Hebrews Lesson 112 December 27,
2007
NKJ Psalm 119:9 How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your
word.
We are in our study of Hebrews. We
are in Hebrews 8 and we’re not going to stay there very long right now because
of the nature of this particular passage.
Hebrews 8:6-8 - the writer of Hebrews is transitioning from a discussion
about the significance of Christ’s present high priestly ministry - that He has
a unique priesthood built on the order of an ancient gentile royal priesthood,
the order of Melchizedek. Therefore it’s different from the priesthood of the
Mosaic Law. It’s unrelated to the Mosaic Law because the Mosaic Law was viewed
from its inception as a temporary law. Therefore the qualifications for
priesthood in the Mosaic Law were related to the tribes of Israel and were
related to the genetic relationship to Aaron and the Levitical priesthood. In
contrast to that, the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ is a royal high
priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. It is a priesthood that is not
related solely to Israel, but a priesthood that is related to all mankind.
Jesus Christ began to function in His royal high priesthood when He ascended to
heaven. In the events of His last days on earth we have His crucifixion in
fulfillment of the Old Testament type of the Passover where the Jews would
sacrifice a lamb that was without spot or blemish. That went all the way back
and looked back to their Exodus when they were delivered from slavery in Egypt.
That imagery of the lamb that was without a spot or blemish was an image of the
Lord Jesus Christ. When the Lord first appeared to John the Baptist at the
beginning of His ministry, John the Baptist said:
NKJ John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold!
The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
The Jews would understand that to be
an illusion to the Passover lamb.
Later in II Corinthians the Apostle
Paul refers to Christ as our Passover. So as part of His priestly ministry He
offers Himself as a sacrifice on the cross for our sins where He pays the
penalty for our sins on the cross. Then He’s in the grave 3 days, 3 nights. He
ascends on the Day of Firstfruits - everything in fulfillment of specific feast
days and types in the Old Testament - all part of the array of predictions of
(prophecies in the Old Testament) at least 100 that were precisely fulfilled by
the Lord Jesus Christ at the First Advent. He is resurrected on the Feast of Firstfruits
as the firstfruit of those who have victory over death. He has a new body, a
new resurrection body, and appears to His disciples with many convincing proofs
over the subsequent weeks. He’s on the earth for 40 days before He ascends.
There’s a 10-day period following His ascension before the Day of Pentecost
when the present Church Age begins.
At the ascension He physically
ascends (as we’ve studied) through the heavens to the throne of God – to
a specific destination – to the throne of God in what the Bible describes
as the third heaven. (The first heaven being the atmosphere around the earth,
the second heavens the stars and the universe and the third heaven is the
throne of God.) He ascends to the throne of God where He is presently seated.
The Latin word is sessionum which became a technical word in theology for the session
of Christ. He’s seated at the right hand of the Father. He is not yet on His
throne, the throne of David as prophesied in the Old Testament. But He is
seated waiting the deliverance the kingdom by the Father to Him. That
deliverance of the kingdom comes when God the Father transfers to the Lord
Jesus Christ judgment as per John 5 when Jesus said all judgment would be given
to Him. That’s the imagery we see and have been studying as a background in our
Sunday morning series in Revelation 4 and 5 when the Lamb who was slain is the
only one worthy to come forward and open the 7 sealed scrolls. So Jesus Christ
is currently in session at the Father - functioning in His high priestly
ministry (as we have studied) as an intercessor for believers standing as our
advocate (I John 2:2) defending believers accused of sin by Satan.
Of course every time Satan accuses a
believer of sin, Jesus says that sin was paid for on the cross. It’s paid in full.
So the fact that He has this new position, the writer of Hebrews has argued
that a new priesthood necessitates a new covenant. And as we have studied so
many times in the past, a covenant is a contract and God has… The theologians
use the word condescended. I am not specifically in favor of that word. It’s
not the best. He limits Himself. He is willing to accommodate Himself to the
finite nature of His creatures. From the beginning of time God has structured
His relationship to man within these legal documents called covenants or
contracts.
So we come to the eighth final
contract in history which is the New Covenant. That’s the subject that the
writer is going into here in Hebrews 8:6-8. He says:
NKJ Hebrews 8:6 But now He
The Lord Jesus Christ.
has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He
is also Mediator of a better covenant,
That is the go-between of a better
covenant - better than the old temporary covenant of the Mosaic Law.
which was
established on better promises.
That is this New Covenant has been
enacted.
