Eye Opening Truth

Truth Revolution Fall Festival 2010

The Sequence Of God’s Two Covenants

It seems that in the last few years as I have studied and listened to God’s word, a stark and amazing contrast of truths stand out like never before. A purposeful contrast that is categorical throughout the entire bible. It is the contrast between His two covenants.

God has laid out this contrast for the intent of diagnosing the ills of humanity and then liberating them from those ills. But the people of God have been stuck between the diagnosis and the healing. The law served for a time for the diagnosis of sin in the human race. The blood of Jesus still serves as the cure for sin in the human race. But much of the church today utilizes the system of diagnosis as way of control, while ignorantly diminishing the value of the cure.

We are 2000 years removed from the cross and yet much of the church has not entered into the revelation of the finished work of Christ. We have received the salvation that is in Christ but we measure our morality by portions of the law (ten commandments).

We received Jesus by the hearing of faith, but we try to make it in by our good works. We say that Christ paid for all our sins but what we really mean is he paid for all our past sins. We preach that Jesus paid for sin but we practice looking for sin in others. All of this is the way of a religiously imposed system by men who in most cases thought it good to employ the law of commandments with the grace that is in Christ. And down through the centuries and years, this composite of law and grace has been passed down by the elders from generation to generation.

I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ is at a crossroads. I believe we are at a place where defining moments will be experienced. I perceive that we are in a day and hour that the Lord from heaven is shinning the spotlight on the cross for the church to learn the entire message of the cross.

When the church can believe that the message of the cross is complete they will see that the law is obsolete.

There are only TWO covenants that God puts emphasis on as being HIS covenants. In the book of Galatians, Paul writes an allegory using Abraham and his two sons to explain the product of God’s two covenants. He refers to the different mothers of these sons; Hagar as being a slave woman and of Sarah being a free woman.

(Gal 4:22) “For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.”

He continues to add that these two sons are two covenants that are products two different sources being opposite of each other, can only have opposing realities.

(Gal 4:23) “But he [who was] of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman [was] by promise.”

(Gal 4:24) “Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.

(Gal 4:26) “But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.”

Seeing that Sarah is a type of New Jerusalem from whence the second covenant emerges through Christ; Hagar which is a type of earthly Jerusalem, from whence the first covenant (law of Moses) emerged, can’t be the law of the Abrahamic covenant. To say that the Law of Moses is the law of the Abrahamic covenant would suggest that Abraham’s two sons had the same mother.

THE FIRST COVENANT

When God gave the law to Moses, the ten commandments, on Mt. Sinai, He called those writings the covenant that he made saying,

“I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel” (Exo 34:27).

God called that covenant His covenant.

Some seem to think that because they’re not practicing the priesthood or the animal sacrifices that they’re not under the law as if the ten commandments are not part of the law. In fact the ten commandments are the spearhead of the law. The ten commandments are definitely the signature of all the law which encompasses the Aaronic Priesthood, the animal sacrifices and tabernacle with its ordinances.

(Deut 4:13) states, “And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and wrote them upon two tables of stone.“

In another place He said, “And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.” (Exodus 34:28)

This the bible makes very apparent, that the ten commandments that God gave Moses is a covenant.

That covenant was given for a purpose and a time. Then in the dispensation of the fullness of time Christ was manifested namely to establish the second covenant from God, except the second covenant is directly opposite and in contrast to the first covenant. In fact, the second covenant came to replace the first covenant not reinforce it. These two covenants are God’s Covenants and they are against one another. The first covenant was powerless to change a man and even less to save a man.

This is why God found fault with the first covenant saying, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.” (Heb 8:7)

Secondly, I think it is necessary to understand all that was included with the ten commandments. The ten commandments included some 600 plus civil laws given for the Israelites to keep. Also there was the tabernacle with it’s priesthood, furniture, courts, animal sacrifices and instructions to make offerings. All of these were part of the first covenant.

And of course the mediation of this covenant was given to Moses. It is often referred to as the Mosaic Law or the Law of Moses. But in either case it is the first covenant. It is not, as some have taught, the law to the Abrahamic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant is really the star of the show because it is the second covenant that God established with blood of Jesus, who is the seed of Abraham. So then the Mosaic law and the Abrahamic covenant have nothing to do with one another and are directly opposite one to another.

The more I studied how God destroyed sin through Jesus Christ, the more I realized that the church was not preaching pure gospel of God; but was rather preaching a convoluted and perverted gospel. You may ask; what is the perversion of the gospel?

