Hebrews Lesson 113 January 3, 2008
NKJ Acts 4:12 "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name
under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
We are in Hebrews. Just briefly, by
way of introduction, Hebrews 8:6-8 introduces the concept of a new covenant. Christ
is the mediator of a better covenant in verse 6. The writer argues that the
first covenant, that if the Mosaic Covenant had been faultless, there would
have been no occasion 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 –
The Mosaic Covenant was never
designed to be permanent. Sin had not been dealt with yet. The sacrifices, the
worship in the tabernacle and temple were designed to point to the person and
the work of the Messiah. It was through the ritual of Old Testament worship
that God was teaching the Jews and those who were proselytes the worship of God
in the Old Testament. God was teaching them about His grace and about
salvation. But, the Mosaic Covenant was limited. It was between God and Israel
only. It was a governmental constitution, a document designed to organize the
society, the legal structures and the religious systems (the ritual systems) of
Israel in the Old Testament. So it was never designed to be a permanent
covenant and it was going to be replaced according to Jeremiah 31 with a new
covenant which is what is quoted from Hebrews 8:8ff is simply a lengthy
quotation of Jeremiah 31:31ff. We have studied the covenants of Israel –
that there were 8. The Gentile covenants—the Creation Covenant or Edenic
Covenant, the Adamic Covenant and the Noahic Covenant—are all basically
modifications of one another and they govern all creation. They cover all
mankind. They’re still in effect.
Then after the failure at the Tower
of Babel, God calls out Abraham and promises him land, seed and blessing. These
covenants are further developed in the Land Covenant, the Davidic Covenant and
the New Covenant. All of these are permanent covenants. Usually we use the term
unconditional, but there were conditions there not for the permanency of the
covenant but for the full enactment of these covenants. God was not going to
bring Israel into the land and give them all of the blessings until they were
fully obedient.
Then there is one temporary covenant
which was the Mosaic Covenant. We looked at the various aspects of the New
Covenant. We looked at the primary scripture that uses the term New Covenant
that is the only scripture that uses the term New Covenant is Jeremiah 31:31-4.
We will look at a number of these other passages this evening. The New Covenant
is between God who is party of the first part and the house of Judah and house
of Israel. That’s what’s clearly stated in Jeremiah 31 and also in Hebrews 8.
It raises the question - what about
the church, because the church is not mentioned in the Old Testament. The
importance of the covenant is that it provides for the future regeneration of
the nation of Israel and the fulfillment of all the other covenants and
promises to them. Remember, I pointed this out last time, when we look at these
parallel passages that predict the giving of another covenant, an eternal
covenant, an everlasting covenant that these other passages always seem to be
connected to Israel being in the land. When this New Covenant comes into
effect, it’s connected to Israel being brought back, the restoration of the
nation in obedience to God in regeneration in the land. So you can’t separate
the two. There’s always that connection between the inauguration and
fulfillment of the New Covenant and the fulfillment of the Land Covenant.
Now there are four passages where
the New Covenant is mentioned in the New Testament other than in Hebrews 8. These
are in Luke 22:20 and I Corinthians 11:25. I Corinthians 11:25 is actually a
quote of the Luke 22:20 passage which is the statement that Jesus makes at the
communion.
At the Passover meal He says, “This
cup is poured out for you. It is
the New Covenant of my blood.”
I have highlighted the word “the” in
both Luke 22 and I Corinthians 11 because the article is present in the Greek
text. Now because of that there were some that came along and said in II
Corinthians 3:6 and Hebrews 9:15 that the lack of the article indicated that
this is a different New Covenant. So in the 20th century there were
some dispensationalists who proposed the idea of two new covenants – a
New Covenant for the church and a New Covenant for Israel. This was primarily
held by faculty members at Dallas Theological Seminary as well as a number of
students who came out of Dallas Seminary in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s.
Dallas Seminary was founded in 1923.
It is very interesting to study the early history. It really wasn’t very large
until the ‘40’s. Then there were a number of men who came back from World War
II and wanted to go to seminary. That’s when Dallas really began its
growth.
