I want to share this message of Cref.lo Dol.lar today, because it is so important that we all understand that we are completely forgiven of our past, present and future sins. Jesus’ sacrifice was more than enough – He paid the penalty once for everybody. The message is called The Overflow of Forgiveness and if you want to order it the order number is #1796C.
“Acts 16:30-31: “And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”
What must I do to be saved? He said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. How do you do that? What must I do to be saved? Well, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ… Romans chapter 10 says that if you will confess with your mouth that the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in your heart… There it is again. Believe what?
Well let’s look at 3 things that I know you have to believe in order for you to be saved. What do I believe? Specifically what do I believe?
- I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Personal saviour who died for all of my sins on the cross.
- I believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation and that once I receive Jesus I receive eternal life.
- I believe that my sins have been forgiven, past, present and future. That on the cross at Calvary and as a result of it, today, God is merciful unto all of my unrighteousness and as far as my sins and unlawful deeds – He remembers them no more.
In fact that part is the last line of the new covenant in Hebrews Chapter 8 that says the only way you will benefit from the new covenant of grace is that you have to believe that He has been merciful to all of your unrighteousness and that your sins and unlawful deeds He remembers no more. In fact if you don’t believe that God has been merciful to all of your unrighteousness and if you don’t believe that your sins and inequities and unlawful deeds He remembers no more the new covenant won’t benefit you. You won’t benefit from the good and the blessings and the unmerited favour that the new covenant offers to you. It won’t work. At all…
So a whole lot of things working in our lives that as far as the new covenant is concerned and we will go over there in a moment but a whole lot of things working in our lives are going to be based on whether or not we believe it. So when somebody says they believe in Jesus they ought to know what they believe…
He is my Lord and personal Saviour. He died on the cross for my sins. He is the one that allowed me to be saved and salvation can only be through Jesus. We are not mixing all the religions together to please everybody – Jesus is the only way! We can only be saved through Jesus, I have eternal life through Him, but now this third area is so important, and I am finding the more I preach this the more people are trying to come up with ways to say; “We really don’t believe that God has forgiven us of all our sins.” I can’t tell you how dangerous that is to not believe that.
Now this is where the last clause of the new covenant applies, the part about believing that He has been merciful to all of your unrighteousness and your sins and inequities He remembers no more. So what I would like to do is, let’s go to Hebrews Chapter 8 and kind of pull everybody up on this new covenant. Let’s start at verse 6… Man, I believe in Jesus, oh I believe in Jesus, Hallelujah! Thank God for all of these wonderful principles we have learned of all of these years, but you know what, it’s going to come down to one person: I believe in Jesus! Turn to your neighbour and say; “Jesus did it all!”
Hebrews 8:6-7: “6 But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. 7 For if that first covenant…” Now the first covenant he is referring to here is the covenant of law that came by Moses, “now if that first covenant had been faultless then should no place have been sought for the second.”
Well that makes sense; if there was nothing wrong with the first covenant then we wouldn’t be talking about a second covenant. Now there was nothing per se wrong with the first covenant except the fact that it was so perfect that men couldn’t keep it. So that was the fault that was found with it, it couldn’t be kept.
Hebrews 8:8-9: “8 For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:” So this is a new covenant we are talking about the old one is getting ready to pass away. “9 Not according to the covenant that I have made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt because they continued not in my covenant and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.”
The amplified says; “It will not be like the covenant that I made with their forefathers on the day that I grasped them by the hand to help and to relieve them and lead them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not abide in my agreement with them, and so I withdrew my favour and disregarded them, says the Lord.” They did not abide in the agreement, so I withdrew my favour. I’m not going to make a covenant where man’s faithfulness will determine My faithfulness. I’m not going to do that. This covenant is not going to be about man doing his part in order for me to do My part. That is not what this is going to be about.
