What it's saying right there is this:
if this could have perfected you, if you could have become
perfect in the Old Covenant there would have never been a New Covenant.
So when you, the Old Covenant,
not that it's bad; it's good. Paul said it's good but, but
the Old Covenant is based on things like
You have to do this do this.
Do this, don't do that.
You will do this.
What is that? That's, that's present tense, future tense. You need to do this.
To follow the law you must do this. And that's all,
but it's all imperfect. I mean the end is perfect, what God's asking is perfect of
course. But to do it, to
I gotta do good. I gotta not too bad. It's me doing. I'm living in the imperfect tense; it's not finished.
The problem with legalism, it's not that. The law is good but it, because it's a shadow of something good. But
legalism, is that it leaves you living in the imperfect;
always trying to be complete. I'm doing it.
Trying to make up, trying to do it.
And then you end up like Paul, who said I try to do this, but I do this. I know this is good but I end up doing that.
And so Paul says, it's show, it's really just showing me how imperfect I am. And then I cry out.
And then I'm calling out for the new.
And that's where the new is. So
the New Covenant is based not on do this,don't. It's got that there; that you can find that in there.
There's doing; we're to do.
But it's not based on us doing,.
It's based on the Gospel which is what He did.
So the New Covenant is based on a perfect verb.
It's based on "It's finished". It's based on God has done it.
It's based on God so loved, perfect tense, the world,
that He gave, perfect, completed His Son.
Now when you read, when you look at the beginning of the Bible, God is creating, it's a perfect work.
In Hebrew "Beresheit bara Elohim et hashomayim v' et haaretz".
The first sentence of the Bible: "In the beginning,"
The first action is a perfect verb.
He, God "created"; first verb in the Bible, it is perfect.
It is, it is the tense of the perfect. God "created" it totally.
The world was perfect.
Only He can do it like that. God did it.
The only thing perfect is what God does.
So we must learn how to do things from His doing.
Turn to Isaiah 53. I want to show you another thing. You will never see this.
Well I don't want to say that completely.
You would. It wouldn't be clear certainly in the English, but you might get a hint of what's going on here.
But I want to show you something that you probably never knew.
Isaiah 53. In fact I don't think most believers would know this.
Isaiah 53. In fact most, probably most Jewish people don't realize that either. Isaiah 53.
The amazing prophecy of Messiah.
Who has believed our report? (verse 1)
To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before Him as a tender shoot,
like a root out of parched ground. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him,
nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised,
rejected of men, man of sorrows, acquainted with grief like one from whom
men hide their face. He was despised; we did not esteem Him;
surely our griefs he bore. Now goes on.
Actually I want you to see something. Do you notice something a little strange,
now that we're talking about this? Do you notice something strange about it?
Here's what's strange.
Isaiah 53 is a prophecy of what's going to happen
when Messiah comes 700 years later.
But when you read it,
and here you can even see it in the English but you may not realize, what's going on.
It appears to have already happened.
Although if you keep going you'll see different, there's actually, but here's the thing.
In Isaiah 53, you've got past tense, present tense and future tense;
all in the same event.
Why? It's speaking about salvation, speaking about the death of Messiah, the Cross because it's timeless.
It's past, present and future.
What he did covers all time.
So it, but here the thing is not, it's obviously this is a prophecy of what's going to happen. Even Orthodox Jews agree about that.
It's all about what's coming, yet it's written. Why?
Because it's written; it's not so much the past tense, it's written in the perfect tense.
When you read it, when it looks like the past and it's the perfect tense.
Why? Because what Messiah did on the cross is a perfect work.
Even when it's spoken of before the fact, it's still as if it was done.
So it is written: the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world,
as if it already was.
Salvation is beyond time.
Salvation is bigger than time.
But salvation is a perfect work. So even before it happens it's as if it was done.
Think about it. We meet the Lord at, on Calvary.
Yet he died 2,000 years ago. Yet we meet Him today.
He was crucified 2,000 years ago but we come to Calvary to this day.
2000 years, yet today.
Paul wrote I am crucified with Him.
I am crucified with Him, as if with Him. Wait a minute.
I thought it was Paul wrote it years later, but it's as if he's, he's, as if it's right now.
And I am crucified with him right now as if it, that the, the moment two thousand years ago and the moment now are one moment.
Salvation happened when? When were you saved?
There's two answers.
You were saved when you received him,
and you were saved 2,000 years ago.
Both. It's timeless.
It's perfect. It's, it's without time.
I am, it's a perfect work.
So the words of the Lord are perfect. It is finished, complete.
Finished.
Messiah is the one who makes complete, makes. He is perfect.
He brings us perfect. It says in, in Daniel 9, it says He will come; the Messiah will come
to finish transgression, make an end of sin, seal up vision and prophecy, that.
What's He doing? He's ending. He's completing everything. He's gonna finish everything, complete everything.
He's completing our sin. He's going to complete our past life. He's going to complete everything that wasn't complete.
He's the cornerstone. We know that.
But in Hebrew '"cornerstone" is Rosh Pinah. Try it.
Rosh Pinah is where you get cornerstone. It's from the Psalms.
He will be the cornerstone.
But the word Rosh Pinah doesn't just mean the cornerstone, it means the... capstone;
meaning that which finishes everything.
And when, if you finish something, what are you doing?
You're making it perfect.
He's the one who finishes us to make us perfect.
It is finished.
In Hebrew, another strange property.
If you put an "and", the word "and", in front of a perfect verb,
the perfect verb becomes imperfect.
Well you take it this way,
if you try to add anything to God's perfect work, you make it imperfect.
But if you take an imperfect verb and you put an "and" in front of it, it becomes perfect.
So a life that's imperfect but you add God into it, becomes perfect in Him.
What does this mystery...