NKJ Hebrews 8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought
for a second.
The implication there with a second
class condition is that it wasn’t. It had problems because it was a temporary
document. The sacrifices didn’t permanently pay for sin. It did not solve the
spiritual problem. It simply foreshadowed how it would be solved.
Then his point is:
NKJ Hebrews 8:8 Because finding fault with them, He
That is God the Father.
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 --
So we get our introduction to this
covenant in the following verses in the following verses of Hebrews 8:9ff.
But before we get there, there are
some other things that we need to study in relationship to this New Covenant.
Who was the covenant for? Who were the covenant partners? What is the extent of
the New Covenant? How do we benefit today from this New Covenant?
Remember as I pointed out last time
– I went through several points related to some summary principles
related to the nature of a covenant. It was a legally binding obligation of God
to man. It was a pledge from God to man to fulfill certain promises which He
had made. It was a legally binding contract. If you want a word substitution,
every time you hear the word “covenant” just substitute contract. It can be
between two parties who are equal to one another or one who is superior who’s
imposing it on an inferior. That’s the nature that we have with divine
covenants. So this is a legal contract. Each one of these contracts describes
what God’s responsibility is, what He is going to do and what man’s
responsibility is and what will happen to man if he fails in that
responsibility. Then God comes in afterwards with plan B. This is the final
covenant in the course of the covenants.
So let’s review these 8 biblical
covenants. Always keep in mind that there is a theological system that was
developed among the Calvinistic reformed theologians in Europe in the 17th
century that became known as covenant theology. The covenants in covenant
theology are not the biblical covenants. Everybody believes in the biblical covenants because
they’re in the Bible. It’s these theological extrapolations that Calvinism
developed in the 17th century that you don’t find in the Bible.
Those covenants were covenant of grace, covenant of redemption, covenant of
works and that’s just a theological extrapolation. So we’re just focusing on
the covenants as described in the Bible.
The first three covenants are
gentile covenants. A Gentile is anyone who is not a Jew. Some people don’t
understand that. To me it’s a statement of the obvious, but the Bible looks at
two people. You have Jews and you have gentiles - Jews and everybody else. So,
in some sense God favors one race because He has a plan and purpose for those
particular people. We live in an era today when one of the most horrible things
you can be called is a racist. That is if you operate on human viewpoint. So when
anybody is going to favor any group simply on the basis of race, that is racism
and that automatically makes it evil. See how that has blasphemous implications.
God favors Israel; they are the apple of His eye. He favors the Jews above all
people - not that they are perfect but because He has a plan. His redemptive
and revelatory plan operates through Israel.
But the first covenant is the Edenic
Covenant. Sometimes I call this the Creation Covenant. It’s outlined in Genesis
1:27-28. Man is to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the
beasts of the field. Male and female are created in the image and likeness of
God to be His representatives, vice gerents ruling over all creation. This covenant
has a number of stipulations. They’re to guard the garden. They’re to work the
garden. Adam is to name all of the animals. The woman is created in order to be
his assistant in order to be his etzer to help the man in fulfilling the
God-given responsibilities that he has as God’s representative.
We live in a world today where in
human viewpoint the feminist movement comes along and says, “Well, to say that
the wife is to help the man if fulfilling his God-given responsibilities is
demeaning to women and this is a horrible thing.”
Once again, “it is this horrible
antiquated patriarchal Christian thing that is Neanderthal so we need to get
rid of it.”
The reality of it is this word etzer –
the great thing about the Bible is everything hangs together and complements
one another. But you have to take the Bible as the whole, as being the Word of
God. Everywhere else in the Bible that you have the word etzer used, the person who is the etzer is God.
God is the helper of man. So if etzer is a demeaning role as per the feminists,
then that is a statement about the nature of God, that God would be in a
demeaning role as an etzer. So you see everything ultimately can be pushed back to some
kind of statement about the nature of God. So when the feminists come along
with their propaganda and say women don’t need to be helpers to the husbands,
then they are making a theological statement and blaspheming God because the
underlying presupposition is that being a helper is a negative thing. Yet the
only other person in the Bible who is an etzer is God. What a glorious thing to be an etzer! That’s
a God-like thing.