But, Dallas Seminary was founded by
a man who was ordained as southern Presbyterian evangelist. He was a musical
evangelist trained at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music up in Ohio which is
where he was from… by the name of Louis Sperry Chafer. Chafer was mentored by a
reformed alcoholic and lawyer. (I am not identifying the two. Don’t make that
mistake.) But you had a reformed alcoholic and he was a lawyer and he was a
decorated Confederate war hero who came to understand the gospel after the
Civil War in St. Louis by the name of Cyrus Ingerson Scofield. Scofield was
mentored by James Hall Brooks who was a Presbyterian pastor in St. Louis and
who was a dispensationalist. Scofield and later Chaffer and men like Dwight
Moody who was a well-known evangelist Bible teacher, founder of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and other men
that were well-known in the late 1800’s frequently spoke at Bible conferences
in places like North Hampton, Massachusetts where Moody had a school. In fact
Moody is buried there. They met. They had a prophecy conference that met
annually – I think it was in the 1880’s the Niagara Bible Conferences. There
was an Episcopal church in Manhattan that also hosted some of these prophecy
conferences. It was a period of time when dispensationalism was growing and
more and more people were teaching that. There were many people who came out of
Episcopal, Presbyterian and other backgrounds who were pre-millennial because
they held to a literal teaching of the Word.
Well, Scofield mentored this young
musical evangelist by the name of Louis Sperry Chafer. In fact he even said
about Chafer, “You know Louis, someday you might make a passably good teacher
if you had something to say.”
So he taught him. But Chaffer never
had the privilege of a seminary education and being trained in the original
languages which is why when he structured the curriculum at Dallas Seminary at
the beginning he emphasized a full four year curriculum for both Greek for the
study of the New Testament and Hebrew for the study of the Old Testament. Chafer
understood the limitations he had in his ministry because he couldn’t get into
the original languages on his own. So that is why that was built into the
curriculum. Unfortunately like everything else we tend to see this dilution occur
over time. Even though you can still go to Dallas and take four years of Greek
and four years of Hebrew, that’s not required. You are only required to have (I
think) three semesters of Hebrew and two years of Greek. That’s just your basic
requirement.
Chafer taught this view that there
were two new covenants, one with the church and one with Israel. That’s where
we are really are going here is understanding the basic issues with the New
Covenant and understanding these particular passages.
The first view is that…let me back
up just a second. There is a non-dispensational view that the church replaces
national Israel and so the church fulfills the New Covenant in the present age.
That is the view of replacement theology. That’s what you’ll find in covenant
theology and other non-dispensational theological systems. In
dispensationalism, you have basically four views that have developed. The first
three are pretty close. The fourth I think is the position (I know it is.) of
progressive dispensationalism. But I think that it’s neither progressive nor
dispensational. That is a view that has taken over in recent years motivated by
the fact that too many faculty members operating on academic arrogance want to
follow the principle outlined in I Samuel 7. Like the Jews of the Old Testament
they want to have a king like everybody else. They want to have the academic
respectability of everybody else and so they’re trying to find a middle road of
compromise with covenant theology so people won’t run them down and denigrate
their intellectual capabilities because they are dispensationalists. Now you
may not realize that but dispensationalists are everybody’s whipping boy out
there now and have been for the last 30 or 40 years. It’s like if you’re a dispensationalist
then you don’t have brain cells that recognize each other.
“You’re not very bright. Oh well,
you’re one of those.”
The first view, the view that Chafer
held that’s written about in his Systematic
Theology is that there are two new covenants, one with the church and one
with Israel. This view was also held by Charles Ryrie in his early book that
came out in 1953 called The Basis of the
Pre-Millennial Faith. Walvoord also held this view in The Millennial Kingdom when that first came out. However Ryrie and
Walvoord (as well as Dwight Pentecost who wrote doctoral dissertation Things to Come which is a classic on
prophecy and dispensationalism) all changed in the 50’s and realized that the
two new covenant view wasn’t exegetically really defensible. You just couldn’t
go to any passages in Scripture that supported this. Because of that you have
people like Chafer who actually held to 9 covenants because they had this extra
new covenant with the church. So they tried to make this hard and fast
distinction between the church and Israel to the degree that they’re basically
coming up with a new covenant that’s not mentioned in the Scripture. The only
argument that they could come up with is the fact that these two passages II
Corinthians 3:6 and Hebrews 9:15 did not have an article.
