety, doubt in the heart, deception, being deceptive in the heart. These are the things that God is first and most concerned about.

You know, I've heard testimonies here, and this is not to make us feel bad in any way, but but it is a burden that that and I fail in this way, too. But I know there's some young people that have said this, and I've heard them say, you know, nobody asked me about my heart. Nobody asked me about what's going on in my heart.

It seems like if I do something outward, they may put a little makeup on or something. It's right on. Everybody's right on.

But nobody's interested in the heart. It's like like where is the concern for my heart, my my pride, my envy, my jealousies, my my depression, my my doubts, my fears? Where is that concern? And and that's new covenant Christianity. That's where God is, is first and foremost desiring.

He wants to write his his commandments on the heart of man. Now, you know this, and I will illustrate this on the board, but the Lord, he always. Is a. A. A starter on the inside, you got the spirit of man, where does God start his work of salvation? He starts it on the inside, don't he? He's an inside guy.

He starts it when you're born again. He goes way, way down in the spirit of man and he starts his work. If your savior this morning, he didn't start the work on the outside and start to work with your hair or your your weight or your dress.

He he goes way down at the start. And the gospel is the message that goes right to the spirit of man. And you must be born again.

That's step one. And so God starts there. He is he is one who starts internally and and then it moves outside of that to the soul of man.

It's called the sanctification. And so the soul of man internally, we start to change our affections. We start to change our attitudes.

We start to change our internals, our thought processes. And then he moves outwardly and he's going to finally change our body. When he returns.

And so when God thinks about doing a work, he thinks about let's start on the inside and we'll work out. And that was the difference. The main difference between the new covenant and the old covenant.

The old covenant was a letter, a law from the outside trying to get people to conform. And listen, it was God's plan and purpose. The law was given to bring us to Christ, to show us we don't have anything on the inside to do it.

And so it's all his plan. And we're going to see here in just a minute, the law couldn't do it. The old covenant couldn't do it.

So we we start out and we help people the very same way we go down there to Columbus. You go to the witness. You go every place.

The first thing you go is you don't go to to work on the outside of a person. You go to get to the spirit of man. You need to be born again.

That's where we start. We're goal is there. And then we start moving from there to teaching them the word of God.

And changing their attitudes and their affections and and freeing themselves from the the bondages that are internal. And then that works its way to the outside. And that's the order.

Of the new covenant, it's inside out, it's metamorphosis, not confirmation. And I believe God's very much into that, because some of you ask and there's been comments. Brother Jerry, when are you going to preach on outward things? Well, I'm going to preach on them when we get to them.

And the problem is I've been preaching to John for two and a half years and I preach to Acts for another two and a half years. And we still haven't come across them. Now, I know there's a few of them in the Bible, but God seems to be emphasizing and following his word.

We're going to go first to the heart and we're going to cleanse it. And you know what happens when you get the heart in order? The Lord says here, he says, cleanse first that which is within the cup, the platter and the outside of them may be clean also. So it's like it almost it just happens.

And and so the emphasis in the new covenant is to go down, first of all, to the spirit and then to the soul. And so so the Lord says now in this new covenant, I'm going to write my laws in their heart and in their spirit. I'm going to change their heart.

I'm going to change their mind. I'm going to change their affections. I'm going to change the way they think.

And that will bleed out to their outsides. Stressing the outside produces hypocrisy. There in Matthew 23, it says, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

You know, many people today, just like here, they're a mess on the inside or a mess, but they look good on the outside. And that's that's kind of where the law, the old covenant brought people, because the old covenant said, don't do this, live this way, do these things. And and people had not the power, the grace to to change inwardly.

And so they conformed outwardly. But their insides were a mess. Now, I brought me my illustration here.

So we use this illustration before. But there you go. Which cup would you want to drink out of this one or this one? How many raise your hand on this one? How about this one over here? Oh, yeah, you do.

You see how it is, you know, when Jesus said outwardly, you appear righteous unto men, it looks good. And you say, I'd like to drink out of that one. But inwardly, you are ravening wolves.