The perversion of the gospel is when the message of the law is made to be observed in conjunction with the preaching of Christ. Or when the weight of rules for living right are laid on the believer as means of remaining saved. This demand of human effort for the result of righteousness is a perversion of the gospel.

The Church has been practicing this for years and years. They preach faith in Jesus for salvation and when the sinner comes walking down the isle to give their life to Christ by faith, like a bird caught in a snare, the yolk of good works of the law is placed on them. Now they have to behave good enough to make it in. This is a perversion of the gospel. The pure gospel is faith in Christ alone.

Thirdly, It is also vitally important to know the actions of the law or first covenant when wrought upon the people of God.

a) The law strengthens sin (I Corinthians 15:56)(Romans 7:8b)

b) The law named sin-it gave identity to sin

c) The law established a knowledge of sin,(Romans 3:20)(Romans 7:7)

d) The law demanded death because of sin,(Romans 3:26)( Romans 7:10,13)

e) The law stained the conscience with guilt from sin,(Romans 3:19)

f) The law was applied to a man’s sinful flesh, (Romans 7:18)

g) The law worked wrath for sin, (Romans 4:15)

h) The law made God’s people bond-slaves to sin (Galatians 4:21-31)

I) The law produced the curse of sin (Galatians 3:10)

To understand any of these characteristics of the law when appropriated with humanity is to understand that this first covenant was against us and contrary to us. The worst of these law characteristics is ‘death’.

It was called the law of sin and death(Ro 8:2), It was called the ministration of death(II Co 3:7), It is called the letter that killeth(II Co 3:6). No wonder the writings of the New Testament opens up with the salutation of “Grace and Peace be unto you”. Because the new covenant was established as gospel of peace that gives life and not death. Why would anyone want to be under the law. Why would anyone have anything to do with the law at all except to know that it was replaced.

What the church has done, is conveniently borrowed parts of the law to establish their own rules and righteousness.

There are a great deal of God’s people in various denominations who are good-hearted, well-intending people from the clergy to the congregation whose desire is to please God, but they are victims of a religious culture that have shaped them with a mixed message of grace and law.

The First Covenant – The Diagnosis For Sin

There is a notable and purposeful sequence between God’s two covenants that the church must began to understand. It is vitally important to understand what the those two covenants are. Then it is equally important to understand the function, provision and outcome of each covenant. Most of the church world fails to understand that the first covenant is the TEN COMMANDMENTS; otherwise known as ‘The Law’ or the ‘Mosaic Law’. Theologians have taught that the law is the law to the Abrahamic covenant etc;. The Abrahamic covenant is the second covenant established by the blood of Christ. So the ten commandments is not the law of the Abrahamic covenant, it is a covenant itself.

When you take close look through studying the first covenant, you eventually see its intent in why it was given to fallen man.

Much of the church still thinks it was given to guide man to live right. To help a man behave righteously. To fix the man from having a sinful life to having a holy life. Well, as I study, I can’t help but notice that in all of the attempts to be kept that no man succeeded in keeping the law; that the law identified sin in all men; that there is none good, no not one; there is none righteous, no not one and that death was always the result the penalty by law. More specifically, the law produced a knowledge of sin in the conscience of man. Whereas the fall of Adam was so great and so far down in the depths of darkness and blindness that man was ignorant of his own depravity. The man still having the desire to be good and right, could never see and even hide from the atrocity of his evil and wrong. So the law entered, not to fix the man to live right but to teach man that the evil in him is so great that he has no power live right. For the law is the knowledge of sin. The law is the diagnosis of sin.

The first covenant identified sin in context of the law. Sin was amplified by the law. Because of the law, sin became exceedingly sinful; sin was made to abound; the strength of sin is the law. The law gave sin the penalizing color of scarlet.

On the other hand, the law was impotent in relation to man’s flesh.(Romans 8:3) The law could not make anyone perfect. the law was weak and unprofitable; The law could not give eternal life; there is no gain of an inheritance by the law; The law was referred to as ‘weak and beggarly elements’. The law was against us and contrary to us.

The outcome of the law is always death but indirectly. Paul asked a rhetorical question of the law asking, “Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.“ Ah hah!!! Sin was exposed and made known by the flesh’s inability to good, holy and perfect suggestions of the law. The law was not assigned to be death but it suggested a law performance of which the human could not do; revealing that the inability to perform is sin. If death is resulting in the presence of the holy commandment the culprit has to be sin. And since sin is amplified and abounded, death also becomes amplified and abounded. Then add the fact there is a sinful bent in our nature, that when we are told ‘don’t do such and such’, that’s the very thing we have to do.

