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 01 Where are the Laws of the New Covenant Written
no. 7 on the PDF list  https://www.friendsofsabbath.org/ABC/Lectures%20&%20Sermons/HL%20Hoeh%20sermons/001.HLH%20Sermons%20&%20Lectures%20list.pdf

This sermon was given shortly before Mr. Armstrong died.
This is one of the sermons in which Dr. Hoeh addresses what Christ's statements on turning the other cheek and how to react to abuse. The other sermon is no  19   on the PDF list

 01 Where are the Laws of the New Covenant Written

"Good morning to you, and the best wishes from Ministerial Services. 
I appreciate Mr. Tkach's suggestion of coming here. 
In a sense, it's much too late, but I will take a moment and tell you how nice it is to have Mr. Freeze (sp?) in the area after knowing him back in the 1950s from the region of Salt Lake, and of course more recently has been on the East Coast. 
We've admired the fact that he's done many things professionally. 
When other men have retired or quit, he had new job opportunities. 
I hope those of you who have not had a chance before or didn't give that much consideration would get acquainted with him, not only from the point of view of his responsibility in the local congregation, but just to know what it was like to do the work that he was doing when he was on the East Coast. 
My wife came this time. We're going up to the San Luis Obispo area, and as far as we know, we plan to return this evening. 
I want to say that Mr. Armstrong's health is essentially stable. 
He has difficulty now seeing the cover of the magazine, but he can read the captions on the cover. 
You need to realize, of course, he's going to be 93 this coming week. 
His hearing is fair only, but he has to have everything he writes read to him if he wants to edit it, because he simply cannot read the text otherwise. 
That's just the reality when age comes along. 
Some have good vision to the end of life, and others like Isaac were blind for many years. 

I wanted to take the time this morning to deal with the topic that, in a sense, developed from what I had given in the Long Beach Church. 
I want to address a question that most of us probably think we know the answers to, or the answer to, that you wouldn't disagree with, but I doubt that you ever sat down to think of the implications. 
That is, where do you find the laws of God written which are included under the new covenant? How many of you know for sure you know where the answers are? Well, how many of you are not sure what I'm really driving at? The Church of Christ, or some other group, let's not just limit one. 
I'm only picking out one as an illustration, but they used to have ads many, many years ago. 
I read them in the 1940s, I suppose they still do, though I haven't seen those ads, as I did before I came to Ambassador College. 
And they mentioned that "we keep the commandments, 
We keep all the commandments that were rewritten."
You see, there were ten commandments that God gave through Moses to Israel. 

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Then they were nailed to the cross by Christ, and then he took the nails out of nine of the ten. 
And reassemble them, presumably in the same order, but now they're numbered one, two, three, four through nine. 
Or else there's one, two, three, blank, five, six through ten. 
I don't know the numbering on that basis. 
But in any case, we find, (as they say,) nine of the ten commandments rewritten in the New Testament, and that's why we do them. 
And since we don't find a command to keep the Sabbath in the New Testament, that's why we refuse to do it. 
Now, it is this kind of approach that I would like to address because I think that most of us have never really sat down to think where the laws of God are written, which are included in the New Covenant. 
Now, how many know the answer now? (Asking the audience) We're getting smarter. Well, I'm going to have to make you smarter still. 
Some of you are not raising your hands, but I'll give you the answer right away, and then we will look at the subject. 
I'm sure you will all agree with me that this was the answer, but you didn't know that it was. 
We will turn to Jeremiah chapter 31, obviously the most important verse on the subject, beginning with verse 31. 
We hold that days are coming, says Yahweh. 
I happen to have the Revised Authorized Version here where it says," says the Lord," but sometimes it's good to read what the original is. 
You know, we have a cult in this world, a group of people who say we must only use Hebrew and they say, why don't you tell us what the Hebrew name is? Well, I have no objection to telling you what the Hebrew is. 
It also says in English that this is what the Lord says, but Yahweh is speaking, the one who became the Word. 
"Behold, the days are coming that I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. "
Now Paul in the book of Hebrews quotes this, so let's just briefly turn to the 10th chapter of Hebrews to find a reference to this. 
"Now the Holy Spirit," verse 15 of Hebrews 10 "also witnesses to us, for after he has said, this is the covenant I will make with them in those days", and there He himself quotes this statement. 
So Paul was aware that there was to become, there was to be a New Covenant. 
Now elsewhere, of course, he says that with the covenant foretold, this automatically made the first one old. 
So commonly we should refer to the covenant as the covenant at Sinai, and it becomes an old covenant when a new one is said to be available. 

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And here in Jeremiah, such a covenant is available, it is then offered, but it was given here in a prophetic form. 
Now we go back to Jeremiah and take note that it is with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 
Now actually God didn't make it originally with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah as separate houses. 
He made it with the two people when they were yet one. 
So this is a covenant which is a new one as distinct from the one made at Sinai. 
This is prophesied. 
One, a message that Jeremiah was given at the close of the tragic history of the nation of Judah over a century and a quarter after the nation of Israel had been punished. 
Now we are not told here that "I will make a new covenant this time it will be with the Gentiles. "
So first of all we note that it is with God's people, with the people whom he had initially called. 
He's going to make a new covenant arrangement with them. 
Now it is going to be different we are told in verse 32. 
"It will not be according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. 
My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. "
Now at this point we should analyze this verse also. 
It will differ from the covenant made at Sinai. 
It will differ in a special way. 
You see that covenant was in a sense and in reality a marriage covenant because the nation had said in advance "all that the Lord has said will we do. "
And part of the covenant that we understand in marriage is that a husband should love his wife and provide for her. 
We also add to cherish her, care for her, honor her. 
And in return the children of Israel reflect what is the wife's role. 
In other words where two people become one family. 
And the primary function of that family is to facilitate, shall we make it plain, to facilitate the responsibility and the work that the man has. 
10:30