You're full of extortion and excess. Now, when we sit down here to eat, I know most of you are going to say, I'd never drink out of that thing. OK, I'll drink out of this one here.

It may not look that good on the outside, but at least it has its internals. And yes, I understand the idea that when the insides are cleaning up, the outsides are going to start cleaning up, too. But but we're not to we're not to evaluate on the basis of the outside.

We're to evaluate on the basis of the inside and the attitudes and the affections of the heart. And here's why we have a new covenant. This is the beautiful thing about the new covenant.

In Jesus' day, men were like this. It says outwardly, you appear beautiful, but inwardly you're ravening wolves. Where did the spirit of God want to live? In there, he wants to come and live in there.

And so in order to live in there, he needed to change in there. And, you know, the Lord can live in here. You can actually live in here.

And even though the outside is dirty, he can live in there. It looks like a good place to live. It's clean on the inside.

But the spirit of God wanted to come to the people of God. And that's what happened on the day of Pentecost and the new covenant. And the new covenant requires this.

It required this. It required repentance. It required, Lord, I'm a miserable wretch on the inside.

Lord, clean me from the inside out. And the Lord said, I can do it. And there are times the Bible tells us not to judge outwardly because there are times people are being cleansed inwardly that still have a work to do on the outside.

But the work on the inside is going on. Let's look here at 2 Corinthians chapter 3. Now, understanding this inside and out concept. In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, I want to look here at verse number six.

Who also has made us able ministers. Who also has made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit. For the letter killeth, but the spirit gives life.

Now, what does that mean? The letter kills. The Old Testament is a killer and it is a killer. But the new covenant, the spirit, God giving his spirit, but the spirit gives life.

Let me explain to you what it means by the letter kills. The letter means the law, the standard. The standard is the law.

Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not steal.

And all the things that were given to Moses from Mount Sinai, that is this beautiful thing called the law. And by the way, the law is beautiful. Bible says it's a beautiful thing and it's perfect in every way.

The only problem is, poor me, I'm a fallen creature. And as those individuals back then, as the fallen people looked at that law, it's a beautiful thing, but I cannot attain to it. And that law, which I cannot attain to because I'm fallen, I'm a sinful being.

That law pronounces death on me because that law says the wages of sin is death. And if you violate me, you're going to die. And that law condemned me.

It made me feel guilty and condemned because I wasn't reaching it. And that law was a real killer. Just ask the lady who was taken in adultery there in John chapter eight and the Pharisees or the Jews wanted to kill her because the law said stone her.

The law brought death, the law brought condemnation, the laws condemns us and sentence us to death. But does that mean that the law is bad? No, the law is not bad. The law is a beautiful standard.

And I want to read to you here Romans chapter seven. Listen as I read, because Paul addresses this when he writes the Romans. Romans chapter seven, verse seven.

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law, for I had not known lust, except the law had said thou shalt not covet. And I've jumped down to verse 10, it says in the commandment which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.

This beautiful commandment, which God originally ordained to be good for me, I found it to be my death sentence. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me and by it slew me. Wherefore, the law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good.

But that holy, just, good commandment made death for me. We're going to see what God's intention is for the law here in just a minute. But but the law is good.

It's right. It's holy. It's just.

But the law condemns us and brings death to us. Now, the law has a purpose. And we read in Galatians, the purpose of the law is the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.

Back then they had tutors or schoolmasters and take a child and child come with me and we'll lead you all to your school and maybe even stay with you and tutor you and help you in your schooling. A schoolmaster and the law was to come to us sinners and say, listen, you need help. I'm going to bring you to the one who can help you.

And that one is Jesus Christ. The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. The law said you're in trouble.

The law said you're going to die. And praise God in the law. The Lord gave a shadow to give us hope.