Unfortunately a common sort of first
year of Greek error is to think that the lack of an article means that it’s
indefinite like it would be in English. In English you have either the chair or
a chair. But in Greek you can have the article or not have the article but the
noun chair or God or covenant can still be inherently definite because of the
nature of the noun or language itself. There are different uses of the article
and different nuances for the lack of an article. In Greek it is only proper to
speak of an article. You never call it a definite article because in Greek there’s
no indefinite article. So it’s really a mistranslation to put the word “a” in
English indefinite article in here because new covenant was inherently a
definite concept. Just like I pointed out before in English, they will talk
about going to hospital instead of the hospital. Hospital is inherently
definite. We’ll talk about going to university rather than the university because
university is inherently definite. The same thing you have with the article in
John 1.
NKJ John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God.
No article in the Greek, so Jehovah’s
Witnesses come along and say, “See that should be translated a god not God
(definite). He is just a god; He is not full deity. So failure to understand
these little nuances in Greek grammar can lead to some problems.
The second position was a position
held by John Nelson Darby. Darby like many other theologians, great theologians
down through history was a trained lawyer. He went to Trinity College in Dublin
where he studied law. Then afterwards he decided that God was calling him into
the ministry, and he entered into the ministry as he grew. He was ordained in
the Anglican Church, but he reacted to the theology of Anglicanism. So, he
broke off and was one of the founders of what later became known as the
Plymouth Brethren Movement. It was John Nelson Darby who was the founder and
the father of modern dispensationalism. He didn’t come up with this. He wasn’t
the first person in history to do this, but he was the first theologian to
systemize dispensational theology and consistently interpret the Scriptures in
light of this distinction between Israel and the church from a
pre-tribulational viewpoint. He’s the first to systematically articulate a doctrine
of the Rapture although in recent years there have been numerous studies of
others down through church history that have held to a pre-tribulation rapture
of the church - that the church would not go through the tribulation. Darby’s
view was that the church participates in the New Covenant only by way of
application. The New Covenant with Israel as far as he was concerned had not
yet begun because the New Covenant is with the house of Israel and the house of
Judah. There is no mention of a new covenant with the church anywhere in
Scripture. Therefore that covenant while it is the sacrifice of Christ that cut
on the cross the covenant with Israel doesn’t come into effect. It is not
established until Jesus Christ returns as the Davidic king to bring Israel back
to the land and establish them as a regenerate nation in the land at the Second
Coming.
The third view that has been held on
this is that the church has some part in the New Covenant. There is some
application primarily in regeneration. As we’ll see we get into Jeremiah 31
that’s one of the main thrusts of the New Covenant.
God says, “I will give you a new
heart.”
This is terminology related to
regeneration. This is why when Jesus comes to Nicodemus he says, “Don’t you
understand that you can’t see the kingdom of God unless you are born again.”
By that Jesus indicates that Nicodemus
who was this great Bible teacher… Arnold will point out that there is a
tradition among Jews that Nicodemus wasn’t his proper name. Actually “nico” the
first part of that – you’ve got Nicodemus – “nico” like democracy
(What’s going on up in Iowa tonight.) That’s the people –“nico” –
like Nike, your shoes - the Greek goddess of victory or the one who is the
overcomer, the one who is the ruler. So Nicodemus was the ruler of the people. That
was his title, but that wasn’t his name. There is a tradition (I don’t know how
true it is, but Arnold will talk about it when he goes through this.) that
Nicodemus was the premier rabbi in Jerusalem at the time when Jesus was in
Jerusalem.
So he was supposed to know more
about the Old Testament than anybody so Jesus said, “Well don’t you know that
you can’t see the kingdom of heaven unless you are born again?”
How would you know that from the Old
Testament? Jeremiah 31 and these other passages that we are going to go to in
the New Covenant. And so there are other dispensationalists that hold this view
that the church has a specific role in the New Covenant only in terms of
regeneration. You may not be able to distinguish in your thinking the
difference between 2 and 3. They are very close. Most of the writers suggest
that. These first 3 views are all held by traditional dispensationalists.