Nevertheless death is associated with the law because death was incited by sin which was incited by the law. Thus it is referred to as the law of sin and death; the ministration of death; the letter that killeth and it required a, slavery of dead works.

The law could only diagnose disease and could offer no cure.

The law could only emphasize death and could never give life.

The law could only point out fallenness and could never pick you up.

The law could only magnify your sins and could never make you righteous

The last cry of the soul under the law is, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

This cry shows the intent and success of the law to remove the veil of ignorance off the soul that it might recognize sin in the flesh and it’s deprave, death producing effect; along with the recognition of being fallen and incapable of helping oneself, by pleading, “who shall deliver me?”

From what? “the body of this death” why? because of it’s inability and failure to acquire righteousness by the law.

(Romans 3:28 “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.”

Can You Handle The Truth?

The simplest way to define ‘TRUTH’ is; that which is real or having reality. Often times people choose to believe things that would seem real to them or seem close to their reality. People love reality T.V. because it is close to what’s real to them. When we talk about biblical truth, we should expect it to be a subject that is real to God. The tendency of most Christians is to perceive truth as it relates to them.

There is a saying in the world that says, ‘If sounds too good to be true, then it is not.’ But this reasoning won’t work when the claim is coming from God. How can anything sound to good coming from God? He spoke and nothing became everything. He died for sin all the world and was raised back to life. The context of the gospel is ‘Good News’. Is God’s gospel too good to be true? The question that was asked toward Abraham and Sarah when they were in unbelief from hearing God’s claim that he would bless them with a child in their old age, was, “Is anything to hard for God?” Obviously what is real to man and what is real to God are in total opposition of each other. Biblical truth is a reality that is relative to God. We as his people were meant to learn and live in that reality as if it were our own. After all, man was created in the Garden of Eden(God’s Reality), but sin moved him out. Christ comes to the earth in the fulness of time and opens the door into this God reality through his resurrection. Jesus came to the earth full of grace and truth. Jesus came and placed great emphasis on the TRUTH.

He said to Pilate, “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the TRUTH. Every one that is of the TRUTH heareth my voice.”

Pilate saith unto him, “What is truth?“

The world cannot relate to God’s truth because they do not know his Spirit. “[Even] the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”

This question was answered when Jesus dealt with his disciple Thomas

in chapter 14 of John’s gospel; who asked Jesus, “and how can we know the way.”

He said, “I am the way, the TRUTH and the Life; no man comes to the Father save through me.

Jesus came to present himself to the world as the TRUTH. Whoever God may be, Jesus came as the reality of God made flesh. If we desire to come to God or to know God, it has to be by way of Jesus.

This is why Jesus announces to the Jewish people, “I am the bread of life“. He is the embodiment of all that God is. He was the word that was in the beginning, He was the word that was with God and as the word he was God. The word then became flesh and dwelt among us.

The reality of God became Flesh. He later said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

TRUTH was now in the Flesh.

Then Jesus commanded, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.”

Jesus-LIFE in you is the Highest and most Glorious life that can be obtained. This life is far beyond the born again-life and beyond the Spirit-filled life. This is God’s objective for all people. This life is only made possible by the consumption of the TRUTH(Bread of Life).

The layout of the tabernacle of Moses shows the movement of spiritual progression. Through the door and into the outer court; through the next set of curtains into the holy place. There the believer is suppose to sit at the table of shewbread and eat the flesh of Jesus. This prepares him or her for the Glory-reality in the most holy place. Stagnation comes to mind when I observe the church’s progress. The church is hungry. The church is doing a lot of eating. However no maturity is occurring. Why?

How is that they can eat and eat but not gain or grow?

You know when God gave Pharaoh the dream that involved seven lean cows and seven fat cows, he also saw that the seven lean cows ate the seven fat cows. But this was strange part; after the seven lean cows had eaten the seven fat cows, the lean cows were still lean. STILL LEAN?

The scripture says, “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth”. STILL LEAN ! WHY? Because . . . They are not eating the flesh of Jesus.

There is a lot good preaching that comes out of the old testament.

However, you don’t find the flesh of Jesus in the old testament. You don’t find the shed blood of Jesus in the old testament.

