Israel In The Old and New Covenants

We're coming to an end of our study in Isaiah, Lord willing, next week will be our last week in that book. And I wonder perhaps if you've noticed during the last two that I have applied some of the promises made to Old Testament Israel to the New Testament church.

Promises that we have seen in Isaiah made to Israel, I have applied to the church, to us today. And we're going to see that especially next week in the very last portion of Isaiah's book.

Now why have I done that? Or how have I done that? I don't want you just to take it for granted that that's the way it's to be. I want you to understand from the scriptures why I believe this to be the true meaning of God.

So I thought it would be good for us to study this morning the relationship of Israel and the church. And I suppose one of the biggest lessons to see in this whole matter is that it's not that the church just replaces Israel.

Israel. It's rather that the church is Israel. Now there's a difference there and I trust that it will come out as we go further this morning.

It's not that, well, we just plug in the church for whatever promises were made to Israel. We just scrap Israel and we just put the church in there and say that's for Israel now.

No, the church is Israel. It's the newly constituted Israel. Israel is no longer under the old covenant. Israel is now under a new covenant.

It's a different covenant. It is not like the first covenant, Jeremiah says. And it's that covenant that now is regulating their relationship to God.

And that means certain changes. So we don't just make this leap from Israel to the church willy-nilly. The Bible itself draws this conclusion and it does so by various steps.

The Old Testament tells us that this change is coming. Remember how we've seen in Isaiah this great makeover that's coming? Look at Israel's condition now, Isaiah is saying.

Oh, but under the new covenant, after the restoration, look what she will be then. So it's like a makeover. There's discontinuity and there's continuity.

There's some things that are the same and there's some things that are different. Just as in a makeover. It's the same person. Oh, but she looks so much different.

It's the same nose, but it's been tweaked. Similarities, differences. So it is with Israel. We will see some things that are the same now in Israel that were the same then.

But we will see also some things that are drastically different. And that's because Israel is under a new covenant that's not like the old covenant.

So we're going to look at the before and after picture once more. One side of the handout. I should say number one is Israel in the old covenant.

And then we're going to look at Israel under the new covenant. Again, covenants were just the arrangement that God sovereignly gave to them to explain. What is this relationship between you and me?

What are the stipulations? How does it function? How will I be your God and you be my people? In what ways will this work? Well, Israel under the old covenant then.

Where did the name Israel come from? Does anyone know? Sometimes the study of the first use of words is helpful. And this is such a case. Back in Genesis 32, 28.

As Becky has said. When Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, was wrestling with the angel of the Lord, who turns out to be the Lord himself.

He says, I will not let you go until you bless me. And then the Lord said to him, your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel. Because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.

Israel means he struggles with God. So Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, is called Israel. That's the first use of the word. The second use is when he comes into the land of Shechem in Canaan, in the promised land.

He pitches his tent there. And he buys just a plot of ground where he was at. Just a small little spot. But in Genesis 33, 20, he set up an altar and called it El Elohei Israel.

Meaning God, the God of Israel. So Israel is the name of Jacob. And now God takes the name of Israel himself.

He is the God of Israel. Have you read those words in the Old Testament? Of course you have. He's the Holy One of Israel. He puts his name upon this people. They are a unique people.

Out of all the nations in the world, only this nation did he choose to be their God in this way. In which he is their king. It's a theocracy. He is their governor, their ruler.

They are his people. And they have responsibilities to fulfill to their God. That are unique and unlike any other nation on earth.

Well, as Jacob is dying, Israel is dying, the man Israel. He speaks prophetically about all of his sons. And he says in Genesis 49, 7, Cursed be their anger.

Speaking of Levi and Simeon, I believe. So fierce in their fury so cruel. I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel. Israel.

He's now using Israel as a name for the whole people of God. So it's gone from being the name of Jacob, the new name of Jacob, to which God himself has now attached his name as the God of Israel, and now to where it stands for the whole nation.

Indeed, that's how it's most often used in your Bible. Used of all the descendants of Jacob. So that's something of the derivation of the name Israel.