Now in our society we have already developed,( that's not the church society)- we've developed a premise that every man and every woman should be free to develop his or her own talents in his or her own way. 
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And so this is an area in which marriage is incidental. 
Marriage may be convenient, it may not be convenient. 
You simply today should develop yourself. 
This is the idea. And hence we have families with two people working. 
Hence our pricing system is often predicated on that with taxation, the remnants of inflation and interest. 
We tend to live at the level not of one person's income but of two people's income. 
But to go back now, what it tells us here in the book of Exodus. 
The children of Israel have arrived at the foot of Sinai. 
Now we'll pick up the story. 
Verse 3, Moses went to God. 
Lord called him from the mountain. 
And then, verse 5: " If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you'll be a special treasure to me." 
That's what men usually think of their wives (or should.) 
"Above all people,
For all the earth is mine" - and to choose you out means that you were selected above all people. 
"You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." 
That's what they were to be. 
"These are the words you're to speak to the children of Israel, Moses." 
So Moses came down, called for the children of Israel through their elders. 
Laid before them all these words which the Lord commanded him. 
The elders undoubtedly addressed the people and the people agreed. 
The elders give the response of what the people's answer was and it says : 
Verse 8, "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do. 
So Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord. "
And then they were told to "prepare themselves." 
In other words, "all that the Lord has said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do." 
The function of a wife is to obey - that may be too strong a word, but it means that the children of Israel were to obey. 
That is, what it means is that the two have now a role together, instead of the daughter of a man or woman having a separate role in the home caring for her 

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parents or brothers or sisters. 
She identifies now with the function of her husband. 
And that was the role of the children of Israel. 
So Jeremiah points up here that in a sense this is a marriage covenant. 
And this marriage covenant that God made at Sinai went sour. 
That was the problem, my covenant which they broke. 
That is, Israel as a nation, Judah as a nation did not do what was right. 
Now before we go further, let me make another statement. 
Mr. Armstrong is aware of this and one of the brethren in Pasadena when I mentioned this in a sermon - he wanted them to take note. 
You and I should know that God divorced Israel. 
That is, he gave them a bill of divorcement. 
We never focused on the question that we should. 
God never divorced Judah. 
He divorced Israel. We should know that. 
Now God actually became in a sense the husband through the covenant with one people. 
But this people separated. 
So in a sense God was married to them, but one division or one nation he gave a divorce to. 
Because you see, he asked them time and again through the prophets to repent and to change their ways. 
But they simply never changed. 
The nation Israel never repented. 
They never went back to Him. 
There was never a king, never a time when the nation as a whole repented. 
There was a time in the days of Elijah that the people acknowledged that the Lord was God. 
But their representative or their king in this case, the family of Ahab did not change or amend its ways. 
And the man who extirpated that family, Jehu did not. 
And the nation simply then gradually drifted further and further away. 
God gave a divorce to Israel because they did not want to live with Him on the terms of the agreement that he made. 

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But Judah was different. 
Judah was a nation that from time to time went sour and repented, and we can name kings. 
"This king did what was right in God's eyes like his father so-and-so", or "this king did what was right like David". 
So the kingdom repented in the days of the king, the king Joash, stayed with God as long as he was carefully advised by the priesthood. 
Josiah turned to God, Hezekiah turned to God. 
Asa was a man who sought God. 
He had certain problems. 
You find Jehoshaphat prepared his heart to seek the Lord. 
It's this kind of thing you hear again and again. 
Josiah made a mistake, otherwise he tried to please God before. 
Jotham sought to, didn't make the mistake his father did. 
The nation of Judah, however, had to be dealt with. 
Now what God did was not to give Judah a bill of divorce. 
God gave Judah a, let's say, a challenge. 
He said, we're going to be separate for a while. 
You will have to live in Babylon, and I will take you back after a certain period of time. 
Jeremiah said it was 70 years from the time that they began to be dealt with by the Babylonians to the time that they could begin to return. 
That's not from the fall of Jerusalem. 
That's long before the fall in the days of Jehoiakim. 
Now there was a 70-year period. 
God said, I'm going to separate. 
But in this case, He said, I'm keeping the house, and you have to leave. 
(Not the other way around.) 
But He said, you can come back after that period of time, after you have thought it over for a while. 
And Judah did come back. 
So Yahweh was never divorced from Judah. 
He was divorced from Israel. 
And this is a very important aspect, and this is the reason, of course, that if there was to be a new covenant, someone had to die, which would terminate the old -