So the Edenic Covenant comes
crashing down when man violates the one prohibition not to eat from the fruit
of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That’s at the fall. So God goes to plan B. There’s a
revision to the covenant. He has a codicil that comes in and there are going to
be certain stipulations. Man was
to rule over the animals, but the woman listened to an animal. So an animal is
the one who brought the temptation and deceived her. So now there is going to
be a new relationship with the animals. Animals prior to the fall were
herbivores. They were herbivores. They were grass eaters. After the fall some
become flesh eaters because now there’s death. There’s violence that enters in.
The man and the woman were to multiply and fill the earth. It was supposed to
be a completely wonderful thing with nothing negative. But now the woman is
going to have pain in child-birth as a reminder of the fall (the curse). The
man who was to guard and take care of the garden, now the ground is going to
produce thorns and thistles. There’s going to be laborious work involved in
production from the soil. The soil is now going to fight man. So now labor becomes
toilsome. He lives by the sweat of his brow. All of this is defined as the
Adamic Covenant spelled out in Genesis 3:14-19.
But even in the midst of that
covenant there is the proclamation of grace that the serpent is going to be
crushed by the seed of the woman. This is a prophecy of the fact that Jesus
Christ is going to come to defeat Satan and reestablish that rule of man over
creation when He returns at the Second Coming as the God-man. So, as the
greater Son of David (the greater Son of Adam), He will establish a kingdom
ruled by a man, the God-man, and bring the earth back to what God originally
intended it to be.
But as man developed from Adam there
was sin and disobedience. Men revolted against God, rebelled against God. Evil
multiplied itself across the face of the earth. God needed to bring judgment
upon the earth because there was also an invasion by the “sons of god” which is
a term for angels. There were demons who invaded sexually seeking to destroy
the genetic purity of the human race to block the seed of the woman. So there
was a flood.
Then in Genesis 9 God gives the
second revision of the original creation covenant. In each of these covenants
man is still supposed to multiply and fill the earth. There are similarities,
but each sphere of responsibility gets modified because of sin and because of
judgment. So under the Noahic Covenant now there is going to be delegation of
judicial responsibility to man so that man in Genesis 9 is now responsible for
policing criminal behavior. Man’s life is precious because every human being is
in the image of God and so God says whenever man sheds man’s blood, man shall
shed his blood (the criminal’s blood) indicating that human beings now have
judicial responsibility to adjudicate criminal action and to execute those who
commit murder. This is the basis for human government. It’s the basis for law
in human society. It’s the basis for establishing the whole principle of human
government.
There is a promise given with the
Noahic Covenant that God will not destroy the earth by water again. This is
going to be symbolized by a bow in the sky, a rainbow, which is associated with
God’s presence in many other passages. That rainbow is a constant reminder that
God will never again destroy the earth by water. He will destroy it by fire.
It’s also a reminder that as long as you continue to see rainbows – just
remember that means you are still supposed to execute criminals. The death
penalty has not gone out. It also means because it’s in the Noahic Covenant that
the eating of meat is authorized for human beings. So that means that you’re
authorized to go have a good steak and good prime rib. You’d better do it now
because the implication here is that when the millennial kingdom comes we won’t
be doing that.
My personal opinion is that God is
going to create something that is going to taste just like a good rare prime
rib. But there won’t be the killing of animals so get your hunting done now. Go
out and eat all the steak you can because that will change when we go into the
Millennial Kingdom. It will be a new civilization. But until then, the rainbow
reminds you that you can go hunt, you can eat steak, you’re supposed to execute
criminals and God’s not going to destroy the earth by water again. See all
that’s back into that one covenant.
Now after the Noahic Covenant, as
time went by man failed again so God had to set up a new system. Now instead of
working through the human race in its entirety, God decided He’s going to work
through one specific family. So He goes to the family of Shem, the third son of
Noah (Ham, Shem, and Japheth) and one of his descendents (Abraham). He calls
out Abraham who is a believer already in Ur of the Chaldees. He gives him a
covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant.
There are three provisions. God
promises to give him a specific piece of real estate which is much larger than
the current nation of Israel, but it’s part of that land grant. It will extend
from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates and cover all the area of
much of modern Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and Jordan which is the true Palestinian
state. Don’t forget that.
After 1948 the original land that
was supposed to go to Israel in the Balfour Declaration back in 1918 had been
chopped up many times through the 1930’s.