He gave the sacrificial system, meaning if you did sin and violate against that law, you could take a lamb or an animal and come down and offer that animal up and you could see that blood flowing. And it was taken into the the holy of holies and offered up as an atonement for your sin. And yes, Hebrews says that in your heart, you didn't think that that was going to pay for your sin.

The blood of bulls and goats and all those things could not atone. But you look forward to the day. When God would provide himself a lamb.

And that was the faith of the Old Testament, they look forward, you know, this lamb that I'm offering for my sin, it's not going to take care of it. I know that in my heart and conscience, but God is going to bring a lamb. Someday in the future, and that when John the Baptist said, behold, the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, this is going to be the real sacrifice.

And so the law would bring you right up to the place where you could say, I need Jesus. And I need an atonement for my sin. But the letter, it says, kills, but he goes on to say here in chapter three that the spirit gives life.

Now, young people, here's something beautiful and you got to latch on to it by faith. You've got to embrace it and you need to come to God with it and claim it and go forward in your life. The spirit giveth life through the death of Jesus Christ.

By the way, Jesus said, I've not come to destroy the law. I've come to fulfill it. I'm going to obey it in every way.

And then me who fulfilled it and lived a perfect life, I'm going to get up on the cross. The just one dying for the unjust, and I'm going to take the place and suffer for the violations of your sin against my holy law. And I'll take the blame for it.

I'll suffer for it. And I will free you from the death penalty. I'll die myself.

I'll free you from the condemnation. I'll be condemned myself. I'll free you from the separation from God eternally.

I'll cry out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? I will take it all for you. Amen. I have come to fulfill it.

And so through his death, he died for the wages of sin is death. He died to free you from condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.

The law says you're guilty and you say, I'm not because Jesus died in my place. I don't have to be condemned. And the beautiful thing about it, he goes down inwardly and he washes you thoroughly from your sin so that now you can participate in new covenant Christianity because the spirit of God can live in there.

He can live in there. The Bible says that your body is a temple now of the Holy Spirit of God. Keep in mind, in the Old Testament, the spirit of God would come upon a man and then depart.

Remember, he would come upon Samson and depart. He would come upon a Jeremiah and move and Jeremiah would prophesy. But I love Acts 1 because Acts 1 is such a beautiful passage when, or Acts, yeah, it's Acts chapter 1 or chapter 2 there where the spirit of God comes in everybody there on the day of Pentecost and they prophesy and people say, what is this? And, you know, it's interesting that Peter doesn't get up and talk about tongues.

He doesn't give a long spiel about tongues, even though they spoke some in tongues. He points to the fact that God is wanting to actually live in you for forever. He wants to live in your body and he wants to move in you young men, young women and prophesy.

You know, in the new covenant, it's not come and go, it's come and stay, come and stay. And in the new covenant, it's not he's coming and going, he's coming and staying. So don't grieve him.

Don't quench him. Right. We get those admonitions from the new covenant.

So he wants to live in us. And that's, that's this new covenant idea to live in us so that by his spirit, his power, we can live. Now, this is something people say, get rid of the law.

No, we can live according to the standard. And even, even I love it what Jesus said, you know, except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. You shall in no case enter the kingdom of God.

In other words, if your Christianity doesn't get past that and have an internal righteousness, you don't have the real thing. Amen. I mean, if you're just here and you're a form and internally you're a mess and outside you look great, you're just like they are.

And they thought they had a righteousness. And the Lord says, no, except you go farther than that. You don't have anything.

And that's why we better make sure we're authentic on the inside. Amen. That, that there is a real work of the Lord internally.

So, so by the spirit now, when the spirit of God comes in now, now the spirit of God is able to give us the power. You shall receive power. After that, the Holy Ghost has come upon you.

Listen to this passage here, explaining this in Romans 8. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, sinful flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. So, so that's the Holy Spirit was given to you so that you might then, wow, that's a high standard. But I can be taken up there.

You know, there's a man my wife knows, Isaac Essel. She met him many years ago when she was in Africa. He's a paralyzed man.

He was probably maybe 18, 19 years old when you first met him. He has crutches. He's very, he's hobbled over just this pitiful young man.