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and as it turned out, it was not Israel, the divorced wife. 
It was Judah, the nation that, as a wife, was separated and then returned to her husband, who, through the leadership in the days of the Pharisees, did what the prophets said they would do. 
Israel was never called treacherous. 
Judah was called treacherous. 
And so the nation actually killed her husband. 
You know, like some women have been known historically to poison their husbands. 
Some men, of course, shoot their wives. 
Well, in this case, Judah turned over her husband to the Romans to have them kill him so they'd be free of him. 
That was the state of mind. 
Now, that's the background of this material, and I think it's good that we understand. 
Once Yahweh was dead, of course, and raised from the dead, then he was free to contract a covenant with a new wife. 
New, not in the sense of other than Israel and Judah, but new in the sense of the nature of the covenant and the nature of the people within Israel and Judah whom God would deal with. 
So now we pick up verse 33: 
"This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Judah." 
Now, we'll be made with both people, but they will become one. 
We read this in the book of Ezekiel. 
Israel and Judah will become one stick and not two. 
So I will make this covenant with the house of Israel. 
After those days, says the Lord, that have elapsed, I will put my law where? So now look carefully. 
None of you would have disagreed with this, but it means more than you think. 
"I will put my law in their minds. 
I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." 
"No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother saying, know the Lord, for they shall know me. "
Now, they've been saying, know the Lord. 
That's the common, do you know the Lord? That's the question today, "from the least to the greatest of them. 
And I'll forgive their iniquity and their sins. 
Well, I remember no more". 

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This, of course, is the future yet when that is to be done for the whole nation. 
But in the meantime, it is offered to the church. 
Now, let us consider what this means: 
"I will put my law in their minds. 
I will write it on their hearts." 
Now, what many Christian groups, denominations THINK this means is that I will write all of my laws in the New Testament in letters of whatever language is read. 
In this case, it started with Greek, and we will have another book of the law. 
You see, when God started it, he wrote on two tables of stone. 
Then he called Moses up, and for the covenant itself, he wrote, he had Moses write in the pages of a book. 
This is Exodus 21, 22, and 23, and the covenant then is ratified. 
Now, being a marriage agreement, anything later that is added does not alter the covenant. 
The whole book of Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the rest of Exodus was added later. 
It didn't alter the covenant, but it didn't mean that what was added later had no validity. 
That is, they also agreed to the rest because being married, Israel was in a position where she would obey her husband. 
That is, what we have in a marriage covenant, when a minister reads the basic responsibility, means that together each one has certain rights and is expected to fulfill his or her obligation. 
If you, as a husband, ask your wife to do certain things when you were gone, let's say on a business trip if you're a salesman, that's her responsibility to see that things are cared for. 
That is, she, in a sense, is your vicar, if you want to use a papal term. 
When I'm away, my wife was responsible for the children, and in a sense, their obedience to her was equivalent to being willing to obey me because it would hardly have been appropriate for them to get in an attitude of disobedience, because that would have been a reflection on their character. 
So we have, then, the nation, the people of Israel, obeying God to start with, saying that they would obey the rest, and from time to time the nation did straighten up in the days of Joshua. 
They certainly did for a whole generation, obeyed everything that was in Deuteronomy, and the rest of the laws that God had given, that generation had learned a lesson for 40 years in the wilderness as they grew up. 
But what is now important to realize is that God said that when he'd make a new covenant, he would not again write his laws on tables of stone. 
He didn't say, I will tack these two tables of stone on the cross, and then I'm going to chip away one, and renumber the rest. 
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He didn't say, well, we're going to nail the book of the law to the cross, and then we'll take it down, and we'll see how much we should blot out with ink, and whether I need to revise something, and then we'll make a new covenant, and write it in what we call the New Testament. 

Now let's turn to a book in the New Testament that confirms what this says, and then we'll find out the real implication of it. 
Second Corinthians, chapter 3: 
Here we have Paul addressing the church of Corinth, and he says, you are like a letter of Christ, verse 3, ministered by us, written not with ink, but by the spirit of the living God, not on tables of stone, but on tables of flesh, that is, of the heart. 
Now what is important here is for us to realize that the church, in a sense, is pictured here as a letter. 
"You are our letter, written in our hearts, read, known and read by all men, manifestly an epistle of Christ." 
That is, the church is actually like a letter of Christ in which Christ describes what human beings should be like, but he does it through them and through what he has done in sending His spirit to put his law, His laws, in their hearts and minds. 
Now let's look at the rest of this chapter, verse 6: 
"We are made sufficient ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter," - that is, if we had the letter, we would simply look at the Old Testament and see what it said, and the Old Testament said about the Sabbath, "you shall not do any work". 
And so we would enforce the law which says, according to the letter, "you shall not do any work." 
And so we would have a discussion over what is work. 
This is the way it was administered. 
Now it was considered not work if you led the ox out of the stall to drink, but if you carried something heavier than an egg of a chicken, that was considered work. 
This is how the Jews tried to interpret it by looking at the letter, and they said that "anything heavier we'll call work." 

Now Jesus said that they also would take the ox out of the ditch, but initially they concluded that anyone who was sick and crippled would have to wait till sunset to be healed. 
It was work to heal, but it was all right to save your money by getting the ox out of the ditch. 
(I think there was a monetary reason there.)
 
So the letter of the law demanded explanation because the law simply said "you shall not do any work". 
Now that work included lighting of a flame for light. 
So every Jew to this day who is practicing the law in the letter has a little bowl with wax candle in it that will last fully 24 hours in order that as a Jew he will have light, you see, for the whole Sabbath day. 
He must not kindle a fire, and they said, well, that even means lighting a candle. 