The new view that’s been invented in
the last 20 years by progressive dispensationalists is that the New Covenant
was inaugurated at the cross. So, we are already under the New Covenant; but it
hasn’t fully come into force yet. One of the implications of this is that as we
saw last time the prophecy of Joel 2 that your young men will see dreams and
your daughters will prophecy and your old men will see visions (all of that) and
speaking in tongues and all this would be legitimate. Actually that’s where the
vineyard movement and some of the other modern charismatic movements go with
that, based on this view that the kingdom is already established, but it is not
yet fully here. That’s a little catch phrase - already but not yet. This is why
I pointed out last week when I went through Joel 2 and Acts 2…we’ll come back
to that. Back in September in this Hebrews study I went through those 4
different ways in which the Old Testament was used in the New Testament that
based on Arnold Fruchtenbaum’s study that this third view in Acts 2 Peter was
saying “this is like”. There is a similarity. It is not a direct fulfillment.
So when Peter says “This is what the
prophet Joel said”, what you tend to hear from your Gentile background is that
this is a direct fulfillment on the same order as Micah 5:2 that the Messiah
would be born in Bethlehem. But there were other ways in which Old Testament
passages are sighted in this sort of fulfillment terminology. There’s the
literal fulfillment was the first view. That’s Micah 5:2. The second view was
that it is just an historical event that’s applied typologically. That’s the
passage in Hosea talking about that the daughter of Ramah were weeping for
children. Then there is this third view… I can’t remember the exact passages. But
the third view was that this was like that. There is a parallel.
Then the 4th view was the
fact that there is no actual literal statement just sort of a summary. I went
through those in detail. This issue of interpreting Acts 2 and Joel 2 is
fundamental and foundational to what’s going on in this development of progressive
dispensationalism. Their view is that the New Covenant is already here. We are
living in the New Covenant. So aspects of this are already true but not
everything. So it progressively comes into effect which is why they got the
name progressive dispensationalists. So that’s the difference is that
traditional dispensationalist (and I believe they have the best position) that
Jesus offered the kingdom. It was rejected and therefore it’s postponed. So the
New Covenant isn’t established until Jesus returns at the Second Coming.
But progressive dispensationalism
says there is some form in which we are already in the kingdom. It’s a spiritual
form of the kingdom. Jesus is spiritually reigning from David’s throne in
heaven. They interpret passages in Acts 2 and in Acts 3 the same way amillennial
covenant theologians do. See what happens is, the distinctions in these
theological systems starts breaking down, not because they are trying to
preserve theological systems but because the underlying issues of interpretation
and understanding what the Bible is actually teaching is at stake. It’s what
the Bible teaches that matters, not some theological system. So I believe that
probably the best understanding of this is that which was articulated by Darby
that in the Old Testament you have promises and prophecies that are made in
relation to Israel and that they all come together in fulfillment at the Second
Coming. None of them are even partially fulfilled before the Second Coming. So
in the Old Testament you have your foundational covenant which is the Abrahamic
Covenant - land, seed and blessing. The land is developed in Deuteronomy 30:1-10;
the real estate covenant. That’s not fulfilled until they are brought into the
land as a regenerate people at the Second Coming.
Then you have the Davidic Covenant. Even
though Jesus Christ is born in Bethlehem as a descendent of David, He doesn’t
take the Davidic throne in fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant until the Second
Coming. So the New Covenant which is linked to the fulfillment of the Davidic
Covenant and Land Covenant and Old Testament passages is not fulfilled for Israel
until the Second Coming. But, we in the Church Age benefit from its establishment
at the cross with Israel. It’s established but doesn’t come into effect until
the Second Coming. So we get blessing from that by association wit the Lord
Jesus Christ who is party of the first part in the New Covenant. That helps you
to see what the distinction is. So there is no dual covenant. There is no New
Covenant with the church.
So let’s start looking at some of
the Old Testament passages that talk about the New Covenant. The first one
we’ll go to is in Hosea 2:17. I’m not going to go through this in terms of
their order in the Old Testament. I am going to go through them in terms of
their chronological order. So we’re going to look at each of these in the order
they were given to Israel in terms of progressive revelation. Hosea was a
prophet in the 8th century BC. He was a prophet
to the northern kingdom. The northern kingdom is going to separate from the
southern kingdom in a tax revolt that occurs in approximately 930 BC. It’s going to be that tax revolt that brings about this split that
occurs. God is going to discipline the nation that way.
