Hebrews Lesson 111 December 13, 2007
NKJ Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the
desires of your heart.
Dr. Fruchtenbaum will be here. Everybody
was quite excited about this – that he would be
here for 3 weeks in January to teach his “Life of Jesus from a Jewish
Perspective”. I want to continue to make this point that there are times when
we’ll have guest speakers here that we will always treat with grace. They may
differ with me on a point of interpretation here or there or what you’ve heard
in the past. That’s fine. That’s how people learn to think through issues.
They hear somebody else that’s a
respected scholar say, “Well, I don’t believe in X.”
You’ve always heard X was
right.
Then you have to go learn how to
think through the issue and think about it and say, “Well, what are the
arguments behind it.”
That’s how you learn how to think. So,
there are a few little idiosyncrasies to Arnold’s theology that haven’t been
able to disabuse him of yet. The reason I point that out is when I had him come
up and speak on this same subject at Preston City Bible Church somebody said,
“Well, you know he doesn’t believe in X.”
I said, “Well, that’s okay. Some
people don’t, but you do and I do and that’s all that matters.”
So let’s not get all wrapped up
around the axle. If you hear something wrong that’s just the way things are out
there. None of us agree 100% on anything. In fact, I may not agree a whole lot
with what I taught 20 years ago. So we all grow, we all learn. There is that
level of objectivity there.
Let’s open our Bibles to Hebrews 8. We’re
going to get into an introduction tonight of the New Covenant. Now this is
again a very important topic in relationship to prophecy. All the biblical
covenants have significance in terms of prophecy, significance in terms of
Israel, and therefore they’re going to have significance in terms of
understanding the distinctions between the church and Israel especially since
when we get into our passage right here in Hebrews 8 as we have been going
through the first…actually we have covered the first 6 verses already but we’ll
start with verse 6 tonight just to pick up the context. When we get into this
we see that the introduction of this passage on the New Covenant, it is organically
connected to what is covered in the first six verses which is
that Jesus Christ is a superior High Priest according to the order of
Melchizedek. That was what was established in chapter 7 so that when we start
talking about the New Covenant in verse 7 the New Covenant in verse 7 can’t be
separated from the present high priestly ministry of Christ at the right hand
of Father which means that as we get into verse 6…
NKJ Hebrews 8:6 But now He has obtained
“He” being the Lord Jesus
Christ.
a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also
Mediator of a better covenant,
Now if He is the mediator of a
better covenant and the better covenant is the New Covenant in this context and
He is the mediator of this New Covenant, then that’s very important to
understand that you can’t mess with this in ways and try to invent other new
covenants.
which was established on better promises.
NKJ Hebrews 8:7 For if that first covenant
Notice that’s in italics because it is elipsized in the Greek, but obviously from context it
refers back to that first covenant being the Mosaic Law.
had been faultless, then no place would have been sought
for a second.
NKJ Hebrews 8:8 Because finding fault with them, He says: "Behold, the
days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house
of Israel and with the house of Judah --
This is a direct quote out of
Jeremiah 31:31ff, which is the key passage and the only passage in the Old
Testament that uses the terminology “new covenant”. Now my point here is that
if the high priestly ministry is connected to the better covenant and if Christ
is the mediator of this better covenant and the context says that this better
covenant is with the House of Israel and the House of Judah (that last line),
then that means that Jesus Christ’s present high priestly ministry at the right
hand of God the Father (His role as High Priest) is directly related to a
covenant with Israel.
Now that ought to make you scratch
your head a little bit because I think by understanding that and thinking about
this a little bit, it’s going to help us understand a lot of things related to
what God is doing with the church and what God is doing with Israel. It’s not
saying that we’re not going to break down the wall of separation between Israel
and the church. But we are seeing that this covenant with Israel with the House
of Israel and the House of Judah is the foundational legal document enacted in
human history that lays the foundation for what God is doing and what Christ is
doing as our High Priest. Just to remind you of something that we have gone
through quite a bit in the past that from Genesis 1 to Revelation everything
that God does in history is based on some kind of legal structure. He has…theologians use the word condescended. What that basically
means is that God has willingly limited and restricted Himself, lowered Himself
in a sense to work within certain structures which man can understand in order
to carry on His relationship with man.