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Now you know what a kindling of fire? That meant that if you had wet wood and you really had to, you know, make that second stick get hotter and hotter at the end until it began to smoke at the bottom. 
You know, you had two sticks like this, like this rather, excuse me, and you turned the top one, you know, until you by friction got one started. 
Now was that kind of thing or gathering enough brush that you could get a fire started. Moses said you shouldn't kindle a fire on the Sabbath. 
That kind of work you should take care of in advance. 
And the Jews said, well, where do we draw the line? So they said, and when electricity came, they made another rule that you can't turn on the switch. 
But if the switch is on before the Sabbath, that's fine, but you don't want to sleep in a room with light. 
So they normally just had little candles that would last. 
And they went through all these rules. 
Now, of course, there was a problem with the egg weight because even carrying an egg is work because that has to do with weight, you see. 
And so in a sense, the law forbade any work in the letter. 
But that was a very stringent wording. 
And in the letter of the law, there were such very restrictive statements. 
Now back to first second, sorry, second Corinthians three. 
"We are sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the spirit." 
So the letter was administered under the old covenant, the covenant of Sinai. 
The priests taught and explained the letter of the law and the priests and judges who were not priests stood as a judge or jury and found out when anybody disobeyed whether he knew it and if he did it deliberately, he was punished accordingly. 
If he did not do it deliberately, he had to bring some sacrifice. 
"Now the letter kills." 
Now it didn't always kill in the actual administration. 
It may have killed your pocketbook but didn't take your life. 
But let's say if there was an act of adultery, if there was an act of murder, if you were caught lying to a court,bearing false witness to your neighbor, why the death penalty was executed. 
So the letter merely said what you should do and the administration was to punish those who disobeyed. 
Now what happened to you if you obeyed? Well, nothing. 
You simply lived out your normal life. 

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God said that if you obey my voice and do what pleases me, then you will live in the land and I'll protect you from your enemies. 
The land will produce all sorts of fruit. 
You will have children. 
You won't have diseases. 
And finally, we'll bury you in a good old age. 
That is, you live and die and the next generation will inherit the land. 
That was the arrangement under the covenant made at Sinai. 
And for any infraction of it, there were penalties, fines, whippings, or the death penalty. 
So in that sense, the letter kills. 
Now the spirit of God imparts life and the function of the New Testament ministry is to tell you how you could be forgiven for violation of God's law or past sins and how you can have the spirit of God and grow and develop, which ultimately, at the resurrection, imparts eternal life. 
"
Now if the ministry of death, written and engraven on stones"- now here we have, of course, a reference to the general aspects of administration, but something more than that." 
33:30

This is even a reference to the commandments. 
It doesn't exclude that. 
"Now that administration of death, written and engraven on stones, was glorious so that the children of Israel couldn't look steadfastly or steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance." 
You remember when he came down from the mount the second time, with the stones, he actually radiated the light of God's countenance, and it was bright enough, (he didn't know it,) that the children of Israel had to turn away. 
It was so bright it was not a couple of beams like Michelangelo pictured like horns. 
So they put a veil over Moses' face so he could address them. 
That happened when the Ten Commandments were brought down. 
Of course, later on, stones were erected, and they plastered the law on the stones too and made it clear, and that was after they crossed the Jordan and entered the Promised Land. 
But what was engraved on stones most surely were the commandments, and there were two stones, and it was a glorious law. 
It said, thou shalt not kill, it said thou shalt not steal, it said thou shalt not commit adultery. 
Now that was indeed glorious, and it was reflected in Moses' reflection of the glory of God's countenance, His light. 
But that glory passed away. 

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The light finally ceased to shine on the right occasion. 
We don't know whether it lasted the rest of the day or how long, and Moses finally died.
 
Now how will a ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? So here Paul shows that if that which was punished by death was considered glorious in contrast to any other human code of law, how much more glorious would the ministry of the Spirit be, or how much more significant spiritually would be the opportunity to have the Spirit of God promised, or His nature. 
"Now if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more. "
So here we have it called, not merely the ministry of the Spirit, it's called "the ministry of righteousness" because the Spirit of God enables us to become righteous or to do right. 
And it does by, shall we say, writing God's laws in our hearts and minds. 
That is, it alters the nature of human nature and it alters the state of mind. 
Any faculty member, any teacher knows that as he proceeds up the years that generally speaking the little children are, it's easy to write, let's say, on their hearts and minds because they're still little. 
I'm not sure that's true in the inner city so much anymore, but that used to be true, that little children were amenable to instruction and the older they got, the more stubborn or carnal or self-willed people got until finally you got into high school and the students often behaved like little foxes and you get into college and they behave like wolves. 
I mean, that's what it amounts to in the classrooms because as a teacher you're challenged. 
Now the teacher should challenge intellectually the student, but often it's this attitude and it's reflected, of course, in a statement that one woman working for a church member said, we came to visit and to baptize this woman who was the church member. 
We came to the home, this was in 1953 and she said, "I'm very glad to see you, by the way, I have someone who works for me here, belongs to a certain church and she said that if your minister can prove it to me, then I'll believe you. "
"Well," I said, "you need not be concerned. 
If she takes the view that I have to prove it to her, I can't." 
That's all there is to it, you simply can't. 
It's an attitude. 

Well, our story isn't over yet here. 
"Even that which was made glorious at Sinai had no glory in this respect because the glory that comes with the New Covenant and the ministration of the spirit excels it. 
For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more so. 
Now, since we have such hope and we have great boldness of speech unlike Moses who put a veil over his face so the children of Israel couldn't look steadily at the end of what was passing away, but their minds were hardened. 
For under this day, the same veil that literally was over Moses' face is figuratively unlifted over them in the reading of the Old Testament because the veil is taken away in Christ and they are not in Him."