Speaking of tax revolt, I had a
great little email that came the other day. Taxes have always been a problem. I
want you to understand before we talk about taxes the nature of the term a
billion. See we have politicians that always talk about “Well, I need a billion
dollars for this, a billion dollars for that.” A billion is a big term. So, how
big is a billion? A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago
Jesus was alive. A billion hours ago, we didn’t even have creation. A billion
dollars ago, it was noon in terms of federal spending. It goes fast, doesn’t
it?
Now thinking in terms of how much is
a billion, Louisiana senator Mary Landrew has asked Congress for $250 billion
to rebuild New Orleans. Just how much is $250 billion? Can we really get our
mental fingers around that? Well, if you are one of the 484,674 residents of
New Orleans (that’s every man, woman and child) you get $516,520 apiece. Or if
you own one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans your home gets $1,329,787 for
repairs. That’s just your house. Everybody’s house gets that amount. Or if you
are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012. That’s how much $250 billion
is.
So we have a little poem that
somebody put together.
Tax his land; tax his wage.
Tax his bed in which he lays.
Tax his tractor; tax his mule.
Teach him taxes is the rule.
Tax his cow; tax his goat.
Tax his pants, tax his coat.
Tax his ties; tax his shirts.
Tax his work; tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco; tax his drink.
Tax him if he tries to think.
Tax his booze; tax his beer.
If he cries, tax his tears.
Tax his bills; tax his gas.
Tax his notes; tax his cash.
Tax him good and let him know
That after taxes he has no dough.
If he hollers tax him more,
Tax him until he is good and sore.
Tax his coffin; tax his grave.
Tax the sod in which he lays.
Put these words upon his tomb
Tax has drove me to my doom.
Then when he’s gone we won’t relax
We’ll still be after the inheritance
tax.
Then there is a list of taxes that
we all pay.
Accounts receivable tax
Building permit tax
CDL tax
Cigarette tax
Corporate income tax
Dog license tax
Federal income tax
Federal employment tax
Fishing license tax
Food license tax
??? permit tax
Gasoline tax
Hunting license tax
Inheritance tax
Employee tax
IRS interest charges - tax on top of
tax
IRS penalties – tax on top of
tax
Liquor tax
Luxury tax
Marriage license tax
Medicare tax
Property tax
Real estate tax
Service charge taxes
Social security tax
Road usage tax
Sales tax
Recreational vehicle tax
School tax
State income tax
State unemployment tax
Telephone federal excise tax
Telephone federal universal fee tax
Telephone state and local surcharge
tax
Telephone minimum usage charge tax
Telephone recurring and
non-recurring charges tax
Telephone state and local tax
Telephone usages charge tax
Utility tax
Vehicle license registration
administration tax
Vehicle sales tax
Water craft registration tax
Welfare tax
Worker’s compensation tax
The ten northern tribes of Israel
revolted on a whole lot less than this. The American War of Independence took
place on a whole lot less than this. None of these taxes existed 100 years ago.
Our nation at the time was the most prosperous in the world. We had no national
debt. We had the largest middle class in the world. Mom didn’t have to work
outside the home. She stayed home with the kids. We just have our politicians
to thank.
Israel the Northern Kingdom revolted
in a tax revolt approximately 930 BC. So that’s the
10th century BC. This is 770, about 150 years after
that during the time of not Jeroboam I but Jeroboam II that you have God call
out three key prophets in the Old Testament. They are contemporaries of each other
– Hosea, Isaiah, and Amos. These are the three key prophets and Amos and
Hosea are in the north. Hosea is the first to speak of the New Covenant that
someday would replace the other covenants. He seems in despair as he addresses
the Northern Kingdom because at this time they’re surrounded by the Baal
worship. If you look at the overall context of how revelation has been given in
the Old Testament and how Hosea is structured, there is a
condemnation-judgment-deliverance cycle in Hosea. This is in the second cycle
within the structure of the book from 2:2 down through 23. Each of these cycles
goes from condemnation and judgment to deliverance and restoration. They all
speak of restoration in the end, that God is going to judge them and that goes
all the way back to the Mosaic Covenant that God promised in Leviticus 26 and
in Deuteronomy 30. If they disobeyed God, God would take them out of the land. But
eventually he would restore them from the four corners of the earth. Now that
has never happened before. They are taken out - the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC
and the Southern Kingdom in 586. They are taken out. There is only a small
group that returns primarily from Babylon, not from the four corners of the
earth between 538 and 444 when Nehemiah is taken. You have three basic returns
– one under Zerubbabel, one under Ezra and one under Nehemiah. Well,
Hosea is much before all of that. He is predicting this. That little return
that occurs after the exile is simply a foreshadowing of the future full bore
restoration and regeneration. So in Hosea 2:17 God says to Hosea:
NKJ Hosea 2:17 For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals,
And they shall be remembered by their name no more.