It used to be that…I took a church
in Irving many, many years ago and there were two or three guys in the church
who were really positive. But, both of these guys had come out of some
quasi-mystical/charismatic background and they would frequently ask questions
related to the continuation of the sign gifts. The thing that you always heard
(and I used to get (Of course I
don’t go in an environment now where people would ask me the question, but I
used to always get) these questions from people who were interested in the
charismatic issue and they would ultimately end up saying, “How can you put God
in a box? God can make anything happen. God can still do miracles. God can give
people gift of tongues today if He wanted to. God could do all kinds if He wanted
to. You are just restricting Him.”
No, you’ve got it backwards here. What
the Word of God does is God informs us how He is going to function in relation
to man, what the bases are for his relationship to man, and what the conditions
are for what He will do and what He will not do. It is God who as told us what
the restrictions are. God has willingly restricted Himself and told us what
those restrictions are. We’re not putting God in a box. God has put Himself in
a box in order to let us know exactly what we can expect of Him so that as you
go through the different dispensations from the dispensation of perfect
environment or innocence in the garden to conscience to human government to the
calling out of Abraham and the Age of the Patriarchs and then Age of Israel
then the Messianic Era and then the Church Age and Tribulation, all the way
through, when God is going to change the way He deals with people. He
articulates it in a legal document called the covenant. So this is how He does
things.
So He says that the New Covenant is
going to be with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah. But there are
some really important issues that have developed over the years in trying to
understand just what this new covenant is and how the church relates to the New
Covenant and in what sense if any are we seeing the New Covenant fulfilled
today. There are those that have taken various positions
which we will go into just so you can have an understanding of what’s
going on here historically. So we will get into our introduction of the New
Covenant tonight.
First of all the New Covenant is the
8th and final covenant in the Old Testament. We’ve had the initial
Creation Covenant, the Adamic Covenant, and the Noahic Covenant. Those are all
modifications of the same permanent covenant. Those are gentile. Those are
universal covenants for all mankind. The Noahic
Covenant is still in effect. Every time you see a rainbow you are to be
reminded of what? Haven’t I taught you all better than that? You are to be
reminded that we have to execute criminals who commit murder. Oh yeah, and
God’s not going to destroy the earth by water any more either. You can still
enjoy good prime rib and good steak. All of that is part of the Noahic Covenant
– all of it.
You can’t pick out one thing and
say, “Well, we are going to ignore the other.”
So the Noahic Covenant is still in
effect and we still need to be executing criminals and we still need to eat
steak and God’s not going to wipe us out by water. That includes water from the
sky and...Oh my, melted icecaps. Wouldn’t that come
into that same category? It would make the oceans rise and flood everybody out.
That’s not going to happen. We can just have confidence in that. So those are
the first three covenants.
Then we get into God saying, “I am
tired of dealing with the whole human race. They have rejected Me and rejected Me and rejected Me, constantly worshipping
the creature rather than the Creator so I am going to call out one
individual.”
God from that point on and
approximately 2000 to 2100 BC, God says He is going to restrict
Himself to working Himself primarily through the descendent of Abraham,
specifically the descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He gives Abraham a
covenant that has 3 elements to it. Those elements are land, seed, and
blessing. The blessing part is what’s integral and important to understanding
the New Covenant. So you have land, seed and blessing. That is a permanent
covenant. That’s the fourth covenant, but it’s the first Jewish covenant. Then
you have the land covenant, sometimes called the Palestinian or Real Estate
Covenant. That’s the fifth covenant and the second Jewish covenant. Then you
have the Mosaic Covenant which is the (I am going to
lose track here.) seventh covenant, right? Sixth covenant...see I can’t count. Numbers
are not good. I’m a liberal arts guy. The Land Covenant is the second Jewish
covenant.
The Davidic Covenant is the third
Jewish covenant and the 7th covenant. And the New Covenant is the
eighth and final covenant in the Old Testament and the fifth Jewish covenant. The
Mosaic Covenant is the fourth covenant…comes in there. I probably screwed that up.
So the only temporary covenant in
the Old Testament is the Mosaic Covenant. We sometimes call it unconditional,
but the key issue is it’s temporary.
That’s what Hebrews 8:7 is all about. It was not to be a permanent
covenant.
So, just some
introductory concepts here. First
of all, some of this is very familiar; some of it’s not. First of all a covenant is a legally
binding obligation of God to man. These are the biblical covenants. A covenant
is a legally binding obligation of God to man. God is committing Himself to
something. One of the reasons we use that term unconditional is because He’s
not putting a condition on man to fulfill the obligation of the covenant. He is
binding Himself to fulfill the obligation of the covenant. He promises Abraham
that He is going to give Abraham land. He is going to give Abraham descendents
that would be as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore.