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"So even to this day when Moses has read, the veil lies on their heart. "
So Paul takes the analogy and says not only was the veil over Moses, but the veil is over them so that their heart doesn't even perceive what the intent of the law is. 
It is taken of his very nature and imparted that nature to us. 
"But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord as reflected in the law of God, are being transformed into the same image or character that God has from the glory that was limited in the days of Moses to the very glory that is characteristic of God today because we have his spirit." 
(That's the sense of the third chapter.) 
Now let us consider clearly what this does mean. 
It's one thing to read this. 
It's one thing to read the Jeremiah 31. 
(I'm turning right back to that again.) 
Now Jeremiah 31 makes quite clear that something is written in the hearts and minds. 
But how do we proceed to understand this? 

Now let us take what the church teaches and let us contrast what others say and then I think we will perceive it. 
God said initially to Moses," since the children of Israel don't wish to listen to me directly." 
(I would have said all the rest of the law.) 
"I simply will give them these ten words or ten commandments and the rest you will communicate to them." 
"I will write on the tables of stone  - you write in the book." 
So we have that now incorporated in the Bible and we have later statements whenever there were new problems that arose Moses took it to Yahweh and Yahweh said, "well now under this set of circumstances my judgment shall be this. "
So he gave an explanation of how to handle new situations. 
All of that was written in the Bible. 
The tables of stone were even finally written down so we know what's on the tables of stone. 
That's in Exodus 20 so that it's ALL now, without exception, ALL of it is in ink in the pages of a book that we call the Bible. 
Now, much later Jesus came and proposed the new covenant that Jeremiah prophesied. 

How did Jesus go about explaining what the laws are on the basis of the new covenant? The answer of course is in Matthew chapter 5. 
We'll now turn to Matthew chapter 5. 
A very important chapter. 

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You're familiar with this no doubt. 
But let's understand the implications of this. 
The children of Israel were told that God would drive out their enemies. 
That they would be free of disease. 
That they would be blessed. 
There would be rain and due season. 
That their animals would not abort. 
Their children would grow up to be normal and protected. 
Jesus now in chapter 5 explains to the disciples what the blessings are. 
You see there were two groups of Israelites. 
They were divided into two groups. 
One was on one mount, the other was on the other. 
One gave the blessings and the other gave the curses and showed what would happen. 
You remember that from the book of Deuteronomy. 
Now Jesus gives the blessings: 
"Blessed are the poor in spirit." 
So he's saying now there must be an attitude. 
Not haughty, but humble. 
Those who are willing to mourn and be sad, to be weak, willing to hunger and thirst after righteousness, be merciful, be pure in heart, be a peacemaker, to tolerate and accept persecution if it comes. 
And now what are the results? Now the results initially under the covenant at Sinai were that they would inherit the promised land. 
They would inherit it from the river of Egypt, which was on the border of Egypt, all the way to the great river, the river Euphrates. 
From the inner desert to the Mediterranean. 
Now Jesus says something different. 
He says, we inherit the kingdom of heaven. 
We will be comforted. 
We will inherit the earth. 
We will be filled with righteousness. 
We will obtain mercy. 

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We will see God. 
We will be called the sons of God. 
And we will have the kingdom of heaven. 
(Again that's the repetition.)
Now this is unusual because no one can see the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God unless he is composed of spirit. 
No one can see or inherit the kingdom of God unless he is born again. 
And that means that he is ultimately composed of spirit. 
So Jesus was saying then that if this is the case, one would have to be begotten and then born of the spirit of God. 
That was something never promised to the children of Israel. 
Let me repeat that. 
The church has said it over and over again. 
The Adventists do not understand it even though they keep the Sabbath. 
The Adventists in most groups believe that you slew a lamb or you slew a goat, you offered the pigeon, you offered the sparrow, whatever you did, the bullock. 
That that was the way under the Old Covenant that you could be saved. 
Now that was the way that you could be forgiven if you sinned in ignorance and continued to live in the community. 
But that was not the way of salvation. 
If it was, then they would have been promised the kingdom of heaven. 
They would have been promised the inheritance of the earth. 
They would have been promised that they were the sons of God. 
You will never find that Moses promised any of those things that Jesus here promises. 
So the laws or rituals of Moses added when penalties of sins were being incurred were never meant to do other than to restore your right to live in the nation if you sinned in ignorance. 
If you killed somebody and you didn't intend to, you could offer a sacrifice. 
If you intended to and did, you either paid the judge off (when things were going wrong) or you received the death penalty (when things were going right). 
That's all there was. 
It was not a way of salvation. 
The blood of bulls and goats never did cleanse the conscience. 

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It only gave the sense of guilt, but that it had been forgiven and they could be restored to live in the nation or the church. 
Now here Jesus is offering something far more. 
And in offering the kingdom of heaven, being called the sons or daughters of God, what has happened is that they are therefore being promised the Holy Spirit. 
The law of Moses never gave the Holy Spirit. 
It was never called the administration of the Spirit. 
It was called the administration of death or of whippings, if you wish , because there were 40 lashes which would solve most problems right off. 
We've gotten away from that. 
Now we put them in prison and think that's the place you reform criminals. 
I think what they did was add the read. 
That's where you form criminals. 
That's what's happened in our society. 
I hope you all understand that under the law of Moses, this is something so elementary, under the law of Moses there wasn't a single case of anybody who was ever sentenced to the penitentiary. 
You will never find anybody ever sentenced to prison under the law of Moses. 
They were put in ward until the trial. 
But nobody was ever sentenced to prison under the law of Moses. 
Imprisonment never occurred as a penalty of the law and the whole thing is wrong !
But that's another subject. 
That would be a good subject, by the way, for a table topic or for a discussion in the spokesman club. 
It would be a sermon for that matter. 
But it's the kind of thing that will make you think of how you solve the problem. 
When there was indebtedness and you had to pay, you became someone's servant until you paid it off. 
Your property was confiscated to pay the debt. 
When you had relatives who could buy it back, why, that's fine. 
I'll tell you, it would have made the nation quite different than what we are today. 
But what is significant here is Jesus is promising spirit. 
Promising God's nature , that we will inherit his realm and that we will inherit His nature. 
And that the attitude of purity of heart, of righteousness, which is defined as the keeping of the commandments, is all going to be made possible. 

