Hebrews, the 8th chapter.
We begin with verse 6 and read the
rest.
But now hath he, Jesus Christ, obtained a
more excellent ministry, for how much more also
he is the mediator of the better covenant,
which was established upon better promises.
For if that first covenant had been faultless,
then should no place have been sought for
the second.
But 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,
not according to the covenant that I 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.
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 minds
and write them in their hearts.
And I will be to them a God,
and they shall be to me a people.
And they shall not teach every man his
neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know
the Lord, for all shall know me, from
the least to the greatest.
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness,
and their sins and their iniquities will I
remember no more.
In that he saith, A new covenant is
made the old, or the first, old.
That which decays and waxes old is ready
to vanish away.
Now, God has established a new covenant.
That's the teaching of the book of Hebrews.
But that isn't to try down the old
covenant in any way, the Old Testament, the
old law.
But it is only to say that the
old covenant was provisional, something like the scaffolding
that goes up when you are erecting a
building.
You cannot say the scaffolding is of no
benefit.
It is of a benefit until the building
is completed, then the scaffolding is torn away.
So the Old Testament covenant, the Old Testament
law, was, according to the New Testament writer
here, a scaffolding provisional for the time until
the new building was erected.
Then it was old, obsolete, and vanished away.
That old covenant was imperfect by the nature
of it, and it was temporary in its
continuance and inadequate in its effect.
I want to show why the Old Testament
law fell short of perfection.
By the law I do not mean the
Ten Commandments only.
The Ten Commandments were never given by themselves.
They were given as a part of a
larger law which included sacrifice and the priesthood
and the high priests and the altars and
the blood and the lambs and the beasts
and the bulls and goats and the Sabbath,
and all of these were included and are
included when we talk about the law.
Now, the Old Testament law was holy and
just and good, but its weakness lay in
its location.
Its weakness lay in the fact that it
was external instead of internal, because always the
springs of a man's conduct and character are
within him.
Jesus said that the outside isn't so important,
but it's the inside, what comes out of
a man, that matters.
And just what the law could not do
was to change what came out of a
man.
You can chain a tiger, but it's a
tiger still.
You can put a mad killer in prison
for life, but he's a mad killer until
there has been a change on the inside
of him.
And this was the weakness of the Old
Testament law.
It was on the outside, and it could
not deal with the life motivations which came
from the inside.
Its motivations were the ten words, thou shalt
not and thou shalt.
But a man always lives from within, and
so it couldn't affect that which was inside
of the man.
I don't want to keep repeating that, but
I'm afraid I'm not making myself too clear.
That which is on the outside is legislation,
and you cannot change a man by legislating.
The City Council could pass a law and
put sanctions on.
Ten years in, or one year, I don't
know how much authority the City Council has,
but it's enough.
They can chuck you in jail, and you
can pass a law that everybody in Toronto
is to love his neighbor.
But we can't fulfill that.
We can go grinning down the street in
order to stay out of jail.
And we can act as though we loved
our neighbor in order to stay within the
confines of the law and obey the ordinances.
Because if you smile at your neighbor and
look loving, they'll probably think you're loving.
But the City Council wouldn't pass any such
silly law, because you can't legislate to a
man's heart.
You can only legislate to a man's conduct.
And therefore, it could not create any inward
moral propensity.
Now, God promised to provide an inward moral
bent to holiness.
He said that there was to be a
new covenant.
And the writer argues, if you are going
to get a new covenant, then you make
old and obsolete the old covenant.
And he argued thus that the old covenant
had no more power over the Christian, because
God had promised a new covenant and the
Christian was under the new covenant.
And that new covenant was not an external
thing, but an internal thing.
Now, in order that we might illustrate this,
let us go to nature itself.
I realize that the word nature and the
word instinct are in bad repute in some
very learned and extremely egghead circles.
They don't like the word instinct anymore, nor
the word nature.
In fact, you'll even go to the dictionary,
you'll not find the word nature used in
the sense in which I'm using it this
morning, at least not in the one I
was consulting recently.
But they are willing to say that there
is something in a man, they don't want
to call it instinct anymore, and they don't
want to call it nature.
But they do admit that there is a
native factor in behavior, that there is an
intrinsic, eternal factor in behavior.
A young rattlesnake is hatched out of its
egg, and before it has ever seen any
other rattlesnake, it will coil and strike.
When it's a tiny thing and hasn't seen
any other snakes and hasn't itself ever been
going to school to learn how to strike,
it coils up and strikes.
Now, that is a native factor in behavior.
If they don't want to call it nature
or instinct, well, we don't want to argue
with the learned brethren.
But it's there anyhow.
I sometimes think of the argument over whether
Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, or somebody else wrote Shakespeare.
