South Shore Pentecostal Church

Announcer: Welcome to the Apostolic Truth Radio program with Pastor Craig Ouellette, our radio ministry of South Shore Pentecostal Church, located in Whitman, Massachusetts. At a time when many Christians do not know what to believe, South Shore Pentecostal is honored to bring you clear biblical teaching on which you can confidently build your faith. Thank you for joining us.

J. Craig Ouellette: We are going to read those scriptures across the screen there. Matthew 26:28, Jesus says, "For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."

John 14:15. In the night of the last supper, Jesus is saying these words after the dinner. He says, "If ye love me, keep my commandments." That is really a proof. Many people say they love God, but the Bible says in multiple places that the proof that we love God is that we keep His commandments. It says it three or four times. A proof of loving God is keeping His commandments.

Jesus says, "And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." Then in verse 26 in the same chapter: "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 says, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are."

God came—and we started to talk about this last week—the Lord came to restore fellowship. Fellowship with God was broken because of sin with Adam and Eve. When you read the Bible, you see a history of mankind in Genesis where sin comes into the world and man gets further and further from God. God deals with Abraham, calls out a nation and a people, and eventually God comes down himself.

The Lord's come, the cross and all of that, he has come to reestablish fellowship and relationship. God created man in the beginning to have relationship with Him. That is God's original plan. We are going to look at these different topics here one at a time. God came to establish a New Covenant. We read Matthew 26:28. Jesus was going to come back in spirit form as the Holy Ghost. That is what we read in John 14. Jesus told the disciples to wait for the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost is an Old Testament promise. It is not something that came out of nowhere, but God talked about it in the Old Testament. That is a good Bible study for you to do is to search out your Old Testament and see where God talked about the coming of the Spirit. There are a number of places where He does that. When we are born again, we become the temple of the Holy Ghost.

We have to deal with the sin problem before God will take residence in us. This is why the Lord came. Part of the reason the Lord died on the cross was to provide the answer for the sin problem, to apply the blood so we can have atonement for sin. Up until the cross, there was no real answer for sin. People were getting through by obeying God in faith. When they obeyed God in faith, they did all they knew how to do, and God took care of them for that point of time.

The Lord came to restore fellowship. Jesus' blood was shed for the New Covenant. A covenant is an agreement. You do not hear people talk about this very much, but salvation is a covenant agreement. It is not just "I believe and I am all set." I have to believe, but I need to enter into an agreement with God. Salvation, He said, "My blood is shed for the New Testament." Testament means covenant.

The New Testament is the New Covenant. All these books we call the New Testament are really how we are supposed to apply this covenant to our lives. I have to look at all of them. I cannot just look at some of them and make a proper application. If I am going to know how to properly apply the New Testament covenant to my life to be a partaker of that, I cannot just choose the book of John, the book of Matthew, or the book of Romans. I have to look at all of that and put it together God's way.

The Old Testament dealt primarily with Israel. The New Testament is dealing with the world. God is expanding. That is one of the reasons why the Lord came. If we look over in Matthew 24:14, Jesus makes this statement because the disciples have told him that Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, the temple and all that, and they say when is this going to be and what is the sign of your coming?

He makes this statement in Matthew 24:14: "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." The Gospel is not just for Israel, it is not just for the Middle East; it is for the world. The Gospel is the good news that we can have a covenant relationship with God, an agreement. The blood had to be shed to have that covenant.

These are a lot of the lessons from the Old Testament with the tabernacle and temple showing that blood is required to deal with sin. It says this in the New Testament too. Hebrews 9:22: "And without shedding of blood is no remission." That is a New Testament verse. We need the blood of Jesus. It takes the blood of a human being to atone for other human beings.

The book of Hebrews says if the blood of bulls and goats and rams took care of it, we did not need a cross. We needed a human being that could be our sacrifice and stand in our place, and the only way that could happen is God had to come himself. God incarnated himself in the person of Jesus Christ. That humanity died on the cross. God cannot die, but the humanity God incarnated himself in did.

The flesh that God robed himself in, that died. God took blood upon himself so that we could have a pure blood to cleanse us. Who died? Jesus died. That is why you get baptized in the name of Jesus. Acts 2:39, Peter on the day of Pentecost reiterates that this is for everybody. He says, "For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call."

This New Testament promise is a worldwide deal. God is dealing with the world in the New Testament. The New Testament deals with the inner man, the inside of us. People in the Old Testament realized it. David understood it: "Create in me a clean heart, renew a right spirit within me. Purge me with hyssop. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight." They understood it, but they did not have the power to do it.

We need the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost gives us the power to live for God. God is dealing with the inner man. This is part of the reason why they were astounded with the Sermon on the Mount. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gets beyond the outward and gets to the inner person. It is not just if you physically kill them. If you hate your brother, you are a murderer still. He is dealing with the inner person.