A lot people don’t realize that the gospels are under the first covenant.

The book of John is the exception because it is the only gospel that transitions you into what the flesh of Jesus is about.

In John he introduces you to sonship; he introduces you to himself as the word; he introduces you to the Father and he introduces you to the Holy Spirit. He establishes the process of God being imparted into man. (eating and drinking)

Feeding on the epistles is feeding on the flesh of Jesus. Feeding on Hebrews is feeding on the strong meat of Jesus.

There is a difference in feeding on fat and meat.

God’s plan goes far beyond the part truths that the church teaches. The reality of God in the church is a partial reality because it is based upon part truths. Jesus said, Howbeit when he the Spirit of truth is come; he shall guide you into all truth:” Literally the whole truth.

The Riches Of His Glory

In Ephesians 3:16 “That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;” The word ‘riches’ are a substitute for the word ‘truths’ as breaded representations of Christ being a derivative of glory for the express purpose of leading back to glory. As mentioned before, the objective of God’s master plan is to bring many into glory; that is Christ glorified in them as a result of being full. The context is the eating of eternal bread for the purpose of becoming like Christ. He goes on to say, “That Christ may be formed in your hearts by faith.” As we hear the TRUTH that is in Christ we must believe that truth in order to progress further into the Christ-maturity being formed within. When you come to a truth you can’t believe you will go no further from that point. Many Christians are still in the outer court dealing with the knowledge of sin. They will never go beyond that point until they believe the truth that Jesus completely destroyed all their sins past, present and future. If they only see their past sins paid for at the cross, they’ll be stuck right there in the outer court.

In Ephesians 3:18, “May be able to comprehend with all saints what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;” This speaks of being completely full from eating and drinking. The church is called to dine at the table on the flesh of Jesus.

In Ephesians 3:19, “And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.” Wow what a thought. God wants us to be full of himself. Can you handle this Truth?

If you can have faith in this, you will spend your time eating the flesh of Jesus. All other biblical flesh is not for filling up on.

When Jesus did the miracle of feeding with the five loaves and two fishes; he took it, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples to give to the multitude. Scripture says this, . . .

. . . “And they did all eat, and were filled.” (Mark 6:42)

This is core attribute of Jesus’ ministry; To feed until fullness occurs.

“till we all come to the unity of the faith, unto the knowledge of the Son of God, unto the a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”

Limitations to gaining truth(that is in Christ) is often due to a secular approach to studying the word; that is, by language, culture etc. ; of the which, can be a helpful stepping stone if used in view of it’s limitation. Hebrew, Greek and even English are all carnal languages. They are all spoken in the realm of man. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit knows all languages better than the man who speaks them. Sometimes we can get caught in the tailspin of what was lost in the translations from one language into another. Do we ever think that He the Holy Spirit never lost anything and that he is the expert translator. In fact, the greatest language that we could ever have the privilege of learning is not hebrew, greek or english, but “TRUTH”. What is higher than hebrew, greek or english? It is the Truth. Jesus said, “Howbeit when he the Spirit of Truth is come; He shall guide you into all Truth;”

There are times we limit truth by defining what a word means. We look in the concordance or biblical dictionary in search of that word. And while the definition is a step in the right direction, it is generic at best in most cases. Our attempt to seek a revelation or some deep truth actually falls short. Sometimes truth is not found in what a word means. Before you can get to the truth you have to sometimes go beyond the meaning of the word and find out what’s in the word itself. Only the Spirit of Truth can guide you into that word. You can look up the word ‘bedroom’ and it may give a definition of – a space for sleeping.

Well that would be true in a generic sense. But if you talk to a interior decorator about what a bedroom is, you’ll get a plethora of details from the textures and colors of fabrics, the styles and sizes of furniture, the continuity of accent pieces, the tones and textures of flooring , the warm tones of paint color on the walls and the delicate beauty of window treatments just to name a few. This adds a whole other dimension to the word ‘bedroom’. I wonder how many words in scripture that have been left in a generic realm; where the meaning of the word is known but what’s in the word is still a mystery.

A similar analogy is that the word is like a suitcase. It’s one thing to know what the word suitcase means. But it’s another to know what’s in the suitcase. The only way to know what’s in the suitcase is to open the suitcase and unpack the contents and articles of the suitcase. It takes a God ordained teacher; led by the Spirit of Truth, to open the word of God and unpack it’s contents and fuller meanings of that word.