New Covenant: Realized
Notes
Transcript
Scripture Intro:
Scripture Intro:
Covenant Theology...
Covenant of Works
Blessing based on obedience
Covenant of Grace
Gen. 3.15 to the end of Revelation
One covenant...
unfolding in different administrations.
Each building on the last.
(a graphic by Jesse Johnson)
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, New
Fulfilling both the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace
Last week, we saw from Jeremiah 31...
the promise of the New Covenant.
What we saw was the reality that “New”
didn’t mean to stop and start a brand new covenant.
It revealed new aspects of the covenant...
and the fulfillment of all of the Covenant promises.
for example, the promises to Abraham didn’t cease.
They were fulfilled in the New Covenant.
So Abraham and David were pointing to the New Covenant.
Harrison Perkins:
“The new covenant promises were always built into the old economy.” (Harrison Perkins)
So we turn to the beginning of the Gospel of Luke.
At the birth of John the Baptist.
A few month prior to the birth of Jesus.
Mary (Jesus’ mother) had already visited with Elizabeth (John’s mother).
So at the birth of John the Baptist...
his father Zechariah speaks the words of the Holy Spirit...
talking about Jesus.
This is often called the “Benedictus”
Which is the Latin word for “Blessed” (from the Latin Vulgate, a 4th century translation of the NT into Latin).
As I read this,
notice all of the references to the covenant promises that have come before.
Scripture Reading (“Please stand…”)
And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us;
to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham,
to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
Pray...
Intro:
Intro:
On July 4th,
I wasn’t feeling great so we stayed in for the day.
“Let’s watch a July 4th movie.”
After a quick Google search of movies that fit that criteria,
we had a list of obvious choices:
Independence Day
The Patriot
And the original Jaws movie...
which was set on July 4th weekend in a New England beach town (Amity Island).
Needless to say,
Jaws was my first choice...
but the rest of my family did not share in my patriotic enthusiasm.
So we opted for “Independence Day”
But that got me thinking about popular movies from the era (the late 70’s).
and I landed on Star Wars (the original one, Episode 4).
In that movie,
In the middle of a galactic civil war,
the Rebel Alliance obtained blueprints to the Death Star,
a massive space station built by the Galactic Empire...
capable of destroying entire planets.
Princess Leia (a rebel leader) is taken captive.
and Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Forces...
along with Han Solo seek to rescue her and destroy the Death Star.
In the 2nd movie, Empire Strikes Back,
Darth Vader discovers that Luke Skywalker is actually his son.
And 3rd movie,
he learns that Princess Leia is his daughter.
As a watcher of the movie,
you begin to think back to the beginning.
“Oh… that’s why that happened.”
“I get it now.”
Your understanding of what came before grew exponentially b/c of learning something in the 2nd and 3rd movie.
Sometimes a complete understanding of the facts and events...
is revealed when something else is made known.
And as we’ve been looking at Covenant Theology,
the true understanding of many facets of the redemptive plan of God...
becomes known when with the birth, life, ministry, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus...
and when we read it...
we can then say about the OT,
“Oh… I get it now.”
The concept of the Messiah and the work of salvation was all over the Old Testament.
And knowing this makes sense of so many questions people are asking in the New Testament.
as to who Jesus was or who John the Baptist was.
John 1:21 (ESV)
And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.”
John 1:25 (ESV)
They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
Who is Jesus?
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
The Covenant Promises Culminate in Jesus
The Covenant Promises Culminate in Jesus
(Timer: 15 minutes left)
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us;
to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham...
“the mercy promised to our fathers”
Generations before them...
Often, this is shorthand for “Abraham, Isaac, Jacob”
representing the people of God.
“to remember his holy covenant”
Notice how many of the covenants that we’ve discussed are mentioned in these few verses.
(v. 69) “the house of his servant David” (Davidic covenant)
(v. 70) “spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets” (New)
(v. 73) “the oath that he swore to our father Abraham” (Abrahamic)
There are also ones that are not explicitly named...