And this nation then, out of all the nations of the world, is to be the nation from which God is going to bring a Savior into the world. That was its chief purpose.

To maintain a distinct people into which Jesus would be born, as to its human nature, who would bring salvation both to Israel and to the ends of the earth.

So, as you're looking at the picture of Israel in the Old Covenant, the most important thing to see is that there were both believers and unbelievers in Israel.

I think sometimes when we read the Old Testament, we think that they were all Christians, as we think, or believers. That they were all saved and going to heaven. But the reality is that there were far more unbelievers than there were believers.

Haven't we seen that in the book of Isaiah? Hence, the judgments to destroy God's enemies within his own nation, within his own people, and to save who? A remnant.

The chosen, faithful ones within Israel. But you see, to be a member of Old Covenant Israel did not mean you were spiritually saved and going to heaven.

Many of those Israelites had been saved out of slavery in Egypt. They all had. But not nearly all had been saved out of the slavery of their sins.

That's another matter. And to belong to Israel of old didn't mean that you were spiritually saved and bound for heaven. No, their physical salvation from Egypt was a picture of spiritual salvation, which some of them possessed, but not all.

God was picturing, by their deliverance from Egypt, physically, what he could do for them spiritually if their faith was in him.

But not all of them trusted in the Lord. So as a nation, they are a type and a shadow and a symbol of the saved people of God. They typify. They picture for us the saved people of God.

They certainly had the gospel preached to them. God sent the prophets to preach to them, called them to repent and believe, set before them the coming Messiah. The promise was given early that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head.

They needed to trust in that coming Savior. He was set before them in the types and shadows of the ceremonies of their worship, the blood sacrifices, Passover. It was all filled with references to Christ.

The gospel was preached to these people, but the reality is that for most of them, they were unbelievers still. Now, on the other side, you see this, the old, down at the bottom of your picture, the Old Testament people of God.

They were all part of the nation of Israel that was uniquely ruled by God. They were all the physical seed of Abraham, or at least predominantly so. We'll see that in a moment.

Well, but then you see that the whole group of Israel was divided into unbelievers, those who were only redeemed from Egypt, but on the other side, you have true believers, the chosen remnant, who had faith in the coming Savior.

They were redeemed not only from Egypt, but from their sin. They're the true Israel within Israel. They are the spiritual seed of Abraham. They are the circumcised in heart. So, that's the unbelievers and the believers.

That's the first thing we need to see about Old Testament Israel. They had both within the covenant people of God. It was not a saving covenant in the sense that you had to be saved to get in.

No, you had to be a descendant of Israel or be circumcised in order to get in. And that's the second lesson. Not only did you have believers and unbelievers, Old Covenant Israel, secondly, was almost exclusively the physical descendants of Abraham.

They could trace their family tree back to Israel, Jacob and Isaac and Abraham, the father of the nation. So, I say that's predominantly, with few exceptions.

But there was a provision in the law for Gentile men to be circumcised and so to become Jews. And you can read that in the law. It's interesting that in the book of Esther, chapter 8 and verse 17, we read, after God had protected them from destruction, the Bible says, and many people of other nationalities became Jews because of fear of the Jews that had seized them.

They became Jews. How do you become a Jew if you weren't born of the line of Israel? Well, you were circumcised if you were a male. And that brought you into this Old Covenant community.

So, that was rare. But still, the exception at least provides the hint for what we see in the New Covenant that God is going to throw the doors open wide and there will not be just a few, but a massive infusion of Gentiles coming in to the Israel of God.

Okay, so that's the Old Covenant. Israel in the Old Covenant. Any questions with that part of what we've covered? The main two lessons, it's made up of believers and unbelievers.

Second main lesson is that they were predominantly the physical offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. All right? You ready to turn it over?

This is the makeover now, okay? Here's the after. Israel in the New Covenant. The very name you can see has continuity.

It's Israel. But there's discontinuity. It's not the Old Covenant. It's now the New Covenant. And so right away, you see some radical changes.

