Welton New Covenant Revolution

Finally Burying Old Covenant Christianity
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5439-4294-1
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

For many year, Christians and non-Christians alike have struggled to reconcile the seemingly conflicting depictions of God found in the Bible. How can the legalistic punishing God of the Old Testament also be the loving Father that Jesus revealed in the New Testament? The key to answering this question lies in understanding that the Bible is the story of God's covenantal relationship with humanity, and this story plays out through five major covenants. Once you understand these five major covenants, the entire Bible will finally make sense! Even more crucially, the character of God, and the relationship He invites you to have with Him, will become wonderfully clear.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Welton, Jonathan

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2 THE BIRTH OF THE OLD COVENANT Moses’ Kinship Covenant To understand the new covenant, we must first understand the old. The use of the terms old and new implies a connection between the two and a progression that we must not overlook. If I live in a house, and then I move to a different house, the first house becomes my old house, and the second becomes my new house. Part of my experience of my new house is in comparison to my old house. If the new house is bigger and nicer, remembering how I once lived in the old house will enhance my appreciation for the new house. To call a thing new (my new house or car or shoes) implies the existence of a now-discarded old thing. This is true of houses, and it is true of the old and new covenants in the Scripture. To get a clear picture of the new covenant, we must understand it in comparison to the old covenant, or the Mosaic covenant. The old covenant is unique among the covenants of the Old Testament. God’s covenant to David was a blessing to David, and God’s covenant to Abraham was a blessing to Abraham, and both of them, when the new covenant arrived, became a blessing to everyone. But the Mosaic old covenant never became a blessing to everyone. Instead, it actually became a horrible weight upon Israel. As we discussed in chapter 1, God wanted to bless Israel with a grant covenant and extend this promise of being a blessing to the whole earth to them as well (see Exod. 19:5–6). As a nation of priests, or individuals who all had direct relationship with God, Israel would have been God’s representatives to the earth. Through them and their relationship with Him, He wanted to bless the whole earth by drawing all people to Himself. That was God’s intention, but Israel refused the offer. As a result, the Mosaic covenant did not bless the whole world. It did not even end up blessing Israel, yet it could have, if they had kept the covenant and did not bring curses upon themselves. However, they failed miserably at upholding their end of the deal. Because of this, while Jesus came to fulfill the covenants to Abraham and David, He did not come to fulfill the Mosaic old covenant but to replace it. In Deuteronomy, God tells the Israelites they will fail and go into exile, but He will bring them back from exile and circumcise their hearts. In other words, He would initiate the new covenant. The point is, while the new covenant is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants, it is the destruction of the Mosaic covenant.11 This is a shift in thinking for a lot of people, who see these covenants as being similar and connected. In reality, they are completely separate and different. The Abrahamic and the Davidic covenants are fulfilled in Jesus, and they continue through His eternal kingdom.12 But Moses’ covenant does not continue. It was a temporary agreement, and now it is done. It was never meant to continue. THE KINSHIP COVENANT To understand this and what it means that the new covenant replaces the old, we need to look more closely at the old covenant and what it does and does not show us about God’s heart. The kinship covenant recorded in Exodus sprang out of Israel’s worst moment as a nation, when they turned down God’s offer of a grant covenant and instead asked for a kinship agreement (see Exod. 20:18–19; Deut. 5:25–27). When they saw God’s majesty, the people got scared and told Moses they didn’t want to hear God anymore. They asked Moses to speak with God on their behalf and get the rules they needed to obey. In this we see the impact of Israel’s 430 years of slavery in Egypt. Only Moses, who was brought up in the palace, could fathom relating to God as a Father and friend. The rest saw Him the way they had seen the cruel Egyptian pharaoh and slave masters. Because of their fearful slave mindset, they sacrificed relationship and asked for rules instead. Though it was not His desire, God adjusted to the Israelites’ request, and rather than the whole nation coming up to have relationship, only Moses and Aaron were allowed to come up to get the rules (see Exod. 19:20–25). That was Israel’s most tragic moment. When God came down and talked to the whole nation audibly in Exodus 19:19, He intended