This is a new covenant and he goes on in verse 10: “10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:” So here is God saying; “all right I’m going to write my laws in their minds and their hearts. Well what is it? Is He going to write the 10 commandments? No He is going to write the law of love, the law of faith the perfect law of liberty, God is going to put it in there, by the Holy Spirit He is going to put it on the inside of you. Romans 5:5 says; “He poured His love into your heart by the Holy Spirit.” So the love of God is going to be written on your heart and not just on stone but in your heart He is going to write it, but now look what he says, Hebrews 8:10-11: “And I’ll be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: and they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his bother saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.” God says I’m going to teach people to know me. Isn’t that something? God says in this new covenant, now this is going to be hard for you to hear this, “I’m going to be serving you.” Yeah… In this new Covenant I will, I will, I will… In this new covenant I’m going to be faithful to you. In this new covenant your faithfulness doesn’t get the opportunity to determine my faithfulness. In this new covenant I will and I will and I will…
All right, but watch this now: In this new covenant God makes it very clear what our part is. Our part is believing. In this new covenant that is our part. In this new covenant our part is believing – our part is to believe OK? Hebrews 8:12-13: “For I will be merciful to their unrigteouness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” All right now verse 12 is so important because this is where the last clause of the new covenant applies, in verse 12 it says, that He will be merciful to your unrighteousness and your sins and unlawful deeds He will remember no more. And God is saying; “I need you to believe that.” That the ignition to the new covenant working is going to be based on you believing verse 12.
Just like it’s important for salvation and being born again for you to believe what you believe about Jesus, in order for this new covenant to release the blessings of the new covenant, release the goodness of the new covenant, to release the unmerited favour of this new covenant in order for that to happen in order for this unmerited favour to be released in order for the blessings to be released in order for the goodness to be released He says you are going to have to believe that God has been merciful unto your unrighteousness and your sins and unlawful deeds He remembers no more. If you don’t believe that you will short circuit and find yourself in a situation where you are not receiving the goodness, the blessings and the unmerited favour from this new covenant and it is all based on verse 12. That is the trigger point. That is the part he is asking you to believe. He is not asking you to, with your self effort, to do what would happen in the old covenant – Do good, get good – do bad, get bad. In the old covenant your faithfulness determined God’s faithfulness, in the old covenant what you did would determine what God could do, He said that’s passed away. That’s decayed away. He said what I’m going to do is – if you would just believe that I am merciful unto your unrighteousness, and if you would just believe that your sins and unlawful deeds are remembered no more, then I can be your God and I can write on your heart and I can write on your mind and I can lead you and I can show you and I can teach you to know me and I can do all kinds of things I just need you – listen to this – to get out of my way!
I’ve been studying for some sermons on the Abrahamic covenant of grace and I went back and studied the Abrahamic Covenant and there was not one thing that Abraham did to deserve anything that God did. In fact when God showed up to Abraham he was worshipping the moon! He didn’t deserve anything that God did for Abraham, it was all unearned. Nothing! In fact you’ll find Abraham in the midst of disobeying God, in the midst of being dishonest and God blessing Him. Yeah! Yeah!
God said; “I want you to leave, go for yourself,” the amplified says, “get away from you relatives” and as he was leaving Lot was going with him! Lot was right there with him and God said I’m going to bless you. And then if you go on to the next chapter and they come before Abimelek and Abraham starts to rising a scheme, “You are a good looking woman so we need to get ourselves together, now lie about who I am.” And God blesses Him! And then in the next chapter there is strife between Lot’s camp and Abraham’s camp, there is strife there and God blesses them! Then He goes and tell them that they are going to have a child out of your own bowels, you know you are going to be blessed with your own kid and they laughed! They didn’t even believe it and God blesses them! The only time God couldn’t do anything for Abraham was when he tried out of his own effort to make what God had promised come to pass – when they had Ismail.
And now you take that Abrahamic covenant of grace – I can’t help but give you a little bit of it, I’m so overwhelmed with this. Part of that covenant of Abraham dealt with the slavery of Israel in Egypt so all the way up to Moses’ time when the children of Israel were being delivered out of Egypt He was honouring the Abrahamic covenant of grace. The Bible says he brings them out of Egypt and there was no feeble one amongst them. They weren’t even feeble! There were nobody hopping, they were all straight, it was all good! It was all good! There was not even one feeble one amongst their tribe! Nobody died on that journey, nobody died!
If you will read it carefully, man, they got to the red sea and what are they doing? Murmuring! You brought us out here to die! It seemed like every fresh murmur produced a fresh mercy of God! They murmured and look what God did! He opened the red sea, and he dried it up because he didn’t want their feet to get muddy when they walked through. What? Then they got over there; “we are hungry! You brought us out here to starve us!” And they started raining down murmurings and guess what God did? Rained down manna. It was all grace. It was all grace and it was all good in that neighbourhood and you know they were complaining and you know they had unforgiveness, you know they had problems with their leadership and God just kept blessing them and kept blessing them…
And look at His presence – His presence was right in the middle of their camp – a cloud by day and a fire by night right in the middle of camp! The presence of God was right there, they murmured and the presence of God was still right there!