I want to start with a pile of twigs down in the bottom right-hand or middle right-hand corner. That's what that's supposed to be, a pile of twigs. All right? And we're working out of Romans chapter 11 where we have set before us this one olive tree.

And this is the picture of the olive tree, the new Israel of God, the church of Jesus Christ, Israel in the New Covenant. And we have this tree. And we find that there have been some unbelieving Jews that have been pruned off of the tree of Israel.

There's been an exclusion of unbelieving Jews. They've been cut off. Now, you remember the Jews thought that they had a natural right to all the privileges of the kingdom.

They thought they were in like Flynn no matter how they lived. Why? Because we can trace our lineage back to Abraham. We got the bloodline. You remember that as you've been reading the New Testament.

How often they trusted in their nationality to make them right with God. Why? After all, Abraham is our father. John the Baptist says, that doesn't mean a hill of beans.

You must bring forth fruits for repentance if you're to be baptized by me. Oh, but we have Abraham. And do not think that you can say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father.

I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Let's not mix our metaphors. Here it's talking about trees, plural, being cut down. They're the ones that didn't believe, didn't have fruit. But in Romans 11, it's not trees that are cut down.

It's branches that are cut off and taken out of the people of God. The axe has fallen. The pruning shears have trimmed out unbelieving Jews.

So, we're starting to see some of the difference. It's not natural birth that enables people to enter into the kingdom of God, the Israel of God.

It's rather a spiritual birth as Jesus would say to one of these Jews. You must be born again and only thus will you enter the kingdom of heaven.

John 8, Jesus was talking to a group of Christ rejecting Jews and they're claiming Abraham's our father and Jesus said if you were Abraham's children then you would do the things Abraham did.

As it is, you're determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You're doing the things of your own father, the devil. So, he does not let them hang their hat on the fact that they are physical descendants of Abraham.

The real father you have as to your spiritual father is the devil, not Abraham. So, they thought that they were in and again we can understand why they thought that.

The Old Testament they were in, weren't they? They were in the Israel of the Old Covenant by virtue of their natural birth. But in the New Covenant it's not that way anymore.

And they're still trying to hang on as if it were that way. And oh, what a time Jesus and the Apostles had pointing that out to them. But turn to Acts chapter 3.

Where does the Bible teach that unbelieving Jews are cut out of Israel?

Well, in Acts chapter 3, Peter and John healed a crippled beggar at the temple gates. The crowd rushes. Peter's preaching. This man hasn't been healed by the virtue of our holiness, but he has been healed by God's servant, Jesus, whom you disowned and handed over to be killed.

Repent and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out. Now look at verses 22 and 23. You can read the whole section later, but verses 2 and 23 are critical. For Moses said, this isn't something that we're just saying.

It's not something that's new with Christ, new with the Apostles. No. It's new with the New Covenant, but it was foretold, clear back by Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 18. And he quotes it.

For Moses said, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people. Who is that prophet? It's Christ.

You can read the New Testament and we don't have time to prove it. That's who this coming prophet was from their own people like Moses who knew God like no other prophet did face to face.

He would come and notice what he says. You must listen to everything he tells you. Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from among his people.

So you're in his people, the Old Covenant people, because you're a Jew, an offspring of Abraham. But if you do not trust in this coming prophet who is your Messiah, you will be cut off completely from your, his people.

That's Israel. Now here, turn over to Romans 11. Paul talks about this one olive tree of Israel and there's been a pruning that has happened and it's unbelieving Jews that have pruned off of the people of God, the tree of Israel.

Look at verse 11 of Romans, verse 17 of Romans 11. Some of the branches have been broken off. Why? Why were they broken off?

Why were they pruned off? Well, he tells us in verse 20, they were broken off because of what? Unbelief. But you stand by faith.

And we'll get to that later. But why were they broken off? They didn't have faith. They didn't trust in the coming Messiah, the Savior. And so we're learning the lesson that in the new covenant, only believers belong to the new Israel of God.

Only the believing Jews are remaining in the tree to start with. All the rest are cut off. You remember Jesus spoke with that Roman centurion who had a servant that was sick and when he said, Lord, just speak the word and my servant will be healed.