to show them that they need not be afraid. Just as God had tested Abraham with the command to sacrifice Isaac in order to show Abraham that He is different from other gods, God also tested the Israelites here (see Exod. 20:20). God was testing them to show them what He is actually like, but instead of embracing the test, they gave in to fear. They refused the test that would have led them into the cloud, where God would have shown them what He is really like. And they decided that—even though they knew they could hear His voice and live—they did not want to hear Him anymore. In Scripture, God often uses offense as a test to see whether we will persevere in the relationship or back off because of offense.13 That is exactly what God did with the Israelites here, and sadly, they decided they did not want relationship. They had seen Him do so many amazing things. He had decimated their captors, opened the sea so they could walk through on dry land, protected them from their enemies, given Miriam a long prophetic song, fed them with quail and manna, and so forth. All these things were signs that should have shown them what sort of person He is and whether or not they could trust Him. Yet when He tested their understanding of His character and their trust in Him, they completely failed. PARTNER AND PUNISHER They chose rules over relationship. This is the basis of the Ten Commandments,14 which is actually a kinship covenant ceremony. In the ANE, when two equals or groups came together to make a kinship covenant, they would draft a list of rules that both groups agreed to obey. This list of rules embodied the covenant. Thus, the Ten Commandments were inscribed on the front and back of two stone tablets. Commands 1–5 were likely on the front, and commands 6–10 on the back (see Exod. 32:15). Both tablets had all of the commandments on them, so there were two copies, one for each covenant partner. Each party would then take their copy of the covenant home to their temple or tabernacle, where they would put it in a box called an ark. Israel was not the first nation to have an ark; it was common practice and was specifically used to hold copies of covenant agreements—thus, the name, the ark of the covenant. The copies of the covenant were placed in their respective temples because people in the ANE believed their gods were witnesses to the covenant. If one group violated the covenant with the other, the god of the first group would punish them for being in violation. If one group violated the covenant, they expected their own god to punish them. This was the normal concept of a kinship covenant in the ANE, but in the case of Israel and God, it did not quite work that way, because God was representing Himself. God did not have a God above Him to keep Him in line. He did not have a temple in which to keep His copy of the tablet. Thus, Moses kept both copies of the covenant tablets. Eventually, he put both copies in the ark of the covenant, but first Israel had to build a tabernacle, and God had to tell them how to do it, because they had never had one before. They were a nation of ex-slaves who had never really had a religion before. All this put God in a strange position, because no one was over Him to make sure He kept His word. This is why it says of God, “You have magnified Your word above all Your name” (Ps. 138:2 NKJV). In other words, He chose to put Himself under His word as a promise that He would keep His promise. The most awkward part of this arrangement was that God had to fulfill two roles in the covenant. He was the one making the covenant, and He was also the one holding Israel, His covenant partner, accountable to it. This put Him in a horrible position as the punisher of His covenant partner, Israel, whenever they violated the covenant. This was not God’s idea, but Israel’s. Through their counter-offer of a kinship covenant, they put God in a position He never wanted, and now He was forced to punish them. God wanted a nation of priests who all had direct access to Him and represented Him to the rest of the world. But, the grant covenant was too big of a blessing for the slave-minded people to comprehend or accept. Instead, they asked for a kinship covenant, which initially sounded like it would be very equal, but it was really a set-up for failure. Even though God recognized it was a bad idea, He agreed to do it their way. This was the covenant they lived with for forty years, while they wandered in the wilderness—which included the Ten Commandments; instructions on how to build the tabernacle, the ark, and the furniture for the tabernacle; and guidelines for how the priests should take care of the tabernacle. He gave them only these basics, but even the basic Ten Commandments placed God in the position where He had to punish Israel when they violated the covenant, which happened frequently. This explains the difference in God’s responses to Israel’s complaining before and after Sinai. Before Sinai, He would reprimand them gently, because He wanted them to become a nation of priests. After Sinai, He was forced by the covenant to punish them for violating it. Consider these examples: Before the law was given at...