And watch when it changed… When they said; “we can do all that you said.” Immediately everything changed. The cloud got thick, God said now tell them they can’t come here no more. If they touch the bottom of that mountain they are going to die. No, they can’t hear from me no more, because you want to judge you based on your own merit, all right I will give you the law! This law will bring you to an end of yourself. Just like with Abraham when I waited 13 years from 86 to 99, when you don’t have any more self effort to depend on and then you are going to have to depend on me and then I will introduce myself to you as the God who is mighty in every area of your life!
I don’t want us to make the same mistake! Religion keeps telling you to get in God’s way, religion keeps trying to tell you that you need to do these things in order for God to this, religion keep trying to tell you you’ve got to do all of these requirements to do that and God is saying I can take care of all of that. God is saying, listen, I can help you to fulfil all of the law, and all you have to do is receive my love. I didn’t tell you to act like a fool! I’m telling you to yield to me so that I can lead you and guide you in the way that the law has tried to lead you and guide you and you keep trying to come up with a way to help me. Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know where I bought you from? Don’t you know there are a 1000 ways for me to knock you off before 8 o’clock tonight!
Would you please believe me! Believe me! Believe me! I sent you a helper. Are you trying to help me? Believe me, let me do my thing… Then go and tell somebody about it. How hard is that? Obey my voice. Walk with me. Talk with me. Fellowship with me. I’m going to show you things that you know not off. That is why He wants you to walk with him. So that He can show you. So that He can talk to you. So that He can say it to you. We are coming to a very rich tender time in the anointing where if you will give the Holy Spirit the opportunity, he is going to lead you and guide you to some truths that is going to take you in places that there would be no way for you to get there in the natural if you will begin to trust him.
But here is the thing you’ve got to trust more than anything: That God has been merciful to your unrighteousness. You know when it comes time to get healed you cannot be sitting up there thinking about maybe this is a get back for something I did 2 years ago. When there come times when there is a shortage in your life and the money is not there you cannot be sitting back there thinking about that it was something that I must have done last week. You can’t do that, because it immediately short circuits what is necessary for that new covenant to begin to operate. That’s got to be a settled issue.
Then you see Jesus in the gospels trying to demonstrate over and over again when it came to this man that appeared before him who was sick and he went up to him and said your sins are forgiven, and then the church folk had a fit; “who are you to forgive his sin!” And Jesus knew this and you see this pattern all through the Bible even in the book Psalms (103) you see this pattern where there is forgiveness first and then a great healing took place. Forget not our benefits, who heals all of our diseases… Yeah! Who forgives all of our iniquities, well which comes first? The forgiveness of all of our iniquities and then the healing of all of our disease and then our life being redeemed from destruction and then he crowns our head with tender mercies and loving kindness and then he satisfies our mouth with good things so that our youth is being renewed like an eagle.
But where did it all start? It all started with you first of all understanding that He has forgiven you of all of your iniquity and then he will heal all of your diseases. Because the issue that keeps so many people down is they don’t believe that God has forgiven them and you know what happens? You vacillate from deliverance to bondage because you are not sure that this is the truth. Every night you go to bed clean. Every night you go to bed pure. You live your life under a waterfall of forgiveness. Do you understand me? That is how you live your life. If you keep going back to maybe there was something I didn’t do that is blocking this blessing from my life, you are dealing with a major issue of the new covenant not being able to function in your life. God is not trying to get you back for sin that Jesus has already paid for.
Based on the new covenant of Grace what does God want you to believe? He wants you to believe with all your heart that he meant every word when he said I will be merciful to your unrighteousness and their sins and their lawlessness deeds I will remember no more. In the new covenant there is nothing for us to do but to believe this (gesturing to his Bible)
So its time for you to be healed. Lord I thank you! I believe that you have been merciful to my unrighteousness and my sins and iniquities you remember no more. Hallelujah! Thank you for healing! That is all that is needed!”
Keeping my eyes on Jesus... 