Instead of giving all of the land which is today Jordan and Israel to
the Jews, the decision was made in the 30’s and 40’s to only give a little bit
of the land to the west of the Jordan to Israel and the rest would go to the
Arabs. That means Jordan is the Palestinian state. You don’t believe Arafat’s
lies and propaganda that they have rights to land on the west side of the
Jordan. They don’t. Arabs were given the land on the east side of the Jordan
and the Jews were given the land on the west side of the Jordan. But of course
the U.N. can’t get anything right. The U.N. is just the latest manifestation
of the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) is a great failure at
this time, which is why God had to work through Abraham.
So there are three provisions in the
Abrahamic Covenant – land, seed and blessing. Now each of these is then
expanded in subsequent covenants to the Jews. There’s the land covenant or the
real estate covenant sometimes called the Palestinian Covenant because the term
Palestinian used to mean Jewish.
That’s why the Palestinian regiment
that served in the British army in WWII was an all-Jewish
regiment. It did not have any Arabs in it. In fact the only relative of Arafat
that was operational at the time was the Mufti of Jerusalem who continuously
went to Berlin to encourage Hitler to kill all of the Jews and to help him
structure the final solution. It was the Mufti of Jerusalem that was Arafat’s
uncle who originated all the terrorist activity in the Middle East.
The term Palestine as I showed (What
was it? Sunday) talked about that (or one time last week we were talking about…
no two weeks ago) spiritual warfare uses the word that our struggle is not
against flesh and blood in Ephesians 6:11. The word there for struggle is based
on the Greek root pale which means to wrestle or to struggle, which is the root for
Palestine. The term Palestine was first given to the land of Israel by the
ancient Greeks. It was a word play.
Palestine sounded like Philistine but notice it is a “p” and not an “f”.
It was called Palestine because the root word meant wrestler. Jacob was the one
who wrestled with God at Peniel in Genesis so the Greeks got a great laugh
about of that. They were going to call Palestine the Land of the Wrestler
(Israel, Jacob). It would sound like the Philistines. So now we are still
plagued with that. The modern so-called Palestinians want everyone to think
that their name comes from the Philistines and that they have an ancient right
to the land. Once again it is the devil’s propaganda.
So you have the land promise. You
have the second covenant that expands the Abrahamic Covenant is the seed
covenant, the Davidic Covenant. II Samuel 7 where God promises that David will
have an eternal descendent upon his throne.
Then the final breakout covenant of
the Abrahamic Covenant is the covenant we’re studying, the New Covenant. Now
the only other covenant that I haven’t listed is the conditional or temporary
covenant of the Mosaic Covenant which is given in Exodus chapters 20 through
40.
So this gives us the covenantal
structure that we find in the Bible. Here we have the Abrahamic Covenant
– three segments – land, seed, and blessing - the land covenant Deuteronomy
30; the Davidic Covenant II Samuel 7 developing the seed, and then the New
Covenant Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah 31 is the core passage. It’s the only New
Covenant passage that uses the words “new covenant”, but there are other
passages. The Davidic Covenant also had three elements – the promise of
an eternal house, the promise of an eternal kingdom, and the promise of an
eternal throne. This sets up the background for understanding the New Covenant.
The land covenant develops the land promise; the Davidic Covenant develops the
seed promise; the New Covenant develops the worldwide blessing promise.
Last time we went through this
fairly quickly. You may not get all the Scriptures written down, but we’re
going to go through each of these to see what they teach us about the New
Covenant so you’ll eventually get them. Jeremiah 31:31-34 is the central
passage for the New Covenant. If you compare that with Isaiah 49:8; 54:10;
55:3; 59:21; 61:8-9; Jeremiah 32:37-41; Ezekiel 11:19; 16:60-63; 18:31; 34:25;
36:25-8; 37:21-28; Hosea 2:17-20 and Amos 9:13-15.
All of these passages tell us
something about the New Covenant. The covenant is between God as party of the
first part and the house of Judah and the house of Israel as the party of the
second part. Now any contract is between two parties. You sign your mortgage
agreement and the mortgage agreement is between you and the mortgage company.
The mortgage company is the party of the first part and you are party of the
second part. You sign a contract with Visa or with MasterCard or whatever
credit card you have. It’s the same kind of thing. There are certain provisions
in that covenant. Those provisions have to do with interest rates, time
periods, and other things like that. Your next door neighbor may have a credit
card. His credit rating may give him a different interest rate. But just
because he has a different interest rate doesn’t give you the right to tell
your credit card company that his 10% is better than your 12% so you’re only
going to pay them at his rate. You can’t apply terms of somebody else’s
contract to your contract.