When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and he said to those following him, I tell you the truth, I've not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. And he went on to say, I say to you that many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

Those are the Gentiles from east, west, coming in, sitting right down at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sharing all the same blessings of the covenant that they have. But, the sons of the kingdom will be thrown outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

There will be a cutting off of the very sons of the kingdom, the ones to whom the kingdom started with. And why are they cut off and cast into hell where there's weeping and gnashing because of unbelief?

Because of unbelief. So that's the first thing that we see and that's that the unbelieving Jews have been cut off from Israel in the new covenant.

Now, before we come to the inclusion of the Gentiles, I want to draw your attention to a very important point that Paul makes throughout Romans 11 and it's that some Jews did believe.

Some of the old covenant Jews did believe and not all were rejected. God had not rejected all Israelites in mass. Not everyone is rejected.

If you're in Romans 11, I want you to see this reality. Most of the nation did reject him. He came to his own and his own received him not, but to those who did receive him.

There were some who did. They were the ones born of God, the remnant chosen by grace from among the Jews. So here in Romans 11, notice how he starts out the chapter.

What's the issue he's dealing with? Has God completely cut off his people? Has he rejected all of them? I ask, did God reject the people, this people, his people?

By no means. I am an Israelite myself. A descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people whom he foreknew.

So, did God reject all of them? Paul argues, no. Not all of them. And he offers himself as exhibit number one. I'm a Jew.

And he didn't reject me. I'm a believer. I'm in Israel. I'm in the body of Christ. I'm in this tree. So he says, God did not reject his people.

That is, those he foreknew. Those he chose. Those he set his love on before time. And he goes into a history lesson and says, this is the way it's always been.

Though God rejected most of these Jews that didn't believe in him, the ones that didn't believe in him, he's always had a remnant. He's always had a people who are faithful within Israel, who are faithful to him, who believe his promises, who trust in the coming Savior.

And I'm the first example of that that I'm giving you. But do you remember in the days of Elijah, he thought he was the only one and God says, I have 7,000 that have not bowed the knee to Baal. I've got a whole lot more people than you realize, Elijah.

Now what are 7,000 in a whole nation? It's just a remnant, a torn off piece of the big cloth. But it's still enough for Paul to say, God didn't reject all Israelites.

Only the unbelievers. We need to see that the rejection is not total. And that's what he's saying. And so too, verse 5, at the present time, Paul's saying, right now, in our time, that Paul was writing, there is a remnant chosen by grace.

In Elijah's time, in Paul's time, and in your time, in my time, there is, from the physical offspring of Abraham, some who believe.

And it's in them that all God's promises to Israel in the Old Testament have been fulfilled. You see, you don't have to have all the nation of the Israelites in order to have those promises fulfilled.

The promises don't need to be fulfilled to all the Israelites. The promises to Israel can be fulfilled to a remnant of the Israelites. And that's what Paul is arguing for in this passage.

God has kept his promise. You can go back to chapter 9, and that's the argument there. What should we say then? Has God's word failed? Let's turn to verse 6 of Romans 9.

It's not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, it's through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.

In other words, it's not the natural children who are God's children. It's the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. So did God's promises to Old Testament Israel about this glorious future, did they fail when he rejected Israel?

No, because there are some Israelites in whom those promises are being fulfilled. I wonder if we really appreciate how Jewish and institution the church of Jesus Christ is.

I think it's our failure to see that that maybe causes this to be a jarring thought to us that the church is Israel under a new covenant.

Think how Jewish the church is. First of all, the root of the church is Jewish. You see that in your diagram? The root. It comes from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

These are the fathers of the faithful. All the faithful. Circumcised and uncircumcised, Romans 4 will tell you. So the root is of this tree is Jewish.

The Messiah and Savior of the church is Jewish. Had to be. He would be one of their own people, Deuteronomy, Moses' promise. And Matthew 1 is dead in earnest to prove that.

Here's the genealogy of Jesus. He is the son of David, the son of Abraham. He has to be of the natural descendants of Abraham. And so our Savior is Jewish.