In other words, under divine
discipline God is going to discipline Israel so harshly that they will never
again be involved in idol worship. That is exactly what happens when the
Israelites return after the Babylonian captivity. That’s what led in reaction
to the development of Phariseeism. They were so concerned and distraught
because God had taken them out of the land that they wanted to eradicate any
possible form of idolatry from the land when they returned in 538 BC. Eventually that leads to the idea of all the legalism. What they did
is, they had the Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law has 512 commandments. So they
wanted to make sure that you didn’t break any of those commandments so what we
have to do is we have to build a fence of commandments around the law to
establish these secondary prohibitions. If you break one of those you still
haven’t broken the law, but it’s going to keep you from getting too close and
actually breaking the law. That was what they would view the Mishnah, the
rabbinical teaching at the time of Christ. Along comes the Talmud. The Talmud
builds a second fence around the other two. The idea being that as you build
these traditions of the Pharisees and the rabbis that it would keep the Jews
from getting close to breaking the laws in the Mosaic Law. So it was such a
harsh discipline, the destruction, the violence, the famines that occurred
– the fact that under siege the mothers were cannibalizing their own
children. The violence that occurred in both the Northern Kingdom with the
Assyrian invasion and later the Southern Kingdom under Nebuchadnezzar
undergoing three foreign invasions in 605, 593 and finally 586 was so horrendous
the Jews wanted to make sure that nothing like that would ever happen again. Rather
than becoming grace-oriented and God-oriented, they just became legalistic. This
is part of the fulfillment of Hosea 2:17.
NKJ Hosea 2:17 For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals,
And they shall be remembered by their name no more.
God said He would wipe out idolatry.
Then he says:
NKJ Hosea 2:18 In that day I will make a covenant for them With the
beasts of the field, With the birds of the air, And with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I
will shatter from the earth, To make them lie down safely.
“In that day” often refers to that
future day of redemption, the covenant the Day of the Lord.
What does that sound like? Where do
you read similar terminology in the Bible? When God first creates man He says:
NKJ Genesis 1:26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image,
according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over
every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
So we have this. This is a rolling
back of the curse during the Millennial Kingdom – not completely because
man is still sinful and those who marry have children with sin natures. But it is a partial roll back of the
curse that occurs in the Millennial Kingdom.
Isaiah is going to talk about this -
that spears will be beaten into pruning hooks and swords into plow shares and
man will learn war no more. That is ripped out of context and emblazoned over
the entry to the U.N. Building in New York. So if you think the U.N. is secular, it’s not. By using that as their motto they are assuming
for themselves a messianic role. Any politician who supports international
courts, who supports internationalism and the rule of the U.N. is promoting the old temple of Babel, the Tower of Babel mentality of
internationalism. There’s not going to be an end to war until the King of Kings
and Lord of Lords who is the true Prince of Peace establishes His kingdom on
earth. So this is the first indication that there’s going to be a new covenant.
The term “new” is not used, but there is this prophecy that in that day in the
coming of the kingdom God says, “I will make a covenant for them.” This is your
first indication that there is going to be a New Covenant.
Now in later passages in Hosea, for
example in Hosea 2:19 there is the emphasis on the length of time that this new
covenant is going to be established forever.
NKJ Hosea 2:19 "I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will
betroth you to Me In righteousness and justice, In lovingkindness and mercy;
So this is the fulfillment that it
will be an eternal covenant. Also if you look at Hosea 2:20 there is the
indication that the covenant recipients will know God. Then the text says:
NKJ Hosea 2:20 I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, And you
shall know the LORD.