Yet there is still a condition in there that Abraham can never lose that title
deed, but his descendents won’t fully realize it and appreciate its blessing
unless they are obedient. It is a permanent unconditional covenant in that God
has sworn that He will never forsake that covenant. He is not going to go back
on it. There will be a time when it is fulfilled and Israel has that land.
A second introductory principle, a
covenant is God’s solemn pledge. That’s another word. We saw this back in the
seventh chapter, the concept of pledge.
God swore an oath. So this indicates that this is something that has a
legal basis to it. A covenant is God’s solemn pledge to fulfill His promises to
those included in the covenant.
Third point, a covenant is a word for
a legal contract or covenant or compact. It is a legal document. So you are
going to have two parties, the party of the first part and the party of the
second part.
A fourth observation is that a
contract can be between two parties of equal stature or of one person who is
superior and the other is inferior. What we have in the biblical covenants is
that God is the party of the first part and He is superior and He willingly
binds Himself. He doesn’t have to. As the Creator He doesn’t have to do it that
way at all. But He set up this whole legal thing is integral and integrated
into every aspect of creation, every aspect of God’s dealing with man - our
salvation, our sin, our eternal punishment. Everything is stated in legal
terms. So these contracts, the biblical covenants, are always between a God who
is superior and man who is inferior.
Now the Old Testament word is berit. That means
a contract or a covenant. When you get into the Greek there are a couple of
different words. The most common Greek word for a covenant was suntheke. The
word that we have in the New Testament is diatheke. Suntheke had the idea
communicated that it was equal partners. That sun is “with” and has the idea of equality. The rabbis who
translated the Old Testament into Greek didn’t like that word so they used the
word diatheke
because it has more of the idea of a unilateral enactment where a superior was
giving something or dedicating something or willing something. That’s the idea
of a will or testament to an inferior person. It’s even used for a covenant by
classical authors such as Aristophanes going back to classical Greek. So it has
a rich heritage and that’ the point. They chose a word that specifically
emphasized the kind of covenant where superior entered into a legal contract
with an inferior.
Okay the sixth point, though
covenants have often been categorized as unconditional and conditional (and
that’s how you’ve heard it for most of your life and how I have heard it for
most of my life.), this leads us into some traps because there are some
conditions in unconditional covenants. As I have stated already, Abraham’s
descendants don’t get to enjoy the full breadth and depth of the land and the
blessing of the covenant if they’re disobedient. But, God’s not going to renege
on the covenant with Abraham and the generation that does enjoy that will be a
generation that is 100 % obedient. How does that happen? Because
of the New Covenant. So when the New Covenant is enacted it’s going to
bring about a radical change with Israel as we will
see.
The seventh point, the New Covenant
is the third permanent covenant with Israel that’s based on the Abrahamic
Covenant. The three parts of the Abrahamic Covenant are land, seed, and
blessing. The land part is expanded in the Land Covenant, Deuteronomy 30. The
seed portion is expanded in the Davidic Covenant, II Samuel 7. And, the
blessing aspect is expanded in the New Covenant.
The blessing was that God commanded
Abraham, “Be a blessing to everyone. Those who bless you I will bless. Those
who curse you I will curse.”
So what God is doing is He is
saying, “I am part of the first part. Abraham, you’re party of the second part.
As a result of this legally binding contract that I am restricting Myself to
and granting to you—because it fits the format of a royal grant in the
Old Testament—on the basis of this legal document, I am going to bless
the gentile folks over here that don’t deserve anything. But if they are good
to you, I will bless them. If they are not, I won’t. If they treat you
well…”
How has this worked out in
history? If they have respect for
Abraham and his descendents, they will trust Christ as their savior and also
have respect for Israel. If they don’t… literally that curse clause says, “Those
who treat you lightly.” There are two different words there. In the English it
says, “Those who curse you I will curse.” In English you have the same word. In
Hebrew, you have two different words. The first word has more the idea of
treating lightly, despising, just treating casually.
“If they treat you lightly or
despise you I will curse them harshly.”
That comes down to someone who just
treats Christianity and Jesus Christ in a somewhat frivolous manner. God says
that He will curse them in a harsh manner, eternal condemnation.