It's a Jewish Messiah who says, I will build my church. I will build the kingdom of God and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And then the foundations of the church are Jewish.

Ephesians 2 speaks of the foundation of the church being the apostles and New Testament prophets. With Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone, but the foundations, Ephesians 2 20, built on the foundation of the apostles and the New Testament prophets.

Peter, James, and John, and Paul, the apostles, were Jews, all of them. And then the nucleus of the church is Jewish. The very first believers were Jewish. Remember Simeon and Anna waiting for what?

The redemption of Israel. The coming Messiah. Oh, Lord, now let your servant depart in peace for I have seen your salvation. You see, he's a believing Jew. And the first believers were Jewish.

3,000 believed on the day of Pentecost. There were Jews who had come back to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. And those that constantly were being saved in Jerusalem.

They were Jews. There is an elect Jewish remnant in every generation and they're found in the church. Not as a separate people on a separate track with a different purpose and plan by God.

No, they're in the church. Indeed, they're the very founding members of the church of Jesus Christ. So it's quite proper then to call the church the Israel of God.

It is Israel under a new constitution. And so, the church is called the seed of Abraham, the circumcised, the chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, the people of God.

So what have we seen here? Secondly, not only unbelieving Jews cut off, but there were some Jews that were not cut off. They were the ones who believed.

And you can see them scattered there on the left bottom of the tree and I tried to represent it right up through the tree. You had these believing Jews in the new covenant Israel.

The third and perhaps biggest point of difference is the inclusion of Gentiles in God's new covenant people. This is the most obvious change in the people of God, the Israel of God.

If you see those branches, some have G, some have J's. Most of them have G's. Most of those people in the new covenant Israel are Gentiles. Now, how do we come about this state of affairs?

I trust we've seen in Isaiah that this was prophesied over and over. Let me just give one verse where the father said to his servant, the Lord Jesus, in Isaiah 49, 6, it's too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and to bring back those of Israel I have kept.

I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth. The Psalms speak of it. Ask of me, the father says to his son, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession.

And so as Jesus is ascending just before his ascension, he says, I want you to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations and bring them into, baptize them into the new covenant people of God, the church, and teach them to obey everything that I've commanded.

You will be my witnesses, not just here in Jerusalem, but in Samaria and Judea and to the ends of the earth because they must all now be gathered in as my people.

And though they might have been a bit slow to move out from Jerusalem, eventually persecution scatters them. The gospel's taken to the Gentiles, but it's largely through Paul, the minister of the Gentiles, that thousands of Gentiles were gathered into Israel.

That's just what had been foretold by the prophets and it's what Paul says here in Romans 11 and verse 17. He's speaking to the Gentiles.

You can see that in verse 13. I'm talking to you Gentiles, Romans 11, 13. Jump down now. He's talking to Gentiles, verse 17. If some of the branches have been broken off, that's the Jewish unbelievers, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap of the olive tree.

Don't boast over those other branches. Don't think you're better because you're in and they're out. The only reason they're out is because of their unbelief. The only reason you're in is because of your faith. And if you don't go on believing, you'll be out.

That's what he says to them. So, it's an individual matter. Which Gentiles are in? Not all from the nations, but believers. Those who have faith in Jesus Christ, the same way any Jew is in this new covenant Israel.

And we're seeing no one's in the new covenant Israel except believers. And now it's not only Jewish believers, but it's also Gentiles, Gentile believers. They were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith.

Verse 20. And you've got the same full rights of Israel. You're all sons of God. Galatians 3, 26 through 29. You're all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

There's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.

So in this tree, doesn't matter whether you're Jew or Gentile, you can look down and at the base of the tree, you'll see that you are a son of Abraham.

You are all children of Abraham if you believe in Jesus Christ. You've been grafted into that tree that is the tree of Israel.

You see that at the end of verse 24. How much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?

This tree is Israel's own tree. It's Israel's tree. That's why it's called Israel in the New Covenant. It is their tree. And unbelievers are grafted, cut out, pruned out.