Furthermore in Hosea 2:21-22 the
covenant insures the future prosperity and material blessing of the nation in
association with a return to the land. There is that land connection. If you
recall from our studies in Deuteronomy and the Mosaic Law, God promised them
that if they were obedient to Him; God would bless them with material prosperity.
This is going to be fulfilled with the establishment of the New Covenant
according to Hosea 2:21-22. Another point, the covenant establishes its
distinct personal relationship between God and His people who are referred to
as My people in Hosea 2:23.
Then the last point I want to make
is also in 2:20. We realize that this comes from the initiation of God. God
initiates this covenant. So in Hosea 2 from verse 17 down through verse 20, we
have all the basic elements of the New Covenant already stated. The term “new”
in New Covenant is not there.
The next reference that we have to
the New Covenant is found in Isaiah. I’m not going to go through all the Isaiah
passages, but I do want to look at Isaiah 61:8-9 and that whole context. So turn
with me there to Isaiah 61. Now this isn’t the first time in Isaiah that Isaiah
alludes to a future covenant that will replace the old covenant. He also
alludes to this in Isaiah 42:6, 49:8, 54:10, 55:3, 59:21, and our passage here
is Isaiah 61:8-9.
First of all, in all 6 of these
references there is a covenant promised to the nation that follows a period of
national condemnation and judgment. That’s exactly the kind of thing you have
going back to Deuteronomy. The reason I keep going back to Deuteronomy is I
want you to understand that everything in the Bible fits together. You have to
understand these things in light of other parts of the revelatory process. In
the Mosaic Law God promised Israel that if they obeyed Him, He would bless them
with physical literal prosperity, agricultural fertility; and they would be
known among all the nations. But if they were disobedient, God said He would
take them through five different stages of discipline the most extreme of which
was to remove them from the land (the land being the land that God had promised
them) - promised Abraham in the Abrahamic Covenant reiterated in the
Palestinian or Land Covenant.
So God says He is going to take them
out of the land. But He says in all those passages that eventually He will
bring them back from everywhere to the land. The indication there is they will
come back in two stages – one stage is a return that is still in
apostasy. That I believe is being fulfilled today – that God is bringing
them back to the land because there has to be a national Israel in the land (a
government in the land at the beginning of the Tribulation because what begins
the tribulation is the Antichrist signs a peace treaty with Israel. That’s what
kicks off the chronology of the last 7 years, Daniel’s 70th week. Now
that Israel that returns to the land is an apostate Israel. They have not
accepted Christ as Messiah. One of the first things they do either just prior
to or just after the signing of the peace treaty is to rebuild the temple. It
is an apostate temple. It is still where they are going to reenact the Mosaic
Law not believing that the Messiah has come. But there is a second return that
occurs and it’s a return in regeneration. For many years there were
dispensationalists who confused those two and didn’t recognize that there were
two returns to the land. So there is an initial return that’s in belief and a
second return that is in belief. That return comes from the four corners of the
earth. It has never happened before. It did not happen in the 6th
century in 538, 516, 5th century in 460 with Ezra or 444 with
Nehemiah.
So what you have in these Isaiah
references is that there will be a future covenant that comes after this period
of national condemnation and it precedes a period of unparalleled prosperity
and happiness and spiritual blessing. All of these passages are covered (Isaiah
42:6, the ones I mentioned earlier) are all Isaiah called the Book of Comfort
from Isaiah 66.
The second thing we ought to note
about these Isaiah passages is that the servant of the Lord, which is a
messianic title, does not refer to Israel. See modern Judaism couldn’t handle
Isaiah 53. In fact sometime try to ask one of your Jewish friends to explain
how they understand Isaiah 53. If they know anything about it, they will
probably tell you that the suffering servant in Isaiah is the nation Israel. But
that’s not the historic position. It took about 800 years into the Christian
era before the rabbis finally came up with that position. They did it because
any time Christians used Isaiah 53 to witness to Jews, the Jews recognized that
it had to refer to Jesus Christ. So they had to come up with some sort of
imaginative, inventive interpretation of Isaiah 53 to quit getting slaughtered
by Christians (slaughtered metaphorically) in evangelism. So the Servant of the
Lord is the Messiah in these passages and the Servant of the Lord is clearly
commissioned to be the mediator of this covenant. You can look at Isaiah 42:6
and Isaiah 49:8.