So the New Covenant is on that
model. I will say this again and again because you have heard it the wrong way
for a long time. That is that when God enters into this covenant, it is with
the House of Israel and the House of Judah. You can’t come in and say that
really means the church. It’s with the House of Israel and the House of Judah,
just like He made the Abrahamic Covenant with Abraham. But what he is saying is
that on the basis of this covenant (this legal contract that I am making with
Israel and Judah), I will bless soteriologically all the Gentiles. That’s where
the church comes in. So, you don’t have two New Covenants.
Eighth point, the New Covenant is an
unconditional covenant, meaning that the fulfillment of its promises does not
depend on the obedience or the will of Israel although in time, that is
eventually, the covenant will be the new covenant will be the cause of their
obedience. We will get into what that means when we get into the Ezekiel
passages.
What I am saying here is that God
promises to give them a new heart and to put the Word of God in their soul and
under the New Covenant there are principles there that no one will need to
teach their neighbor the Word. No one will need to give the gospel because
everyone will know it. I mean it’s different. God is not only going to die for
them, He is going to put it in their soul for them. He will regenerate them. There
are some issues there that we have to discuss that I think some people aren’t
real clear on. We will work our way through some of those things. But again,
the emphasis is God is the one who is going to do the work for them. It’s not
based on their own native ability.
The ninth point, whereas most of the
other covenants are material and national in nature—I have talked about
that before how they are very physical in their blessings. It’s a land covenant—very,
very physical. It’s the seed. It’s the descendents.
The New Covenant is primarily
spiritual. “I will give them a new heart. I will put the Word in them. I will
give them the Spirit. I will sprinkle water on them and they will be cleansed.”
It is a spiritual factor.
Tenth, the New Covenant is
everlasting in nature. It is a permanent covenant especially in contrast to the
old covenant which is a temporary covenant.
Those are 10 points to kind of give
you a little bit of a summary and orientation in our introduction to the New
Covenant.
Now let’s look at some basic
elements related to the New Covenant itself. First of all, Scripture…now that
is a lot of Scripture. I want everybody to get that written down because I am
going to go to the next slide in 30 seconds so you’ll just get writer’s cramp. Jeremiah
31:31-4 is your key passage. That’s the only passage in the Old Testament that
uses the term New Covenant. This is the passage word-for-word that the writer
of Hebrews quotes verbatim in Hebrews 8, starting in verse 7. That’s all he
does. He quotes the whole thing from verse...excuse me verse 8…verse
8 down to verse 12 he quotes Jeremiah.
But he doesn’t expound on everything that’s in here. He doesn’t develop
everything. He hardly develops
anything that’s in here. He doesn’t talk about anything here. He says,
NKJ Hebrews 8:7 For if that first covenant had
been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.
Then he starts the quote in verse 8
and he quotes the whole passage down to very 13. Then he makes his point. Then
he says:
NKJ Hebrews 8:13 In that He says, "A new covenant,"
He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing
old is ready to vanish away.
See what he has done? He has only
focused on one thing. He quotes 5 verses there.
See he used the word “new”. Because
he used the word “new” that means the old was temporary. He only focuses on
that one word. But we’re going to focus on more because we need to talk and
understand the New Covenant. So the key passage in the Old Testament is
Jeremiah 31:31-34. But that’s not the first time chronologically that there it
is an indication that God is going to give Israel a better covenant. It is
referenced in a number of other passages in the prophets. You have Isaiah 49:8,
Isaiah 54:10, Isaiah 55:3, Isaiah 59:21, and Isaiah 61:8-9. We have Jeremiah
32:37-41, Jeremiah 32:39-40, Ezekiel 11:19, Ezekiel 16:60-63, Ezekiel 18:31, Ezekiel
34:25, Ezekiel 36:25-28, Ezekiel 37:21-28, Hosea 2:17-20 and Amos 9:13-15.
Probably the oldest passage there is
Hosea 2. In chronological order you have Hosea 2:17-20, then Isaiah passages,
and then Jeremiah, then Ezekiel and Amos.
So, these are the key passages. Several of those we’re going to go
through in detail. We are just doing a flyover tonight.
Second thing is who are the persons
involved. What is very clear in the Jeremiah 31 passage and the Hebrews passage
(It doesn’t change the wording at all.) God says:
KJV Jeremiah 31:31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I
will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
I didn’t hear “with the church” in
there. I didn’t hear Peter. I didn’t hear Paul. I didn’t hear John. It’s with
the House of Israel and with the House of Judah.