It is not physical adultery. If you are looking at a man or woman to lust after them, that is adultery. The inner man. God is interested in the inner being. This is what this New Testament salvation is about. The only way we can have ourselves lined up is we have to have God help us. We have to deal with the sin and we have to have the Holy Ghost to give us power. We have to get baptized, and the Bible says water baptism for remission of sins.

What does that mean? Freedom from sins. It does not say repent for remission of sins. It says get baptized in Jesus' name for remission of sins. That means if you have not been baptized in Jesus' name, even if you have been baptized a thousand times, if you have not been baptized in Jesus' name, you do not have your sins remitted. You still have them in your life. Even if you have the Holy Ghost, you still have the sins in your life.

Baptism is what Peter said, "Be baptized every one of you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins." I do not read where Peter says, "I did not mean to say that. That was a slip, a Freudian slip." Of course, he did not know who Freud was. But again, the inner person. Living waters, John 7:37. Look at this again. Jesus is telling us it is a different dimension.

This New Testament salvation, God wants to take people to a different level. John 7:37, He says, "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)"

The Holy Ghost, living water, says something is inside of me now. I am not going and drinking it; it is flowing up from me because of His spirit, because of the Spirit of God. The New Testament covenant is dealing with the inner person, not just the outer. The outer is important, but He is particularly dealing with the inner person. Jesus' blood is shed for that New Testament covenant.

We can look at a couple examples to try to illustrate the point. Noah had to build an ark God's way to obtain covenant relationship with God. If we look at Genesis 6:18, God says to Noah, "But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee." The last verse of that chapter says, "And Noah did according to all that God commanded him; so did he."

Verse five in the next chapter: "And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him." We are under grace. Look at verse eight: Noah found grace in the eyes of God. Grace did not mean Noah did not have to do anything. Grace meant I will tell you what to do, I will make it possible if you will listen to me. I will give you a way out if you will do what I say to do. New Testament salvation is no different. You have to do what God says to do.

Noah obtained a covenant by obeying God, doing what God said. Sometimes we do not want to do things because we do not like the way it looks. God said pitch the ark inside and outside. An ark with tar all over the outside does not look that great. Inside and outside, God is interested.

Abraham had to circumcise each male to participate in the covenant of circumcision. He had to circumcise himself and pass it on to his posterity. This is in Genesis 17. Genesis 17:11: "And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you," or a sign. Speaking in tongues is a token of the covenant. Speaking in tongues is a token of the covenant.

In Romans, God says He gave Abraham circumcision as a sign of the righteousness of his inner man. A person gets the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues is a sign of the righteousness of the inner man. That is Romans chapter 4. So then he goes on to say in verse 12: "And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant."

"And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant." My point is, when you enter into a covenant relationship, there is an agreement and some things that God expects from us. Abraham could not just say, "Well God, I know you can do this, but I will just stay here until you do it." He has to go to where God shows him to go and do the things that God says for him to do to obtain the covenant.

We have to do the things that the New Testament talks about. Peter said on the day of Pentecost, which is the birthday of the New Testament church, when the people ask what to do when they are convicted of their sin, Peter does not say just believe on the Lord and you will be saved. He says, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."

"I feel like I am saved because I believed." How do you distinguish that from people that believed before the Holy Ghost was poured out and people after the Holy Ghost was poured out? You have people that believe before the Holy Ghost was poured out, but they do not have the Holy Ghost. Just because you feel like you believe does not mean you have the Holy Ghost. You have to do things God's way. The sign of you getting the Holy Ghost is you speaking in tongues, a language as the Spirit gives you. That is the sign.

Peter said repent, get baptized, get the Holy Ghost. Repentance is where you die to sin. When I repent, I am dying to sin. It is not just asking God to forgive me of my past sins; it is coming to a realization that, "Lord, I want the past forgiven, but I do not want to go forward and sin again. I want to now live the way you want." That is repentance. It is also I am going to go forward trying to live the way you want me to live. I am going to try to live a godly life.

Then he said get baptized. He did not say do it for a testimony of who you believe or to show the population. He said get baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. Not some of you, every one of you. It goes on to say in the chapter: "And they that believed and gladly received the word were baptized."

Suppose they came out and they heard John the Baptist preaching a baptism of repentance. Do you think that anybody that said, "I believe John and I am repenting, but I am not getting baptized" would be accepted of God? No. If they believed John's word, they got baptized. That was the sign they believed it. In Luke 7:30, Jesus even says to the Pharisees: "You rejected the counsel of God against you by not being baptized."

Luke 7:30 says, "But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him," meaning John the Baptist. My point is, if you believe, you are going to do what God says to do. Peter said it, but Peter is speaking under the power of the Holy Ghost. God is speaking through him. If you read that chapter, you find out that Peter, being filled with the Holy Ghost, says what he says because the Holy Ghost is telling him to say that.

I want you to understand this. A birth is a traumatic event. When a child is born, they call it labor. There is a traumatic event that goes on there. For some children, it is hours or a day and a half. Others, it is a quick one, but in every one, there is some kind of trauma.