The third thing we should note is
that in connection with the Servant of the Lord in these passages, the Servant
of the Lord is understood as a descendent of David, a descendent of Jesse, the
root of Jesse, the branch of David. You can look at passages such as Isaiah
55:3 where you have a clear association between David and this New
Covenant.
NKJ Isaiah 55:3 Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul
shall live; And I will make an everlasting covenant with you -- The sure
mercies of David.
So here you see the New Covenant
that is connected like we saw in Hosea with the land. Now in Isaiah it’s connected
with the Davidic Covenant. So you can’t distinguish the New Covenant from these
other covenants. They all come together and are fulfilled at the same
time.
A fourth observation is the servant
in conjunction with the fulfillment of the covenant the establishment of the
New Covenant fulfills a saving role toward the gentiles. So through the
function of the servant of Israel, the suffering servant Gentiles are going to
be saved. In Isaiah 42:6 he is described as a light to the nations, to the Gentiles,
the goyim.
That takes us up and covers these
passages. Now let’s look at Isaiah 61: 8.
NKJ Isaiah 61:8 "For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery for burnt offering;
I will direct their work in truth, And will make with them an everlasting
covenant.
In contrast to the Mosaic Covenant which
was a temporary covenant. So this is a prophecy related to a future everlasting
covenant.
NKJ Isaiah 61:9 Their descendants shall be known among the Gentiles,
And their offspring among the people.
That is the Jewish descendents at
that time would become known among the Gentiles. They would become famous. Isaiah
2 talks about the fact that all nations will come to Jerusalem to worship.
All who see
them shall acknowledge them, That they are
the posterity whom the LORD has
blessed."
This has not yet been fulfilled and
won’t be fulfilled until Jesus Christ returns. That takes us through the Isaiah
passages.
Now the next key passage is the one
that is quoted in Hebrews 8. That is Jeremiah 31:31-4. Isaiah operates in the
8th BC and Jeremiah operates in the late 7th and early 6th century
BC. He is right before the exile and during the exile. He’s
the one who is warning them about the coming of Nebuchadnezzar and the
Babylonians.
NKJ Jeremiah 31:31 " 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 --
The present covenant, the Mosaic
Covenant will be ended and there will be a New Covenant.
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,
So it is clearly distinguished in
context from the Mosaic Covenant. How can you miss that? It is obviously
talking about 1446 BC.
My covenant
which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD.
NKJ Jeremiah 31:33 "But this is
the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,
says the LORD:
Not the church, but with the house
of Israel.
Notice how now it’s the house of
Israel. The indication here is a unity of the nation once again.
I will put My
law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and
they shall be My people.
That should be taken together. That
is talking about the same thing. There is going to be this internal knowledge,
an intuitive direct knowledge of doctrine (the gospel) among Jews. There are
many who believe on the basis of this that this means that all Jews in the Millennial
Kingdom will be saved. There will be no Jew that rejects the gospel in the
Millennial Kingdom.
NKJ Jeremiah 31:34 "No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and
every man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'
The implication is that if nobody is
going to teach anybody the gospel or explain the gospel to one another in the
kingdom, then how are they going to get saved? Well, they are going to get
saved because God automatically puts it in their hearts. Now that’s different
from what we have seen in other dispensations. But it’s a dispensational shift.
There is something that is radically different that occurs with Israel and with
Jewish believers and with the Jews in the Millennial Kingdom.
Pastor-teachers are out of a job. So
it’s not like today. Now this isn’t talking about Gentiles. This is talking
about in Israel. Every one of them! So it’s not like today. This is talking
about in Israel.
for they all
shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD.
So this expands on it. It’s not just
say all of them meaning may be most of them. All sometimes means most. But here
all means everyone. It’s expanded in the next phrase.
For I will
forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
So I have 9 points on the New
Covenant which we will begin with when I return from Kiev. Since we have Arnold
here I guess we won’t get back to this for a month. So we will hold that
thought. It’s a good place to stop because I will have to review the New
Covenant when I come back and we’ll go over Jeremiah 31 again and then go
through those 9 points.
With our heads bowed and our eyes
closed.