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That is, now God promises that we actually can be given the power to obey. 
Now the children of Israel had to use as a source of their strength their own human nature and willpower. 
Now God didn't say you shouldn't use willpower, but all they had was willpower and it worked through human nature. 
Now you remember Paul said the law was weak at one point. 
It was weak through the flesh because there was nothing in the law that enabled the law to enable you to obey it. 
It was dependent on the flesh to obey through human willpower. 
Now there are a lot of things some people can do with willpower and there is a lot that people don't do with the lack of it. 
But it never made man perfect because human willpower is in itself still limited. 
And human nature often makes willpower difficult, especially when you get into bad habits that were not corrected when little. 
So Jesus says something quite different, we are to be like the salt of the earth, we are to be like the light of the world. 
But with regard to the law, he says, look, don't think that I've come to destroy the law or the prophets. 
Don't think I've come to nail it to the cross. 
That's what he was saying, "I did not come to destroy. 
I have come to fulfill it." 
And if you're pleased - to show you how you can also fulfill it. 
So heaven and earth pass away. 
One yod, the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, or one titel, a decoration on a letter which had no meaning other than just a way of remembering that at a certain point in the writing of the text that there was this letter that was decorated. 
I don't know how it ever got started, but they did as a kind of reminder along the way that they had gotten so far in the copying of the Bible. 
"Nothing in the text" he said "will by any means pass from the law." 
Now the Church of Christ said, just the opposite, that " I've come to fulfill it once so you don't have to." 
"I've come to nail it to the cross and then we'll take it down and we'll only extract certain points of it." 
That's not what Jesus said. 
He said, "I have come to fulfill it and nothing is going to be altered in the text of the written law or the prophets who expounded the law and foretold the future."

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"Whoever breaks one of these least commandments in the law (as we have it in the old covenant) "and teaches men so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven." 
"Whoever does , and teaches them will be called great. "
Now unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you won't even enter the kingdom of heaven. 
You have to do more than obey the letter of the law. 
You have to do more than follow the rituals of Moses, more than follow the many, many small laws of the Pharisees, the rabbis, by which they build, or built walls around the law. 
For instance, they made certain requirements that you could only walk a Sabbath day's journey. 
That was to be short enough so you wouldn't get tired and wouldn't be called work. 
Now there's nothing stated in the Bible as to when you have reached a Sabbath day's journey because after all, if you're old, a Sabbath day's journey logically should be less than if you're young. 
But they simply made an arbitrary distance and called it a Sabbath day's journey. 
Well all that has to be exceeded in terms of spiritual intent. 
Now if there is going to be no alteration of God's law, he said," I did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it", and not one change even of a letter that is a semi-vowel, like the yod was. 
Not one alteration in the text of the law shall occur. 
That is what did he sayed. Now how then do we approach it? 
Well the answer is we are asked to repent, which means to acknowledge guilt, to turn around and go a different direction, to believe the message that Christ sent, the kingdom of God is at hand, to be baptized, which means you're willing to bury the past and bury the self, and to receive the Holy Spirit, which means you wish the power to enable you to fulfill the law that Jesus had, that same power. 
So when you have now the Spirit of God that takes away the veil over your heart so that you can read the law, see its meaning, and hear and understand, Jesus now says in verse 21, "You heard that it was said an old time, you shall not murder, that is," you shall not kill, thou shall not kill." 
And of course in the law of Moses, whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. 
"Now I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment." 
So that's the correct one, "without a cause" must be there. 
It's wrong to leave that out because that's clearly what Jesus said and that's in the traditional Greek text even though it may not be in the RSV except in footnote. 
"Whoever is angry without a cause", another one, verse 27, "you shall not commit adultery." 
That's one of the ten commandments, another one. 
Two of these are ten commandments. 
Jesus said it is not enough merely not to murder. 
He said you must not be angry without a cause. 

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He said it's not enough not to commit adultery. 
He said whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery whether in his heart. 
And of course that's equally applicable to women and it didn't used to be so common but it is the new thing in a society in which women call or young girls call boys for the date today. 
You know that's not uncommon and they make the proposition of sexual relations not uncommonly in the world today. 
So it's equally applicable and principle is all different. 
Now on more than one occasion Jesus analyzed this. 
Take verse 43. 
"You shall love your neighbor." 
That's what the scripture said, and the attitude of the rest of the law was manifested in the statement , and hate your enemy, because you put him to death. 
You expelled him from the land. 
There was much evidence that that was the way you dealt with someone who was your enemy. 
No one goes to war who loves his enemy. 
It was hate that afflicted the nation. 
So Jesus said "you have heard that you shall love your neighbor but hate your enemy." 
"I say love your enemies. 
Bless those who curse you. 
Do good to those who hate you. 
Pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. 
That you may be sons of your father in heaven. 
He makes the sun to rise and the evil and the good sends rain on the just and the unjust. 
If you love those who love you what reward do you have? Even the tax collectors do the same. 
If you just greet your brethren, what do you do more than others who do the same thing? " Tax collectors, he showed that even the lowest scum, the people who belong to those organizations that we now call by IRS, the way they were viewed you see in that day. 
Now they do the same thing. 
So  "you're to be perfect just as your father in heaven is perfect." 
Verse 48,...(tape break) the man who wrote this book that you've just been reading from. 