(v. 68) “he has visited his people” (Moses)
The Temple/Tabernacle - the dwelling place of God with his people
(v. 77) “the forgiveness of their sins”
Same reference as Jeremiah 31:34...
“For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Let’s focus now on Abraham.
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
Land, Seed (descendants/nation), Blessing
A search of Abraham in the New Testament is fascinating.
He’s everywhere.
So the logic that the promises to Abraham “old” b/c of the “New Covenant” doesn’t follow.
A straight word search of “Abraham”...
Shows up in 71 verses in the ESV
But a search which includes pronouns and other phrases to reference Abraham yields...
111 verses in the NT...
232 mentions in those 111 verses.
Said succinctly,
The covenant promises to Abraham are the basis of the Gospel promises that we have in Christ.
How does this play out?
Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.
Who was the one to inherit the land?
Jesus… he is the Promised Land
And the promises to Abraham can only be realized in Jesus Christ.
The covenant promises to Abraham culminate with Jesus.
But what about Moses? Didn’t he come after Abraham?
This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.
Moses didn’t set aside the promises to Abraham.
They were both tracking to Jesus.
And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
App. Why spend so much time on this?
B/c humanity was created to know God.
But we are all born moving away form God.
God has pledged himself to his people.
God has been unfolding his plan of salvation for thousands of years.
Abraham - 2100 years before Christ
Us now - 2000 years after Christ.
From before time.
All so that we can be restored to what we were created for.
Instead of… chasing after pleasures of this world that never seem to satisfy.
We are brought back into our created design...
Not living for ourselves.
But living for God and his glory.
And in that...
we find what we have been searching for.
The True Temple
The True Temple
(Timer: How much time left?)
(Moses/David)
(v. 68) “he has visited his people” (Moses)
And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.
There are two Biblical themes in view here:
Immanuel Principle - “God with us”
God with his people.
Temple/Tabernacle
the dwelling place of God with his people
“visited the people”
Moses - “unless you go with us… don’t send us.”
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).
because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
The Covenant Secures God’s Presence
God With Us
Immanuel Principle
“visit us”
As the Old Testament progresses after the Exodus from Egypt,
what became the representation of God with his people?
Tabernacle and Temple
The Presence of God with his people.
The True Temple/Tabernacle
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
The covenant promises to Moses culminate with Jesus.
The Law culminates with Jesus.
The Tabernacle/Temple culminates with Jesus.
The sacrificial system culminates with Jesus.
The True Sacrifice
The True Sacrifice
(Timer: How much time left?)
(Moses)
to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins,
The covenant that deals with sin and sacrtifice is Moses
But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.
Then quotes Jer 31...
forgiveness of sins...
And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.
For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
And then the writer of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah 31 (our passage from last week)...
“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,”
then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
Harrison Perkins
The new differs from the Mosaic as forgiveness now comes from the guarantor of our own administration rather than from the future work of our mediator foresignified in our ordinances. (Harrison Perkins)
—true forgiveness never came from within the Mosaic sacrifices themselves
but always from Christ communicated and applied through the Mosaic covenant’s ordinances.
The True Prophet
The True Prophet
(Moses and New)
The covenant promises delivered by the prophets culminate with Jesus.
Peter… speaking in Acts 3 about Jesus...
The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him.
But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled.
Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you.
And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days.
You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’
Quote from Deut. 18… “prophet from among you”
And what did Peter call these people to do b/c of realizing who Jesus was?
Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out,
The True King
The True King
(David)
Angel told Mary,
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
The covenant promises to David culminate with Jesus.
The True Israel
The True Israel
(v. 68) “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel...”
Who are these promises for?
True Israel
Who know the only True Israelite (Jesus)
The only one who ever kept the stipulations of the covenant.
The new covenant completes the Abrahamic covenant, being fundamentally like it. Christ “helps the offspring of Abraham” (Heb 2:16). The church is, then, simply the true fulfillment or “fruition” of Israel.
Close in Prayer
Close in Prayer
Closing Song:
Closing Song:
“Immortal, Invisible”
“the Ancient of Days”
God has been unfolding his plan of redemption...
for our salvation and for his glory.
Benediction:
Benediction:
