Sunday, 22 February 2009

  • February 22

     

    February 22, 2009

     

    John S.

    As believers today we are living in the new covenant, not in the old covenant. In the old covenant you had no right to come to God directly, and just to be right with God so that I wouldn’t have a problem with God I had to bring sacrifice. In the new covenant, we do not have to qualify ourselves. The Corinthians were even Gentiles, and many were sinful, yet that is where we read of coming to the Lord’s table, and being one spirit with the Lord. There was no requirement to take offering to Jerusalem, because the new covenant is so much better than the old covenant. Today, in the new covenant we have God as the Spirit, and we can enjoy His presence every day. The old covenant has been fulfilled in Christ, who also enacted for us this new covenant through His blood.

     

    Deedee

    The new covenant is the basis of all spiritual life. Based upon it we can have direct knowledge of God, even an inward knowing. Apart from it, we could have no confidence that our sins have been forgiven. God’s eternal purpose is that He might work Himself into man that man might have His life and nature. This new covenant also enables us to have fellowship with God. As we enjoy the fellowship, the Lord’s light exposes us, prompting us to apply the Lord’s blood even further, which results in deeper fellowship, further shining, and further cleansing under His blood. In this cycle, we grow in the spiritual life.

     

    Sarah

    Two points touched me. In the old covenant there was a continual bringing to mind sins due to the recurring sacrifice. The old covenant could also never perfect anyone. In the new covenant, the Spirit gives us life.

     

    Shirley

    In the old covenant if you failed, you died. In the new covenant, if you fail, there is complete mercy. The Lord says, “Their lawlessness I will remember no more.” The Lord knows we are failures; that is why He sent His Son to die for us. Now we can take HIS blood over our sins.

     

    Steve W.

    We have been speaking on this matter of the blood of Jesus for a month and a half now. The Lord desires a relationship with us, and in spite of man’s failure, He did not give up on this desire. He covered the sinful pair with animal skins, which was significant. When you love a person, you are so active trying to keep that relationship going. After man fell, God became active. He slaughtered an animal, and that was continued through Abel, Noah, Abraham… so it must have been understood as being necessary to keep up some kind of right stand with God.

     

    God made a covenant with the nation of Israel eventually, and in that covenant God made some laws regarding that relationship. The laws are good, but the problem comes with whether we can keep them, for God is a righteous God. In the USA we could probably get a good lawyer to get us off of something, but God is a judge in the old covenant who could not be swayed, because His standard had to be upheld. If a child were rebellious and the parents took that child before the elders, that child would be stoned. How strict that law was! It was a fearsome thing.

     

    God has to be righteous, because His throne is established upon righteousness (Ps. 89:14). If He were unrighteous in anything, His kingdom would be overturned. Therefore He has to be absolutely righteous in every matter, and the new covenant was something He had to hold Himself to absolutely.

     

    If there were no speed limit on Oberlin Avenue, it would be a race course out front. The law keeps us limited. The old covenant kept things in check until Christ would come. The old covenant was just a shadow of what was to come. God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled through the new covenant, so the old covenant was something that came in between. The reality of the promise God made is Christ.

     

    In the new covenant, God writes His laws upon our HEARTS instead of upon tablets of stone. The law given outwardly sounds good, but we have nothing within us that can live out what the law represents, which is simply God Himself. Therefore none of us can pass the requirement of keeping the law, no matter how right the law seems. That is why God had to transmit those laws into us by giving us Himself as not only the model of somebody who keeps those laws, but also as the Person who spontaneously keeps those laws.

     

    Older couples begin to act like each other, because they have been around each other for so long that something has been infused from one to the other. God wants such a relationship with us. The new covenant affords God the relationship with us He longs for.

     

    In the old covenant, all the offerings could do was cause the problems to be covered over, and the fact that you had to keep offering just reminded you that you had no real solution to the root problem. In the new covenant, God says He will remember our sins no more!

     

    If you drop a cup of coffee on the floor, and the stain is left there, we can say we forgive you, but that stain remains to remind everyone. God removed the stain! That cleansing is related to God not remembering our sins anymore.

     

    Some people may feel, as they sin, that they cannot change and that they should just forget about being a Christian. But God has taken our sin out of the way! When we make a mistake, it is not over, because God has made provision for us. The Spirit has come into us now because of the Lord’s cleansing blood, and now God is very active within us to transform us into someone who will be as He is.

     

    The Hebrew believers (addressed in the book of Hebrews) were in danger of going back to the old way of worshiping God. They were wavering, thinking perhaps they should go back to the offering of animal sacrifices and so on.

     

    Paul told the Hebrew believers, “You have not come to the mountain that cannot be touched… etc. (Heb. 12)… Paul was writing about Exodus 19, where God put up a “fence” around Mount Sinai lest anyone touch it and get killed. It was surrounded by gloom and was on fire and black smoke. Moses entered into that. There was a whirlwind as well, and trumpet blasts! They sounded the alarm. Even if an animal were to touch the mountain, it was to be killed. This is Paul painting a picture of what the old covenant was like.  

     

    Paul then says, “But you have come forward to Mount Zion…to the church of the firstborn who have been enrolled in the heavens, and to God, the judge of all, and the spirits of righteous men who have been made perfect, and to Jesus…and to the blood of sprinkling.” Which would you prefer? The scary mountain of doom, or the bright mountain of the city of God? These two mountains represent the two covenants.

     

    We can touch and enter into this mountain, because the Lord rent the veil so that we might have full entrance into that mountain.

     

    We do need to be sensitive to what offends God, and ask His forgiveness, but we must realize what He has done too take care of it. When we see what He has done, we are joyful to run to Him, without fear. That’s what this race is all about now. We are running, pursuing hard after the Lord now. We are going forward, and the angels are watching as the spectators. Would they have anything to cheer about in the old covenant? Only failure there. But in the new covenant, the runners actually are reaching the Objective!

     

    I believe the angels get excited every time one of us runs a few steps further. We have such a cloud of witnesses surrounding us! And our names are enrolled in the heavens. First Peter 1:12 tells us that the angels know that something is finally happening among men that they long to look into, because it is the fulfillment of God’s desire. They are stretching to look to see how God is working in us in this new covenant.

     

    In this new covenant we are in a race, and the universal host is cheering us on. Therefore, we should not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as those of the new covenant.

     

    The mediator of this new covenant is Jesus. And who are we? We are those who overcome by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of our testimony, and as those who not love our soul-lives unto death (Rev. 12:11). The Lord’s blood speaks better things for us. Abel’s blood spoke condemnation to the guilty ones, whereas the Lord’s blood speaks forgiveness for us (Heb. 12:24).

     

    We have been given a provision by which we might always have a relationship with God. He has given us everything we need. Now it is up to us to realize it all. As we do, we what a glorious church life we have!

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