See that’s what happens in the study
of Scripture is we have these contracts with Israel and people want to come
along and say that it applies to the church when the church isn’t a party to
the covenant. So when we look at the New Covenant the party of the first part
is God. Party of the second part is the house of Judah and the house of Israel.
There is never a mention of the church as a party to the covenant.
Third is the importance the New
Covenant. It provides for the regeneration of Israel. Remember when Jesus was
asked by the Sadducees – they came up with this hypothetical case (always
one of my favorites.) They come up with this woman and she is married to a man
and he dies. She marries a second time; he dies. She marries a third time; he
dies. She marries a fourth time; he dies. She marries a fifth time; he dies.
She marries a sixth time and they convene a grand jury. No, he dies.
A seventh time and the Sadducees who
didn’t believe in resurrection say, “Well, who’s going to be her husband in the
regeneration?”
See that was a term that was used.
Regeneration referred to the future kingdom. So that’s a key part of this
element. Of course He answered the question and said that people are not going
to marry or be given in marriage in the kingdom.
So regeneration is a key element.
Also it will be a fulfillment of all other covenants and promises to them. What
is one of the other covenants (so you are not zoning out from too much sugar at
Christmas)? Let’s think a little bit. What does one of the other covenants
promise them? Land. Okay, now the importance of this point is that the New
Covenant is also linked to the fulfillment of the land covenant. That’s
important because when the people try to come along and say we have some
elements of the New Covenant today, I want to know why the Jews aren’t in the
land. See they try to break these things out and you can’t do it.
Fourth, there are ten provisions. I
went through that last time. I am not going to repeat them this time. There are
ten provisions which reinforce a unique state of salvation for Israel in the
Millennial Kingdom. Now we’re going to study this because some people have a
little bit of a difficult time with this and I will confess that I do too. I am
not sure how it works, but I know what the Scripture says so we’ve got to stick
with what the Word says.
Okay. That’s our summary - those
first four points. Then we come to a fifth point which is a confirmation. God
gives other confirmations to this, to His covenants. One of the confirmation
passages is in Joel 2:28-32. So turn with me in your Old Testament to the book
of Joel, chapter 2. Joel is towards the end. The last 12 books in the Old
Testament are called the Minor Prophets - in the Hebrew they were the Book of
the 12, but we call them the twelve minor prophets, not because they’re of
lesser importance, but because they are shorter books. They began with Hosea,
Daniel, Joel, and Amos. So Joel is the second of the Minor Prophets.
It’s written about 9th
century BC, about 800 BC. So, this is very early. This isn’t long after the
Northern Kingdom separates from the Southern Kingdom. We’re studying (I know it’s been awhile because of the
construction schedule and going out of town on Christmas and everything else)…
remember in I Kings after I Kings 9 this division, the civil war in Israel. The
ten northern tribes will revolt against the Davidic monarchy in the south and
establish the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The
Northern Kingdom of Israel begins very early to establish a false religion and
idolatry as the basis for their nation.
Jeroboam I is the first king in the
north and he will have a golden calf built. He will say (just like Aaron did at
the time of the Exodus), “This is the God who brought you out of Egypt.”
See historical revisionism is always
a part of the establishment of a tyrannical government. As soon as you see
people starting to rewrite history that this nation wasn’t a Christian nation,
there is no Christian influence, we can’t have God in the schools and the
founding fathers didn’t really know anything about Christianity - as long as
you have that kind of revisionism going on, pay attention because people are
trying to change the foundation of our government which is exactly what
Jeroboam I did. So he establishes these two centers of worship in the north -
one in the far north at Tel Dan and one in the south in Samaria. He establishes
these two places so they don’t have far to travel to go to the temple. That’s
basically the point.
“We don’t want to have to go all the
way down to Jerusalem. That’s in another country now so if we really want to
unify, we are going to have our own places and we’re going to do it where
people don’t have to go to much effort to make a sacrifice and worship
God.”
So he’s already accommodating to the
lust patterns of the people. So Joel comes along with a prophecy related to the
end times - how God is eventually going to restore the breach between the
Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. But in doing it, there is going to be a cataclysmic judgment
called the Day of the Lord.
