Developing a High Christology: Part 3
September 14, 2019      |     By: Sam McVay, Jr.      |      Category: Sermons      |      Location: Wichita
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Part 3: God Cut Covenant in His Christ

The great need of every disciple is to have a high and deep heart-level Christology.

The primary ministry of the Holy Spirit is to enlarge your revelation of, faith in, and fellowship with Jesus Christ.

What will enable you to endure suffering and success? - High Christology!

These last couple of weeks we have looked into glories of who Christ is and how the apostles found him as the supreme one in their teachings, faith, and affections.

This week, as we continue to exalt Christ, we want to meditate upon the glory of His blood as central to the New Covenant.

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (ESV)
1 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling,
4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Paul’s gospel is so radical it offends the Jews.

They are open to blood covenants and to a coming Messiah, but the thought that the “New Covenant” would be a blood covenant process of a suffering, bleeding, and a dying Jewish Messiah that claimed to be God was shocking to the Jewish religious leaders.

Remember that the Biblical witness of God’s relationship with humanity is rooted in His making blood covenants with them.

A covenant in the simplest terms is an intentional, formalized agreement between multiple parties with benefits and consequences.

Yahweh goes beyond just mutual promises or contractual agreement by establishing His core covenants in blood.

Leviticus tells us that, “the life is in the blood”.

Many are covenants in the Old Testament, but the main two are:
1. Abrahamic Covenant: The promise of a nation that comes from a “seed” that would release blessing to all nations. Genesis 15:7-18
2. Mosaic Covenant: The tabernacle worship and laws of the covenant. Hebrews 9:19-21

They are both prophetic in nature.

The Old Testament prophesies that a New Covenant is coming:
Jeremiah 31:31-33 (ESV)
31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,
32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 
33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Hebrews 9:11-28 (ESV)
11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 
12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 
13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 
14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. 
16 For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established.
17 For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.
18 Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.
19 For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 
20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.”
21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 
22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 
24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.
25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 
26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,
28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

And that the prophesied coming Messiah (Christ) would install it shockingly through his sufferings, death, and resurrection.

The stunning reality of the New Covenant, that is eternal, is that it was cut in a human being and by His blood.

The glory of the New Covenant is that it is permanent and has been established in the heavenly realms by the blood of Jesus.

Oh, the blood of Jesus!!!

What is our confidence of forgiveness: The blood of Jesus!
What is our access to the promises and blessings of God: The blood of Jesus!
What is our access to the Throne of Grace: The blood of Jesus!
What is our power over a guilty conscience: The blood of Jesus!
What is our power over Satan: The blood of Jesus!

Ephesians 2:11-13 (ESV)
11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—
12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Psalm 149:6-9 (ESV)
6 Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands,
7 to execute vengeance on the nations and punishments on the peoples,

Psalm 149:8-9 (ESV)
8 to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron,
9 to execute on them the judgment written! This is honor for all his godly ones. Praise the Lord!