But he was a part of the church there in Ghana. And he would write my wife letters after we were first married and she was back home. And then I went over to Ghana, same place, shortly after we were married.

And I met Isaac there and just, you know, hobbled and sweet young man. But just he's just kind of paralyzed in many ways and hobbling around and had a good spirit. But, you know, you take Isaac and you sit before him, let's say an eight foot bar and say, jump over it.

I jump it. He's, I just can't do it. Beautiful.

I'd love to, but I can't get it, can't get done. And, you know, all of a sudden someone who's strong, like Caleb over there, has power, comes to Isaac and says, we'll do it. And he helps Isaac, he's a small young man, lifts him up and pushes him over.

You know, Isaac has no hope. He has no possibility of getting over that high jump bar at eight feet or seven feet, however they do the Olympics. But with grace, but with help.

And that's exactly the purpose of the new covenant, to bring grace to the heart, grace to the heart. And don't get this idea, young people, that the law is gone and we can just live any way we want. No, the grace was given to you not to go out and live in sin, but the grace was given to you to fulfill the law of righteousness.

And not only when it says, thou shalt not murder, to just not kill anybody out there on the streets, but to not hate whosoever hates his brother is a murderer. To not just commit adultery, but to overcome looking upon a woman, to lust after her. Amen.

That's why there's grace. Amen. To go exceed life.

The freedom from death, the freedom from condemnation, and the grace and ability to help, to live up to the standard. Now, you know, those are facts. What you need to do is come to the Lord and say, Lord, I believe this.

I believe you've given me grace. I have no more guilt. I have no more condemnation.

I'm not going to die because of my sin. But I also acknowledge the fact that you've given me the Holy Spirit. And Lord, help me and teach me.

I want the Spirit of God to move in me and deliver me from my bondages. And get serious with the Lord. As it's available, if you're a child of God.

Let's go back here to 2 Corinthians again, and we'll keep moving. This is an interesting subject here. I like this last point in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 7. I'm going to read down through verse 11.

But if the ministration of death written and engraved in stones was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, which glory was to be done away, how shall not the ministration of the Spirit, the new covenant, be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, but by reason of the glory that excelleth. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.

Now, I'll draw a picture up here to help you understand. Here's Moses. That's Moses.

Moses is on the mount. And he's getting the old covenant and he's talking about this glory, the glory of God. Well, that represents the Shekinah glory.

No man has seen God and lived. I mean, the glory of God is incredible. And so he's up there on the mount in the presence of God.

And this glory is with him. It talks about it. This glory is emanating down to Moses.

And Moses, his 40 days in this glory, his face comes down. It's like it's glowing. It's just amazing.

And he had to put a veil over his face. It was just so distracting to the people like, wow. And so Moses gets this law on Mount Sinai and it talks about how he, we're going to talk about this next week, how he has this glow on his face because of the presence of God.

That's old covenant. But now here we are in the new covenant. There's something different happening.

That's you and me. Now it's no longer external bringing a glow on the face of Moses. Guess where the presence of God is now? And it's now going emanating out.

That's new covenant Christianity. Now, this is old covenant Moses, presence of God, glory shining externally on his face, put a veil over it. But new covenant, God's Shekinah glory is inside of us.

Oh, boy. And now it's supposed to be emanating out of us. And this is a greater, we're talking about here, a greater glory.

Now, some of you ever been to a Church of God meeting and Brother David probably knows these things, you know, the holiness group. And and they talk about the glory. I got the glory, you know, the glory.

You know what that means is I've got the Spirit of God filling me. I've got the glory, the glory in me. Amen.

Well, I have the glory in me. I got to tell you, whenever I think about this, I think about my wife will remember this. I think she will.

Brother Craig, I talked a lot about Brother Craig because he's a he's a good example of this. Way back in the late 1990s, young man was deeply involved in drugs and alcohol and it was a mess. And and he was converted and he was a part of the church here.