And one man didn't want to argue about
it, so he took both sides.
He said that he didn't think himself that
Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, but that a man named
Shakespeare wrote it.
And of course, that pleased everybody, and all
were content.
So that, if you don't like the word
instinct or nature, let's call it a native
factor in behavior that makes a little rattlesnake
strike without ever having seen any other rattlesnake
strike.
And so we're back at Shakespeare again.
And then it's said to be actions or
resulting actions not dependent upon previous experience, individual
previous experience.
I have seen chickens hatch out and lie
helpless for maybe five minutes and then struggle
to their feet.
And the breeze would begin to dry them
off, and the fluffy little fluff would begin
to show.
And before they were completely dry, they'd be
out scratching.
They never saw anybody scratch, any chicken scratch.
They were the first one to do the
scratching.
They scratched by some native factor which led
them to do acts which were not dependent
upon any previous experience.
They did it without having been taught it.
And then it's a tendency to action which
lead to an end, and it's that unknown
factor which impels each creature to act like
itself.
Now, I think we've made that plain by
definition.
Whatever this is in animals and birds and
fishes and worms and all the rest, it's
that unknown factor which impels every creature to
act like itself.
Now, this can be altered by pressure from
the outside, of course.
A chimpanzee can be taught in the circus
to put on a bib and eat with
a knife and fork.
But he's a chimpanzee still.
They haven't altered him inside, and they haven't
in any wise removed that unknown factor which
impels every creature to act like himself.
He will act like a chimpanzee as soon
as he gets by himself or gets out
with another chimpanzee.
But there has been a force used from
the outside to persuade him to act like
something else.
That's pressure.
And you know that there's such a thing
as teaching a sinner to act like a
Christian, to imitate him.
You baptize him and confirm him and feed
him the Lord's Supper regularly, and you instruct
him in ethics, and pretty after a while
he begins to act like a Christian, just
as a chimpanzee acts like a man.
But he's not a Christian because he has
not that inward factor that impels him to
righteousness and true holiness.
He only is taught from the outside to
be a Christian.
And there is so tremendously, terribly much of
this.
The vast numbers of Church members are taught
to imitate Christians.
They read the Sermon on the Mount, and
they know how a Christian should live.
They don't live like that at all, but
they approximate it.
They play it by ear and get close
to it, close to it enough that they
are accepted into the Church, and they go
to Church and sing and give, and people
think they are Christians.
But they are living by external pressure and
by artificial training and imitation, and not by
that native factor inside of them which teaches
them to act in a certain way, and
that unknown factor which impels them to act
like Christians.
They don't have that.
Now, moral preachers, you can take two extremes,
if you will.
Let's take two extremes in order that might
be clear.
Let's take the first archangel.
While he sings, he hides his face beneath
his wings, as Watts said.
Let's take that first archangel, and then over
against that, let's take that old devil which
is called the dragon and the Satan.
Let's take those two.
Now, there is far apart morally, I suppose,
as possible for creatures to get.
And why does the first archangel act like
an archangel?
Because there is an unknown factor in him
which impels him to act like himself.
Call it what you will.
You don't like the word nature, name it
X.
But it's there, and it impels the archangel
to act like an archangel.
And when he acts like an archangel, he
is not acting the way he has been
trained to act.
He is acting from the inside out.
That thing inside of him makes him do
it, and he doesn't resist it.
He wants to do it, just as the
tick doesn't resist the temptation to scratch.
It scratches because something inside it impels it.
It never saw anybody scratch, but it does.
And so the archangel does not compare himself
with somebody else and say, Now, I've got
to act like an archangel.
He acts like an archangel because he is
an archangel.
The old question that the Church has chewed
over in the past is whether a sinner
sins because he's a sinner, or whether he's
a sinner because he sins.
Well, both, of course, would be true.
You're moving in a circle, but he sins
originally and first because he's a sinner, and
then he's a sinner because he sins, and
so he goes around the circle until, by
the grace of God, he breaks out of
it and is a sinner no longer.
So a sinner is one who sins, but
he sins because he has been a sinner.
He acts like himself.
Why does the baby, as soon as it's
able, act like the little sinner it is?
Now, you don't feel yours are.
Ours are all sinners.
We had seven sinners in our home, even
little Becky, all sinners.
They didn't do anything very bad, really, but
they did enough to know that the instinct
scratch was there.
They didn't have to imitate, it was there.
The unknown factors.
That's something that we're ashamed to call or
name within us.
That's the archangel, not sinning, but the opposite.
He's out on the side of the holiness,
but over and against him is the devil.
The devil acts like himself, and that's the
only thing I can say in his favor.
He acts like himself even when he's deceiving,
he's acting like himself.
Even when he's acting like a devil, he's
acting like himself.
