As Christians or followers of Christ, our goal is to become mature disciples of Christ. This means that you need to know why you believe what you believe. There is no way around it, to become a mature Christian, reaping the blessings of God, you need to know what the Bible says. You cannot be a mature Christian based on feelings or what others have said alone. You must allow God’s Holy Spirit to teach you through the Bible. That is not to say that you can’t learn from others, but you must confirm what others are teaching you. Even this message I am bringing, don’t just accept it. Check it out! Confirm it through your own study of the Word of God. Show More
In my last message, I said that it is impossible to understand “grace” without understanding the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Let’s take a closer look at the Old Testament which is all about the Covenant of Law.
The Old Covenant
The Old Testament represents a “covenant” known as the covenant of the Law. Every Covenant has two parties called covenant heads. God is one covenant head, and the other covenant head is a person called out by God to represent a group of people. In the case of the Old Testament Covenant of the Law, the two covenant heads were God or Jehovah and Moses. Moses represented a group of people known as the Hebrews or Israelites. What is true of all covenants is that there is an exchange between the two parties. What belongs to one now belongs to the other. God, clearly the stronger party, made His power and authority available to the weaker party, Moses and the people of Israel.
The Israelites
Where did the Israelites come from? Let me take a brief moment to take a look at the genealogy of the Israelites. God created Adam and Eve then after many generations came Noah, a descendant of Adam and Eve. After more generations, a descendant named Abram was chosen by God to be the one whom God would use to receive the promise that his descendants would be God’s chosen people.
God changed Abram’s name to Abraham. Abraham had a son, Isaac. Isaac had a son named Jacob. God changed Jacob’s name God to Israel. Jacob now known as Israel had twelve sons and they eventually became the twelve tribes of Israel. The sons were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. The point is that these twelve tribes of people became known as the Israelites, or the children of Israel (Jacob). Just as a side note Jesus is a descendant of Judah.
As a result of a famine in the land, these tribes found themselves in Egypt. In the beginning, they were treated very well, but over a period of 430 years, they became slave laborers. All of this is described in beautiful detail in the Book of Genesis. I would encourage you to read or re-read this book of “beginnings”. The book of Genesis shows that in the midst of life, God has a plan and that His plan will come to pass. God never fails.
So far, with many gaps in between, the genealogy goes like this; Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Israel) and the twelve tribes of Israel.
In the Book of Exodus, we pick up the story of the Israelites in Egypt. God heard their cries of hardship and raised up a Hebrew leader named Moses. It is with Moses that Jehovah God establishes the Covenant of Law. The Covenant of Law was the fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham that his offspring would become a great nation. Moses is the Covenant Head representing the people of Israel. This is a key point; God deals with the people of Israel through the Covenant Head Moses.
On Mount Sinai, God gave Moses the tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments as well as orally giving Moses commandments about worship, religious practice, and expected behavior. There are about 613 commandments or “mitzvot” that a religious Jew had to obey. The books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy describes these details. Remember the first five books of the Bible are the “Torah” or the “Law”.
A Conditional Covenant.
The bottom line of the Covenant of the Law is that it is a “conditional covenant”, that is if the people obey the Law they will be blessed. On the other hand, if they disobey the Law they will be cursed. A person’s “righteousness” was determined by how well they kept the Law.
When a person under the Law broke the Law (sin or unrighteousness) the only way they could be restored to a right relationship with God was to repent and provide a sacrifice. That is why the Old Testament concerned itself with sacrifices, feasts, and traditions. Even the Old Testament Jews recognized that it was impossible to keep the Law perfectly.
Don’t despair because during the Old Covenant of Law, Six hundred years before Jesus Christ, the prophet Jeremiah said in 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— 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. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: 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. 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
The Prophet Jeremiah could see that something new was coming… see you the next time.
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