Now here Jesus did not say I'm going to make a new covenant. 
He said he didn't say I'm going to rewrite the Ten Commandments. 

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I'm going to rewrite the law of Moses. 
He said nothing like that at all. 
He simply said verbally and later written here, "you've heard it said that it's written this way. 
Now I'm here to tell you to take a new look at the law and to consider the rest. 
He said you've heard it said it's written this way, but I'm here to tell you that that's not enough."
 
Now what we learn from this is Jesus did not write the laws of the new covenant in a book, in a new contract, ink on the pages of a book or on a scroll. 
He simply said I'm changing nothing of the law and what he said was to go look at the law. 
You've heard it said that is if you hear it read to you, then you hear it. 
And if you are reading it, then you see it. 
So whether you see it written or whether you hear it read to you, I want you to think when the veil is lifted over from your heart. 
(That's the analogy from 2 Corinthians 3 ) that you reconsider the intent and purpose of the law. 
That's Mr. Armstrong's nice summary of it. 
We don't look at it in the letter alone. 
Now you have to look at the letter to know what it says. That's what it means. 
But you don't stop with the letter. You consider the spirit or intent and purpose. 
And that intent and purpose can become clear to you if you have the Holy Spirit. 
(That is the nature of God.)
 
Now where then is the law to be written that is a part of the New Covenant? Well, the answer is, as you all now know, it is written in the heart and in the mind. 
That is the spirit of God is not rewriting it - because you know what that would mean? It would mean that for all the questions that we have to deal with that were not answered in the Old Covenant. 
And you know constantly the ministers write in questions. 
Mr. Carl Smith probably has over the years written in a few questions to ministerial services where the law of God seemed insufficient in the way it was. 
Moses found it insufficient because in the letter you won't cover every single thing. 
And so we try to analyze what the problem is and then we write back the answer. 
You know if we had all those answers written and called it the new covenant, some of you would have a new problem that wasn't answered. 
And we'd have to keep writing in and it would get bigger and bigger and bigger. 
And the questions would be twiggier and twiggier and twiggier.

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And we would still never be able to answer everyone in the letter. 
And finally you would never be able to read the book. 
It would be so big. 
Big enough as is, you see. 
That's why God chose not to rewrite any of the law in a form of a law or a covenant. 
He simply didn't. 
Jesus made a verbal proposal and He said what He will do now and what He's going to do in the millennium and the judgment after that, is write these laws in the human heart and the human mind. 

1:03:10

That is your spirit, sorry, the spirit of God that joins with the spirit in man and transforms your nature, enables you to see the law or hear it read, and grasp it and apply it according to your perception at whatever stage of conversion you are of intent and purpose. 
If you understand you're not to be angry without a cause. 
If you understand you should not resist someone in authority who is evil or talk back. 
That's what it says. "I tell you not to resist an evil person," verse 39. 
Now that must be understood. This is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. 
We're not talking about somebody who's trying to break in the window. 
We're talking about the administrating of justice in verse 38 of Matthew 5. 
The penalty was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. 
That is, you took a thousand dollars and you had to pay. 
You took his ox, you had to pay. 
Jesus said, "don't resist an evil person." 
The meaning there is, do not resist someone who is in authority administering justice who has that authority. 
Because if you do, he's likely to put you in prison and fine you beside. 
Just simply take the penalty. 
"And if somebody in a court of law slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other." 
Paul made the mistake. He hadn't fully perceived that, you remember? He talked back to the man who slapped him on the face. 
He said, "you whited  wall." 
He said, "who gave you that responsibility in administering your duty?" And the man turned out to be the high priest. 
And he realized he shouldn't even have said it.

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Even if it were true that he should have been told it, that was for Christ to tell him, or Yahweh, and not for Paul. 
"If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also." 
That is, don't fight tooth and nail. 
"Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two." 
And this is talking not about some criminal who tries to break into your window as you're parked at a red light. 
We're talking here about somebody in authority. 
The Romans were in authority. 
And you had to carry the mail. You had to carry a message. 
They could confiscate your boat if you had a ship at port. 
"Give to him or ask you from him who wants to borrow from you. "
Do not turn away, assuming you have something that can be of help and that it meets his need. 
Now you can be shrewd. 
If somebody says, I'm hungry, can you give me some money? I'll offer him food. Usually he wants drink. 
You need to know, of course, how to apply even Jesus' teaching. 
So what Jesus is saying here is that I'm giving you ideas about how to look at the law. 
We're not going to rewrite the law with letters of the alphabet of any language. 
We're simply going to write the laws of God in the heart and the mind of the individual. 
Now what the Bible is, as it turns out, is the heart and core of it, is the law. 
But then it is the historic background of what led up to it, and the historic development of the outgrowth of the relationship of the nation to Yahweh who made the covenant. 
So the prophets expound what the people were doing, usually what was wrong, and they foretell how God will resolve the problem. 
That's what the prophecies are about. 
How God will resolve the problem first by punishment and then by bringing people back to their senses. 
Jesus came and sent the apostles to propose the principle of a new covenant and to tell us how to learn about the laws in the covenant. By reading and understanding with spiritual eyes to see, spiritual ears, if you please, to hear. 