He's acting like himself because he is a
devil.
Jesus said about certain Jews who are persecuting
him, you're of your father the devil and
the works of your father you'll do.
You'll act like your ancestry.
The crowning achievement of the New Testament is
to implant in the heart of a believing
man an unknown factor which impels him to
act righteously.
Right there, I've given this morning in a
few brief sentences the difference between denominational Churchanity
and true Christianity.
It's the difference between training a man to
be a Christian and having him born a
Christian.
You can take a man of another race,
an Indian from the plains of Nebraska, and
you can bring him up and give him
an English accent.
I remember once hearing on the radio a
man by the name of Lobogola.
Lobogola was a Negro who had escaped, had
run away when he was a tiny boy,
and had gone to the coast and then
had been taken to Scotland and had been
reared in Scotland.
He learned to speak, almost the first language
he knew was Scottish.
I heard him make a speech on the
radio.
He had become a well-educated man.
I think he had written a book, if
I remember.
It was the most brave Scots you ever
heard in all your life.
And here he was, a Negro from the
wilds of Africa, speaking like a Scotsman.
And you wouldn't know the difference if you'd
said, well, imagine this man's got red hair
and a fresh complexion, he's a real Scotsman.
But he wasn't.
He was a Negro.
So he had been trained to sound like
a Scotsman.
And I suppose he ate lumps in it,
just like the rest of the Scots.
But he was not a Scotsman.
And nothing that you could ever do could
make him one.
No reason that he should be ashamed of
what he was.
No reason in the world that he should
be.
Negro race.
He belonged to his race.
But he had been shoved out of his
racial norm and put where he learned another
language.
And so he sounded like this Scotsman, which
he was not.
Now, the average church is full of people
like that.
They have been brought into the church and
they learn the songs of Zion.
And people who have never been any nearer
to God than Adam, at his worst, will
sing some of the most beautiful hymns you've
ever heard in your life.
They got their accent right from Mount Zion.
They sing the songs of Israel, but they
are not Israelites.
They sing the songs of the church, but
they are not Christians.
You say, what right have you got to
in this bigoted manner rule men out of
the church?
I don't have any right to do anything
at all, only to go to hell.
But under the grace of God and by
the authority granted me by the Lord Jesus
Christ, I do have this commission to draw
the line between him that serveth God and
him that serveth him not, and to dare
to stand and say in his name that
unless a man be born again he cannot
enter the kingdom of God.
And no amount of training and no amount
of religious accent that we put on will
ever do, my brother.
There has got to be implanted in the
human spirit that thing which impels to righteous
conduct.
We call that by various names.
We call that the new birth, we call
that regeneration, we call it sometimes conversion, though
the conversion is a shallower word and means
less.
You were converted in order that you might
be regenerated, and you are regenerated because you
were generated wrong in the first place.
And that unknown factor, God calls it my
laws.
He said, For I will put my laws
into their minds, and write them in their
hearts, and I will be to them of
God, and they shall be to me of
people.
So there is where we get it.
I will put my laws into their hearts.
A Christian is one who has had the
laws of God inscribed in his heart at
the motivation center of his life.
That's a Christian.
Nobody else is a Christian, nothing else is
a Christian.
Now, the New Testament also teaches this, and
I wouldn't be honest nor fair if I
did not give this side of it and
show what it teaches.
The New Testament teaches the presence of other
conflicting factors in even a Christian's life.
While the main spring of his life is
that new law of God written not in
stone but in flesh, there are conflicting factors
which sometimes overcome him, weakness and flesh in
the world and lust and old habits.
In the 7th chapter of Romans there is
the classic wail of a holy man who
sometimes felt factors stirring within him that impelled
him to be unholy.
He cried, What will I do, O God,
who will deliver me from this body of
death?
And he went on into the 8th chapter
and showed that there was provision made for
deliverance from these wild factors that lie in
us, which we call the flesh or carnality
or the old man, or a dozen names
are given to this.
A holy man, a good man, a man
I heard of was converted, the law of
God written in his soul.
He loved God with all his heart, but
he hadn't been converted very long, and he
was a carpenter.
He was pounding away and missed a nail
and hit the thumb, and he let out
a yell that would have curled the hair
of an archangel.
It was an old swear word.
But instead of getting on his knees, he
smiled and said, Glory to God!
It sounds sort of confusing, doesn't it?
But it isn't at all.
It's suddenly a rich thing that was gone.
That was a reflex, an old habit that
he had fallen into for a second, but
God knew he didn't mean it, and he
looked up and glorified God who delivered him.
He put that behind him and said, Glory
to God, I'll have none more of that.
I recognize that for what it is.
So about making a production out of it,
as the kids say, he got right with
God right there where it was happening.