Gentile believers grafted in. Well, we don't have time to look at the different verses elsewhere that bring that up. The inclusion of Gentiles was a very difficult pill to swallow by the Jews, wasn't it?

Even Peter had trouble with that and God had to bring down the sheet three times. Rise and kill. Never eaten anything unclean. Don't you call unclean what I call clean.

All those rules and regulations of the Old Testament that had to do to keep a division between Israel and the Gentiles to maintain purity among my people until the Messiah came.

Those dividing laws have been smashed. They are no more. The Gentiles are no longer regarded as unclean and unfit. They are now part, if they believe, they are part of Israel as much as you are, Jews.

Christ has torn down that dividing wall, Ephesians 2 says. So, that was hard for them to swallow. You can see that throughout the New Testament.

But this was the wonder of God's plan that because of the unbelief of Israel, God would open the doors wide and Gentiles would stream in.

That's the third point of Israel and the New Covenant. And the last is that unbelieving Jews are grafted in when they believe. This is the arrow down.

You see the pile of unbelieving Jews who had been cut out. But they can be grafted back in when they believe. Romans 11, 23. If they, these, talking about those who were broken off, if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in.

For God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that's wild by nature and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?

And that's what was going on in Paul's day. So that's why, as the apostle to the Gentiles, I'm out preaching, hoping that by preaching to the Gentiles and showing the Jews that as people are coming to Christ and enjoying the privileges of Israel, it will make my own people envious and that I might save some of them.

And that's what happened. Read the book of Acts. To the Jew first and then to the Greek. But he went to the Jews and some of them did believe. And so there was this re-grafting in among those who had been cut out because of unbelief.

As they heard the gospel again through Paul, then many of them were grafted back in. God is able to do that, he says. It's been going on right through the gospel age.

It's not something that waits for the end of the age. And we don't have time to even get into this. It's not that this is the time that Gentiles are flowing in and the Jews aren't and after all the Gentiles have come in, then we'll have a little time when Jews will come.

No. It's right from Paul's own ministry. He was making the Jews, his own people, jealous by preaching to the Gentiles and some of the Jews were coming in.

They were being grafted in. There are some Jews today being grafted in and so it will be to the end of the age until you have the full number of Gentiles and the full number of Israelites and so all Israel will be saved.

So that's a helicopter ride over the terrain of Old Testament and New Testament. Israel in the Old Testament, Israel in the New Testament. And I trust you can see why we then say that it's not that the church replaces Israel, rather the church is Israel under a new covenant.

And you can read that new covenant and see that it's not like the Old Covenant. In the Old Covenant God wrote His law on tablets of stone but in the New Covenant He writes it on fleshy tables of the heart.

And in the Old Covenant some of the people knew the Lord. Some of the Israelites knew the Lord. But in the New Covenant all the people of God will know the Lord.

And in the Old Covenant Israelites some of them had their sins forgiven. Only those who had faith in the coming sacrifice Messiah. But in the New Covenant all will have their sins forgiven and remembered no more.

So there is a difference between Israel in the Old and Israel in the New and it's precisely because of the different covenant that Israel is under. And Jeremiah can say this covenant is made with the house of Israel with the house of Judah and as you come to the New Testament what you find is that every reference to the New Covenant is applied to the church.

Jesus is the mediator of that New Covenant. His blood is the blood of the New Covenant. The Lord's Supper is the memorial meal of the New Covenant.

Hebrews is written to believing churches Christian, Jews and Gentiles with them and it is said to them that this covenant this New Covenant applies to you.

You are the new people of God. And so let's rejoice and all that is ours all the promises made to Abraham Isaac and Jacob are being fulfilled or will be fulfilled.

Many of them fulfilled in the church. We're still waiting for some of them. We're still waiting for the final touch up of the makeover when Jesus returns and makes a new heaven and a new earth.

Well I wish we had time for questions. Maybe we can take that up another time another day. May the Lord add his blessing to our study and make us to appreciate then the fact that we are the people of God through Jesus Christ.

We're dismissed.