And so the writings of the apostles as well as the prophets expound and expand upon the law and comment on it so that we have a better understanding of the intent and purpose of the law. 
Let's just turn briefly to the book of Galatians. 

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We're not here to expound the book of Galatians, but we're here to look at one part of it. 
Now if you want to know what the nature of man is, it's nice to read Galatians chapter 5. 
"Walk in the Spirit," verse 16, "and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." 
"For the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish. 
But if you're led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." 
That is, the law now has no claim over your life. 
If you were led by the Spirit, you are not transgressing the law, and when the Spirit is not leading you at any point and you stumble, you pick yourself up, acknowledge your guilt, you can be forgiven, and you start walking by the Spirit again. 
"Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery," 
Well, the law said so. 
There's no question here. 
There is no question whatsoever that the law said you shall not commit adultery. 
So we know that. 
That doesn't add anything because that already was there. 
But he says "fornication", and here's a term that means having premarital sex or sex with a prostitute, male or female. 
"Uncleanness and licentiousness". 
This is certainly any other form of sexual uncleanness or licentiousness. 
And here we have an expansion. 
The law only said adultery, but here Paul adds fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness. 
The law said "you shall not bow down and worship, and serve any statue." 
Paul expands that. 
He says idolatry, then sorcery. 
The law said "you shall not kill", and he adds hatred, and contention, and jealousies, and outbursts of wrath. 
Then it said "you shall not covet", and it says here "selfish ambitions, dissensions." 
It says you shall not lie. 
He said there should not be heresies. 
You should not envy. 
And murders. 
Let's see. 
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There's a footnote here. 
Yes. 
Well, here murders is essentially simply the statement of the commandment. 
It says you shall not covet, so he adds drunkenness and revelries and the like. 
So Paul takes certain sins listed in the commandments and then expands on them. 
Now, he gives the fruit of the spirit, and he calls it love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. 
Against such, of course, there's no law written. 
Then he also expands in 1 Corinthians here in a very important chapter, verse 13. 
He expands on an attitude, and he defines love which fulfills the law. 
"Longsuffering, kind, doesn't envy, doesn't parade itself, isn't puffed up, doesn't behave rudely, isn't always seeking its own, is not provoked" and doesn't imagine or think evil regularly. 
We may have to know about evil, but it doesn't constantly think of evil as an attitude, "doesn't rejoice in iniquity, rejoices in truth. 
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. "
It's talking about, it doesn't mean you believe a lie, it means you believe all the things that are revealed of God that are true. 
Love never fails. 
So here we have a general attitude, a description of the positive attitude. 
So what we have all the way through in the Old Testament, in this case the Hebrew part of the Bible translated into English, was a description of what was going wrong and why and how it is to be corrected, and essentially in the New Testament we have the exposition which makes clear what a right attitude is, what a wrong attitude is, and how to look at the law of God and how to work together as a group of people. 
And the end result is that the Spirit of God gives us an understanding of the whole Bible so that we can have the laws of God written in our hearts and minds as we read and study them. 
For instance, we'll now end with one example. We're coming to the Feast of Tabernacles shortly. 
Now there is the statement about keeping holy that day. 
Now there is also that festival. 
There's also a statement that there is a holy day at the beginning of that seven-day period. 
There's also a statement about the sacrifices. 
Well now we can read the Bible and have no trouble perceiving that. 
God has not called the New Testament church to offer animal sacrifices at the altar at Jerusalem. 
One, there is no priesthood in the church to do so. 

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No established Levitical priesthood. 
Two, the Levitical priesthood alone had the function. 
Three, we're not over there. 
Four, there is no altar. 
And five, there is no temple. 
So we can read and understand. 
Paul says, and Christ of course makes it plain, the apostles as well, that in fact Christ himself, the Messiah, the God who instituted the rituals, paid the penalty in our stead. 
So we can read that and realize now we are not under that obligation that we can have our conscience cleared of any sins. 
Now we also learn that during the Feast of Tabernacles they were to build booths. 
And we learn in church administration that the church may make pronouncements in matters such as this. 
In the world tomorrow, I certainly have no doubt that there will be booths in the Middle East much like is described right there in the Bible. 
But in our society, when we have to do what Jesus said, that is you will not be worshiping either where the Samaritans did or Jerusalem, and you will not be worshiping Him according to the letter, but according to the Spirit. 
Though the Spirit of the law there has been administered by the church and we define the booths for your needs as a temporary dwelling wherever you are that serves the purpose to enable you to keep the Feast. 
Because the real purpose of those temporary dwellings was to show that even during the Millennium the period of time that we call the Millennium is only temporary and that's not the permanent inheritance because you're still then only flesh and blood. 
You is not referred to, I'm talking about the people during that time. 
And that simply was to represent the fact that even during the Millennium people who lived during the thousand years as mortals are only living a temporary life, what is permanent is to inherit the kingdom of God. 
So this is where now we look for the laws in the New Covenant. 
We look for them as they were written in the Old Covenant. 
We find how they are expounded or expanded upon in the Bible and then we obey and do what we see through means of the Holy Spirit and we ultimately, if you please, see them written in you. 
Now I hope that you do see that.