And thank God from the depths of his
heart that that was a memory, something that
reminded him of what he used to be,
but that he wasn't anymore.
Now, it says here, and let's close with
this.
And they shall not teach every man his
neighbor, verse 11, and every man his brother,
saying, Know the Lord.
The reason is that all shall know me
from the least to the greatest, for I
will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their
sins and iniquities I'll remember no more.
Now, the question is, can we teach religion?
Can religion be taught?
Tremendous ought of emphasis is being placed upon
what we call religious education in our day.
And I believe in religious education if we
understand what we mean by it.
Doctrine can be taught and ethics can be
taught.
You can get a half a dozen little
kids before you and you can teach them,
God is love.
God created the heaven and the earth.
God so loved the world he gave his
only begotten Son.
Believe on the Lord and thou shalt be
saved.
That's doctrine.
And you can teach doctrine.
You can get those little ones before you
and you can teach them, obey your parents,
lie not, do not steal.
You can teach them ethics, that is righteous
laws.
You can teach that, and we should.
Doctrine should be taught.
I've been trying to teach it this morning.
We can teach doctrine and we can teach
ethics, but you can't teach salvation.
Salvation is that which happens in a man's
life because he has believed the doctrine that
he has heard.
But he can receive the doctrine and pass
a test in doctrine and recite the Catechism
from the first question to the last, letter
perfect, and still not be a Christian.
Because you cannot by teaching make a man
a Christian.
Though by teaching you can impel him to
want to be a Christian and you can
show him how to be a Christian.
And when he's become a Christian you can
teach him, as Jesus said, all things whatsoever
I have spoken unto you.
But you can't make him a Christian by
teaching.
The curriculum never yet was devised that could
cause a baby to be.
A baby is a life, and it's born
out of life.
But after he's born and grows up, you
can send him to college and subject him
to the curriculum, and he can learn a
great deal that he ought to know.
But you have to start with life.
You cannot create life by teaching.
I wonder how many Christians there are who
are Christians only by instruction, Christians only by
religious education, Christians only by having somebody manipulate
them, put them in water or sprinkle water
on them.
This is tragic, it seems to me, that
we can come into the Church and take
a part in the Church and not be
known not for being Christians, because we are
acting like Christians, that is in the measure
we are.
We don't do this and we don't do
the other.
And we are in Church and we do
give, we are somewhat refined, so we act
like Christians, but the terrible thing is we
are Christians by manipulation.
Christians by instruction rather than Christians by regeneration.
Salvation can't be taught.
Salvation, among other things, brings an implantation of
an unknown factor within the soul that impels
the Holy Mass.
And the true Christian cries, Abba, Father, by
an impulse of the Spirit.
He doesn't have to be taught.
Nobody says to the new Christian, now say,
Abba, Father.
He says it because the Spirit of the
Son is in his heart impelling him to
say it.
And so the biggest question before us this
morning, has this happened to me?
Have I received him, believed on him?
Has he wrought in me that miracle which
impels me to want to do right and
makes me grieve if I don't?
It's most serious, my friends, that we ask
the question and answer it.
And it's most serious that we answer it
in the affirmative and be right about it.
It would be a heart-breaking thing, or
at least a very disheartening thing, if we
were permitted to stand out in front of
the average Church, just the average Church anywhere,
just close your eyes and put a pin
down in the telephone Church department and go
to that Church.
It would be disheartening to go and be
permitted to question each one that steps down
the steps out of the grocery car.
Are you truly a Christian inside?
Do you have implanted in you by the
miracle of the new birth that unknown factor
which God has named for us, his laws
that make you want to do righteousness and
hate sin and love God and hate iniquity?
Are you yourself now this morning blessed with
this inward factor that impels to holiness?
If you could get an honest answer, I
know what you'd get.
You'd get the brush-off from 99 percent.
But if you could get honest answers, it
would be heart-breaking, because there is no
question about it.
If all the people who go to churches
in Toronto had this unknown factor, this thing
that imperiled them to righteousness, this would be
a different city from what it is now.
And Christianity would be quite some other thing
than what it is now in this town
or any other town.
So as we enter into the communion service,
let's not blame each other.
I won't blame you, don't you blame me.
Don't try to pick flaws in me, and
I won't pick flaws in you, but let's
pick flaws in ourselves, each one.
And let's before God this morning say, Lord,
don't let me be one more of these
persons.
It's like the chimpanzee that's been trained to
act like a man that isn't a man,
will die a chimpanzee.
Help me, Lord, that I may not be
a sinner, a good sinner, a moral sinner,
a sinner with high ethical standards, a religious
sinner, but a sinner nevertheless.
This would be a terrible tragedy, my brethren.
Make God grant it shouldn't be the portion
of any other.
Amen.