The Day of the Lord is described in
the second chapter of Joel. It is related to the Great Tribulation, that last 7
year period in Israel’s history. It’s the period of Daniel’s 70th
week. The Day of the Lord becomes a term for the tribulation period, the
judgments that we’ll be studying on Sunday morning between Revelation 14 and
Revelation 19, specifically, and the culmination of those judgments at the end
just before the Lord Jesus Christ returns. So there are a lot of parallels in
the first part of Joel 2 to what will happen in all the geophysical problems,
earthquakes, the problems in the astrophysical problems, stars the darkness of
the skies, all of these kinds of things are going to go on. There is a call to
repentance because God would rather people change and turn to Him than go
through judgment.
Then we come to Joel 2:28. Now this
is a very important passage because this is a passage that Peter quotes in Acts
2 on the birthday of the church, right after the apostles are all standing
there and the Holy Spirit descends upon them like flames of fire over each of
the 11 disciples and they begin to speak in foreign languages.
The unbelievers that are there, the
Jews that are there say, “These people got drunk already?”
Peter says, “No, it’s only the 9th
hour. It’s 9 o’clock in the morning. Sun’s not over the yardarm yet. Nobody’s
had a drink yet.”
This is not the result of
drunkenness. This is a work of the Holy Spirit just like Joel said. Then he
quotes from Joel because Joel…the interesting thing is nothing that happened on
the day of Pentecost is prophesized in Joel 2. Nothing that Joel says in Joel 2
happens on the Day of Pentecost. But what Peter is saying is these things that
are happening right here are like those events. Now we’re going to get into
this a little bit as we go through our study – get into some things that
are going on today in what I consider to be some wrong teaching. We’ll save
that for next time where it’s a misunderstanding of what Peter is saying there
in Acts 2. These are crucial passages – how to understand the
relationship between Joel 2 and Acts 2. We’ve studied some of this in the past.
If you remember I went through…When was that? About…I don’t know in the last
couple of months I was teaching on hermeneutics and we went through the four
different ways in which the Old Testament is used in the New Testament based on
how rabbis tended to quote and apply Old Testament scripture. That comes some
of the study and work that Arnold Fruchtenbaum’s done. But we will step around
that right now and just look at these verses.
In verse 28, Joel 2:28 Joel says:
NKJ Joel 2:28 " And it shall come to pass afterward That I will pour out My
Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your old men
shall dream dreams, Your young men shall see visions.
God is speaking actually.
After what? After the Day of the Lord.
After this judgment is completed, the 7-year tribulation period, Church Age
believers won’t go through that. We will be raptured. We will be taken to
heaven before the 7-year tribulation. The 7-year tribulation relates to God
bringing Israel to a point of repentance so that they turn to Jesus as Messiah.
That’s what this is describing.
That is part of the New Covenant
terminology. We haven’t gone into that but in Jeremiah 31, but when Joel writes
in the 8th century he’s writing 300 years before Jeremiah specifies
the New Covenant. So this is one of the first references to what happens at the
end of the Day of the Lord period when Jesus comes to establish His kingdom and
to enact the New Covenant.
NKJ Joel 2:29 And also on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My
Spirit in those days.
See in Jeremiah 31 we’re told that
the key element of the New Covenant is that all the nation is regenerated. The
Holy Spirit indwells and fills every Jew to the point that no one needs to be
taught about God because they have an internal knowledge of God. So, there
won’t be a need for pastor-teachers or evangelists among the Jews at all. So
this is clearly New Covenant terminology, New Covenant description in Joel
2:28-32.
We continue to read in verse 30:
NKJ Joel 2:30 "And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: Blood
and fire and pillars of smoke.
All related to the judgments that
occur at the end of the tribulation.
NKJ Joel 2:31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before
the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD.
That is that final judgment that
culminates in the campaign of – military campaign of Armageddon.
NKJ Joel 2:32 And it shall come to pass That whoever calls on the name of the LORD
Shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance,
As the LORD has said, Among the remnant whom the LORD calls.
Now that passage is quoted by Paul
in Romans 11, which is one of your passages in the New Testament that relates
to the New Covenant. In Romans 11:26 Paul says:
NKJ Romans 11:26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The Deliverer
will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
That’s the thrust of the Greek houtos
there.
That is how they will be delivered
and at the end of the tribulation period. What happens if you know the map of
Israel, is at the mid point of the tribulation when the Antichrist sets himself
up in the Holy of Holies of the Tribulation Temple to be worshipped as God,
Jesus said in Matthew 24 that when you see this sign, flee to the mountains.
‘Woe to the mother who’s pregnant.
Woe to the person who is out in the field. Pack up your bags and be ready to flee. As soon as you see
that sign, flee to the mountains.”
