Sermon Tone Analysis

The Covenant, The Gospel, and The Kingdom to Come

Shabbat shalom once again, everybody.

Welcome to all our regulars as well as guests, physically and online.

The past 6 weeks we’ve talking about The Divine Council, this concept of there being other spiritual entities.

People understand the Bible talks about angels and demons, but things often get muddled between those categories.

For example, the common belief is that there is one class of supernatural beings, angels.

The belief is that there are cherubim, and seraphim, and other sorts, but all of these are angels.

Demons are merely fallen angels.

But this is incorrect.

Angel is more of a job description than it is a description of the supernatural beings.

There are cherubim, which resemble creatures with wings and multiple faces.

There are seraphim, which are serpent-like creatures.

When the Bible describes angels, more often than not, they are described with a human-like appearance.

Demons, on the other hand, are not fallen angels.

Rather, they are the spirits of dead Nephilim, great beings who were half human and half supernatural.

They were not an authorized creation, and as such when they die, their spirits wander and, from what we see in the New Testament, attempt to possess a body.

We have spent a lot of time thus far combing through our Bibles, looking at many references to various supernatural beings.

We looked at Deuteronomy, Daniel, Genesis, Psalms, and various other passages in depth.

We looked at events that shaped our world and our relationship to Adonai.

The rebellion in the garden, the rebellion of the Watchers, the rebellion at the Tower of Babel.

How God split up the nations and apportioned them among the members of Hid divine council, and how for Himself, He chose Abraham.

The covenant that resulted from that is what will start us off today.

In short, we have been trying not to construct our own worldview of the supernatural, but rather, to rediscover the worldview that is described in Scripture.

So today we will be looking at the Covenant - in particular the covenant with Abraham - and the Gospel.

Since that’s going to be our starting point, let’s first go to Genesis 15 and read it.

Genesis 15

We’ve reviewed some of these verses before when talking about God’s decision to choose Abraham and to take his descendants as His people.

But now I want to connect this covenant, the one with Abraham, to the Gospel.

Now Jeff spoke a couple months back about the Gospel, specifically the Gospel of the Kingdom.

At its core, the Gospel is about our allegiance to the King, and the establishment of His Kingdom.

Yeshua’s Kingdom is the ultimate vision for what humanity has always been designed to achieve: dwelling with God.

This was the Edenic vision, but man fell.

The Tabernacle and Temple - which we looked at last week - were designed to imitate this, to re-create the conditions of God and man, heaven and earth, together.

That’s why Yeshua refers to Himself as the Temple, He is the place of convergence of Heaven and Earth.

Yeshua’s Kingdom, by its very nature, is transformative and restorative.

The Holy Spirit’s work in us as believers accomplishes this very task.

Acts 3:21 tells us Yeshua will bring the restoration of all things.

And here’s a sampling of passages from Paul’s own letters about the very same topic, that of restoration and renewal.

Notice the intentional Temple language there.

Living sacrifices; holy and acceptable to God.

The offering of which is spiritual “service” he says.

This word “service” (Greek latreia) is used in the LXX as a reference to the offering of sacrifices and is even related to the Passover service in particular.

Paul uses this idea of service and worship, and relates it to the next verse: being transformed by the renewing of our minds.

This renewing is the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

The contrast here of life and death is common in Paul’s letters, as is how he parallels this with the flesh (death) and the spirit (life).

Again, the “inner person, inward man” is being renewed day by day.

Laying aside the former life, the old self.

Be renewed by the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self.

The restorative language again.

We find very similar language in Colossians 3:8-11.

Now quick side-note: if you’ve never done this before, I suggest you study Colossians and Ephesians in parallel.

They bear a lot of the same language and concepts.

And one more, this time from the Pastoral epistle of Titus.

Titus 3:3–8

3 For we also once were foolish, disobedient, deluded, enslaved to various desires and pleasures, spending our lives in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.

4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared— 5 not by deeds of righteousness which we had done ourselves, but because of His mercy— He saved us through the baptism of rebirth and renewing by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom He abundantly poured out on us through Messiah Yeshua our Savior, 7 so that being set right by His grace, we might become heirs with the confident hope of eternal life! 8 Trustworthy is the saying, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have put their trust in God may be careful to devote themselves to good deeds.

These things are good and beneficial for people.

Verses 4 and 5 especially: God’s kindness and love appeared because of His mercy, to save us through rebirth and renewing by the Holy Spirit.

Once again, we have this sort of language, this language of restoration and renewal.

The Kingdom, when we finally get to it, is a Kingdom of restoration.

That’s why John’s description of it in Revelation sounds so much like Eden.

Gold, rivers, the tree of life, light, and God welling in the midst of His people.

This is a restoration.

This restoration all started with the covenant with Abraham.

This covenant was not simply to take Abraham and reject everyone else, however.

We see time and again that foreigners are also accepted into God’s people when they cling to Him.

A mixed multitude came out of Egypt in the Exodus; Ruth was a Moabite, and Rahab was a Canaanite.

Uriah was made a commander of Israel’s army, and he was a Hittite.

Caleb, one of only two of the first generation - along with Joshua - who got to enter the land, was a Kenizzite, not an Israelite.

But by and large, God dealt with - and fulfilled His covenant promises through - Israel.

Just as we read a few moments ago in Genesis, however, God would use His people, the descendants of Abraham, to bless all nations.

As the Biblical story unfolds, we discover that not only would He bless all the nations through the seed of Abraham, but He would reconcile the people to Himself.

And this brings us to something is pretty simple, but has become a point of contention and controversy in this movement.

That is: the covenant model on which the New Covenant comes into being, is based not on the Mosaic or Sinaitic covenant, but on the Abrahamic.

This is why there are more references in the NT to the covenant with Abraham as a comparison to our relationship with Adonai, than there are the covenant at Sinai.

Paul mentions this in both Romans and Galatians.

The author of Hebrews mentions it.

James mentions it.

Now it is not the Abrahamic covenant to the exclusion of the Sinaitic covenant, but rather, they work together.

The Gospel is about the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is the ultimate reality of the covenant.

I mentioned last week that Yeshua’s life and work gave us a glimpse of the Kingdom.

He raised the dead; He banished evil spirits; He healed the sick; He was a restorer of life.

That’s what the Kingdom will be like: restoration and life.

Now let’s look at some of this in action.

We’ve been studying the Book of Acts in our Tuesday Bible studies.

If you can make it, please do.

We have had some great discussions.

As long as we can keep Brian from trying to bait Jeff and I into debating election and free will.

;)

Go ahead and turn to Acts 2, and I’ll set us up for our study and how it relates to our current series.

Now obviously, at this point, we can see a connection to our study by focusing on Abraham being’s Adonai’s portion, right?

We’ve looked at that a couple times.

But specifically, we’re going to look at how the Gospel works to undo the damage of the fall, and how this restorative action is taking place.

So in Acts 2, we have Shavuot, or Pentecost it is more commonly called.

The Holy Spirit is poured out on the apostles.

Let’s read.

Recall from the incident at Babel, that God divided the nations, and confused their languages.

That was the characteristic aftermath of the event.

And here, Luke in writing this, uses very intentional language to cause the reader to not only understand the events he’s describing, but to also make a connection to Babel.

Look at verse 3 again, which says the “tongues like fire” were spreading out among them.

In Greek this is diamerizo.