Importance
The importance is that this New
Covenant provides for the regeneration of Israel in the Millennial Kingdom, and
the fulfillment of all other covenants and promises to them. Part of the New
Covenant secures them in the land so it’s not just isolated to that spiritual
regeneration. So it’s going to provide for all these things. It’s the
culmination of everything that has been going on from the Abrahamic Covenant in
Genesis 12. It all points to that and when that New Covenant is enacted at the
return of Christ at the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom that’s when all
these promises, all these prophecies, everything finally comes to fulfillment
in relationship to Israel.
Provisions
There are ten provisions in the New
Covenant – ten provisions which reinforce a unique state of salvation to
the nation in the Israel in the Millennial Kingdom. Some of these provisions
sound a little odd to us because we are in a different dispensation. So, things
are going to change. We just have to deal…we may not understand all of it or
why it works the way it does but this is how God is bringing about the conclusion
to His promises to Israel. To start off:
NKJ Jeremiah 31:32 "not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in
the day that I took them by the hand
to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I
was a husband to them, says the LORD.
If they were not completely obedient to the Mosaic Covenant, they
wouldn’t enjoy the land. They weren’t and they didn’t. They never had complete
control of the land.
Those are the ten provisions of the
New Covenant.
Now let’s look at four points for
contrasting the old covenant and New Covenant. First of all God will write the
law in the minds and on the hearts of those in the New Covenant. That means
that they are going to inherently know it. We do not have any kind of truth
that is inherently and intuitively known today. If you think so, you’re a mystic. See, that’s the contrast.
We don’t have that today. But this is part of that danger. If you start
thinking we’ve some aspects of the New Covenant functioning today, then why
don’t we have this? That does lead to...see in a lot of charismatic theology
they have bought into this same kind of idea. Already-not-yet theology came
along a little later, but they had an incipient form of this that we’re getting
these New Covenant blessings Joel 2 already. So when I wake up in the middle of
the night with liver quiver that’s God talking to me. He is writing it on my
heart.
Second area of contrast, God will be
the God of those in the New Covenant and they will be His people. There is
going to be that final fulfillment of that intimate relationship between God
and Israel. Those in the New Covenant will know God automatically, intuitively,
directly.
Two basic characteristics
There is an internal spiritual
transformation and a promise of a future regathering of Israel and restoration
to the land. That’s part of the New Covenant that Israel will be regathered and
in the land as a regenerate people. Now as we have pointed out before, Isaiah
11:11 and some other passages indicate that there will be a regathering of
Israel in unbelief before the tribulation. That just stands to reason. If
Daniel’s 70th week that 7 year period that is known as the Great Tribulation,
the time of Jacob’s Trouble, notice the emphasis on its relationship to Israel.
If that begins when the prince of the people who is to come enters into a
treaty with Israel, then there has to be a national entity in the land for Him
to enter into a contract with.
Not only that, but
half way through he is going to bring an end to sacrifices and offerings. It
means that the people that are in the land are apostate not only because they
returned in unbelief but because they are entering
into a treaty with the ant-Christ. But they are going to have temple
operations, sacrifices and offerings during that first 3 ½ years that end half
way through and those sacrifices and offerings are just legalistic nonsense
because it’s part of a reinstated apostate Judaistic worship that isn’t in
obedience to God. But, there has got to be a national entity there.
So sometimes people have said this
was wrong to encourage or try to encourage…let me tell you can try to encourage
Jews to go back to the land all day long and until God opened the door they
weren’t going back. They were movements all through the last 2,000 years to try
to give Jews an opportunity to return to their homeland. None of them came to
any fruition until starting in about 1835 to 1840. Little doors started to open
on the one hand and on the other hand since 3/4ths of the Jewish population in
the world lived in Eastern Europe and Russia, the czar began to ratchet up the
intensity of these pogroms and running Jews out of Russia. They had to go
somewhere. Isn’t that interesting that in the coincidence of God’s plan it just
happened that the door opened to go into the land at the same time that God was
kicking them out where they were. (That was dispensationalists
who were trying to manipulate the fulfillment of prophecy, don’t you
know.)
So the New Covenant has these two
aspects to it. Okay.
In a quick conclusion, understanding
the issues there are two new covenants. I’m not going to get into…this is the
old thing that the position that there are two new covenants, one with the
church and one with Israel. We have to figure out what’s going on there.
Second, how does the church fit? I
would say the church participates in the New Covenant only by way of
application.
What I want to do there is show the
four positions on the New Covenant. There are four positions on the New
Covenant. We will get into that next time. Okay.
Let’s bow our heads in closing
prayer.