He’s talking about fleeing south
into the Judean wilderness, which is desert and wilderness. Then you flee south
across the barren flats south of the Dead Sea and across into the mountainous
region around Petra. Petra was actually was a Nabatean kingdom. But you’ve seen
pictures of that if you’ve seen Raiders of the Lost Ark where they went in through the Siq,
that long narrow canyon into the Petra where they have the façade of the
Treasury House. (We had a re-enactment of wedding vows for Bob and Roberta
right there when we were there.) That’s the northern part. That whole area
south of there is rugged, mountainous terrain.
In fact this last year when we were
there we went up to the monastery which is up about 1500 feet higher than that
area. We didn’t go there the first year.
We walked up there, and we kept walking up the trail, walking up the
trail and coming around the bend and walking up some more. Finally we got there
and everybody was resting. I saw this sign up on the ridge. It said, “Great
view this way”. I said “Okay. I’ll walk up there.” Well when I got to that sign
about 300 yards off across another little valley and up the ridge was another
sign that said, “Great view here.” So I walked there. Now I have committed
about 600 yards and I got there and there is about another 300 yards off there
is another sign. That was it. But I kept walking. When I got there, you’re standing
out on a little point. On a clear day you could probably see 100 miles to
Jerusalem. You could probably see the Mediterranean. It was a fabulous view. Just
to my left was Mt. Hor. There is a monument on the top of Mt. Hor. I don’t know
how anybody even a goat could get from one side to the other. That’s where
Aaron’s body was buried. That monument is for Aaron’s body.
It is that rugged area that is not
easily attacked. In fact the Nabateans who had their kingdom there, were not
able to be defeated by the Romans until the Romans captured a turncoat and he
told them how the Nabateans were able to get water down into Petra. They had
carved these channels along the side of the Siq so that when it rained the run
off coming down the canyon would be collected into these channels and rundown
the sides of the Siq and then they had dug out these massive 150,000 or 200,000
gallon cisterns. (How could I forget that? We saw hundreds of cisterns when we
were there.) These 150,000 -200,000 gallon cisterns and in just a one inch rain
they would collect enough water to support a population there of several tens
of thousands - 20,000 to 30,000 people for a year. Many of those channels are
being reconstructed today by the archeologists. I think so everything will be
functional again when the Jews have to flee there. But see they were all
covered up. They carved these channels and then they covered them up so it
blended in to the sides of the walls. The Romans couldn’t figure out how these
people got water. Once this turncoat told them how they got water, they came in
and they broke the channels so that the water system didn’t work anymore. It
took about ten days and they captured Petra. Well, that’s the area the Jews are
going to flee to – between there and an area south of there called Basra.
It is there that the remnant that survives that are believers that have
responded to Jesus’ warning to flee when you see the sign in the Holy of Holies
of the Abomination of Desolation. It is there that they will call on the name
of the Lord. This is what Jesus says at the end of Matthew 23. He is weeping
over Jerusalem. He says:
NKJ Matthew 23:39 "for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed
is He who
comes in the name of the LORD!' "
That’s a reference to Joel 2:32. So
they call on the name of the Lord. They’ll be delivered. This is when the
remnant calls on Jesus. He comes as the Jewish Messiah, delivers them, defeats
the anti-Christ and establishes His kingdom and inaugurates the New Covenant
when you have this pouring out of the Holy Spirit. In terms of a fifth element of the New Covenant, you have
confirmation in Joel 2:28-32.
Now the New Covenant is mentioned in
4 different verses in the New Testament. Just the very fact that we call it the
New Testament versus the Old Testament is a recognition of the distinction
between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
Now the first two passages talk
about the same event. Luke 22:20 focuses on what Jesus is saying at the Last
Supper when He is celebrating the Passover meal with His disciples. We’ve gone
over this numerous times when we have communion and when I‘ve done a Passover
meal reenactment. As they go through the Passover meal, there were four
different times in the course of the meal when they would take a cup of wine
and drink it. Each cup signified something different. When Jesus came to the
third cup, it was called the cup of redemption and He assigned it new
significance, new meaning. After they had eaten He took the cup (the third cup)
and said:
NKJ Luke 22:20 Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This
cup is the
new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.
It is the redness of the wine that
was a picture of the shedding of blood and of death. So a covenant was always
sealed with a sacrifice. So the covenant is cut. The sacrifice that establishes
the covenant is made at the cross. So when we come to this passage, it seems as
if what Jesus is saying is that “after I die on the cross anybody who believes
in Me is part of the New Covenant.” But, we have to fit this within the whole
framework of biblical revelation.