And of course, he couldn't hold the glory in. I've told you before, he'd sit in church service. Hallelujah.

And I had to deal with some of these starchy type that didn't like people shouting in church. And and but he just had the glory. He had so much in him that he was very excited.

But one day he come to me and he said, Brother Jerry, I met this young lady at the at the laundromat this week. He was living in an apartment. He did his laundry at the laundromat.

And you remember this, honey, and this and Craig said, there's a young couple. They're living together, not married up there in Mount Vernon in an apartment, second floor. And they want you to come up.

We want to have a Bible study with them. Remember that? So I said, OK, that sounds great. You met someone and, you know, he was always out and about trying to win souls.

But yeah, I'll come and let's have a Bible study. So we get up there at this apartment and this girl's there. And I don't know where Craig stepped out.

He was using the restroom or something. But I asked this young lady, I said, how did you meet Craig and how did it work that, you know, you got together like this? And she said, well, I was at the laundromat doing my laundry. And I looked across at this Craig.

He was over on the other side. He said, and this is her words, she said, his face was glowing. It's glowing.

I got to, what's, I got to find out what's, what's going on with this guy. And she went up and talked to him. Why, why is your face glowing? Maybe I'm filled with the spirit of God.

Maybe the glory is coming out. Oh, that was, that's a good testimony. You know, Stephen had the glory.

Bible says he had the face of an angel. I don't know what an angel looks like, but I do know this. Whenever you see angels in the Bible, their faces, they're pretty powerful.

They're pretty bright. The angels, the faces are like one angel. The revelation is his countenance was as the sun shining in its strength.

And so here in the new covenant, you know, we don't have to go up and spend 40 days with the presence of God and have it emanate upon us and have our face shine. We got the presence of God in us. Amen.

And that presence ought to be emanating out of us. I don't think we ought to walk around looking like we're in the molly grubs and we ought not to have to fake it. There ought to be something in us, well, ought to have the spirit of God in us that that we have some glory.

Amen. Isn't that true? Bible says in Isaiah, I didn't write it down, but Isaiah, it says, Woe unto you, no, yeah, your countenance doth witness against you. Yeah, our countenance doth witness against us, you know, whether or not we have the glory or not.

Isn't that right? And so when we're internally. In a good place, we ought to have the glory and that glory ought to be coming from the inside out. Not the old covenant, Moses up there and having to get some external influence to make his face shine in the presence of God.

But now God is going to dwell in us. And that glory is going to emanate from us. So let's seek the glory.

Like the holiness crowd does, I think it's a biblical concept. You want to get up and start running around the church and shout, you got the glory, just go ahead and do it. We probably need a little more excitement in here anyway, don't we, don't we need some? Amen.

So that's the New Testament glory, not like Moses, who my, he must have shown he put a veil over his face. But there's another glory, and that's that's the stuff that should be emanating from us. I need more of that.

Amen. The glory. We'll continue on this subject next time.

Let's have a word of prayer and we'll open up for anyone who might be sure. Heavenly Father, we do pray your work in us, Lord, to. To truly experience the new covenant.

And to have the spirit of life. The ministration of righteousness. And the glory.

That you afforded us through the death, burial and resurrection of your son. And may we attain unto that law, that beautiful law. Not only externally, but internally.

Our hearts might truly be pure. And Lord, may our focus be on those things. But as the scripture says, if we will take care of that which is big, the beam, then we can see clearly to take out the moat out of our brother's eye.

So Lord, help us. May the word of God find a place in each one of our hearts this morning. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, maybe we'll have Brother John preach next Sunday. He says that passage on Moses, his favorite passage. One of his favorite passages, so I'd like to hear what he's learned from it.

Anyone have anything they'd like to share this morning? Can we honestly say before the Lord here that our biggest concern and our striving is for those things that nobody sees. That we are striving with internally. Can we say that? Honestly, this is where my struggle is.

Keeping my heart subdued, submission, honor, purity. That's where we ought to be living. Yes.