In 1Corinthians 11:25 Paul is
referring back to that same event in Luke 22:20 and he says:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 11:25 In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new
covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me."
I highlighted the word “the” because
in the Greek there is a definite article before kaine diatheke. It’s he kaine diatheke – the New Covenant.
So there were those who came along
and said, “Well, we have a definite article here so this is talking about one
specific covenant; but in these other two passages there’s no article.”
Actually I misspoke a minute ago
when I used the word “definite”. We have a definite article in English. In
Greek, it’s just an article because the function of the article in Greek is not
merely or it’s not only to make the noun definite. A word can be indefinite and
have the article; it can be definite without the article. The article in Greek
doesn’t function like an article in English. When you have people who don’t
understand that come along and translate the Greek, they make mistakes. For
example in John 1:1:
NKJ John 1:1 In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
In the Greek there’s no article before that last use of theos for
God.
So you have a group of people known
as Jehovah Witnesses who came along and said, “See that shouldn’t be translated
‘the Word was God’. It should be translated ‘the Word was a God’ because it
doesn’t have the article. If it had the article it would be ‘the God.’ But it
doesn’t have the article so it should be ‘a god.’”
But see in Greek, the absence of the
article can be more significant and more definite than the presence of the
article. In fact one of the things that’s emphasized when you don’t have an
article with the noun is that it’s emphasizing the quality of the noun or the
essence of the noun. So by not having the article, John is making an even
stronger statement that the Word was the essence of God. He was full deity. He
couldn’t say it any stronger. In fact, if he put the article there it would
minimize the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ known as the Word in that
particular passage. So that’s what’s going on in these two passages in II
Corinthians and Hebrews 9.
II Corinthians 3:6 says:
NKJ 2 Corinthians 3:6 who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of
the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
But see the translators here put in
an “a” in there. The point I am making here is a point of technical Greek
grammar. The absence of the article doesn’t mean that you should insert an
indefinite English article. It’s emphasizing the quality, the essence of the
noun that New Covenant represents. So as servants of New Covenant it’s would
still indicate the New Covenant.
Now, just another little point here.
Some of you have been to places in Canada and England and you’ve heard British
English as opposed to American English. In British English there are a number
of nouns that are inherently definite. You’ll hear the British speak of “going
to hospital.” That sounds kind of strange to us. We would say, “I am going to
the hospital.” They’ll just say, “I am going to hospital.” Because they
understand the noun is inherently definite. It doesn’t need the article with it. “I am going to
university.” We would say, “I am going to the university.” But see they
understand that certain nouns are inherently definite. We do too. God is an
inherently definite noun. So we don’t pray to the God. We don’t put “the” in
front of God in English because we understand God is inherently definite.
Well, the same thing is going on
here. New Covenant is definite without the article because he is emphasizing
the quality and the essence and the significance of this New Covenant. The same
thing is going on in Hebrews 9:15.
Now the reason I make that point is
there have been those (and some of you have heard people teach this) who say
that there are really two new covenants and this is the evidence for a new
covenant with the church because it talks about a new covenant indicating that
there is another New Covenant. But again this is a misuse of Greek to try to
use it to arrive at that conclusion. But that brings us to a very important
point that we won’t be able to get into tonight. That is looking at these issues related whether there is one
New Covenant or two New Covenants.
The conclusion that I’ve reached
after years of studying this – I agree with John Nelson Darby who is the
first systematizer of dispensationalism that there is only one New Covenant and
it’s a new covenant with Israel only – the house of Israel and the house
of Judah and that the church benefits by way of blessing in the same way that
in the Old Testament God made a covenant with Abraham and said, “ On the basis
of the contract that I have with Abraham I am gong to bless the Gentiles.”
In the New Covenant God says, “On
the basis of the covenant I am going to establish with Israel, I am going to
bless the Gentiles. And, they will be saved.”
So that’s how the church comes into
it.
We’ll get into that in more detail
because there is some confusion there and there are some important things to
talk about. So next time we’ll
talk about this issue of one new covenant, two new covenants, three new
covenants or half a new covenant - whatever. And then we’ll start going through all those Old Testament
passages to understand the tremendous spiritual dimension of the New Covenant
as it will be established in the Millennial Kingdom.
With our heads bowed and our eyes
closed.