Daniel 1:1-3 The Christ of the Covenant

Intro

What relevance does the Old Covenant have for Christians today?

Now before we go any further, let me clearly say, we are not under the Old Covenant. That Covenant has passed away and we enjoy the blessings of the New Covenant through the work of Jesus Christ.

But what many Christians want to do is put a hard break between the Old and the New. The Old is irrelevant, it has nothing to teach us, all it did was show us our sin.

But what I want to show you today, is that when you understand the Old Covenant, you see the glory of Christ and the New in a whole new way.

Because the New is the ultimate, true, spiritual fulfillment of the Old.

At every turn, the Old Covenant pointed to Christ in a shadowy form.

And we are starting the book of Daniel this way because that context is important.

Daniel is a fascinating book. It has some of our favorite stories, amazing visions, and is foundational for building a biblical eschatology.

And we are going to cover all of that.

But the overarching theme of Daniel that ties everything together is the Kingdom of God over the kingdoms of men.

But when you read Daniel, you will make a mistake when you jump to the end of the world.

Because when Daniel wrote the book, he was looking for the Christ who would bring the Kingdom of God and secure the blessing of that Kingdom for God’s people forever and ever.

So what is the covenantal context behind the book of Daniel? And that takes us to the BIG IDEA I want you leaving here with today.

Jesus is the True Israel who fulfilled the Old Covenant to establish the Kingdom of God and bless all the families of the earth in the New.

Now in that statement there is some high theology. True Israel. Old Covenant. New Covenant. Fulfillment.

That sounds like a theological word salad that doesn’t mean a whole lot. It’s enough to make your head spin.

But, don’t worry. We are all going to get there together, and by the end of this sermon my hope is that you will see the glory of Christ in a way you haven’t seen it before.

But to start getting there, we need to start in Daniel with Daniel 1:1-3.

Deportation to Babylon

Daniel 1:1-3 In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 2 And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god. 3 Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility.

The book of Daniel, as you might have guessed was written by Daniel.

And we are told it is the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah.

That puts the beginning of Daniel around 606/605 BC or around 600 years before Christ came to earth.

And at that time, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.

Jehoiakim was a wicked king. 2 Kings 23:37 says he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

Under his reign, just like with kings before him, the people rejected God and turned to Idols.

So God sent Nebuchadnezzar as a judgment on Judah.

The Northern Kingdom of Israel had already been taken into captivity by the Assyrians in 722 BC for their sin and idolatry.

And now Judah was under judgment, on the brink of captivity and exile themselves.

Because this wasn’t just a little bit of sin. It was years and generations.

Sure, there were some good kings of Judah. Josiah, Jehoiakim’s father, was a righteous king who did what was right in the eyes of the Lord (2 Kings 22:2).

But by and large, just like Israel, Judah rejected God and forsook the covenant.

And what Daniel is describes in chapter 1 is the first seige of Nebuchadnezzar.

The foretaste of Judgment.

Jehoiakim had thrown his lot in with Egypt. He was worried about the growing power of Babylon, so he though an alliance with Egypt would help keep Babylon at bay.

So Nebuchadnezzar came to Judah, laid seige to it and made it a vassal state of the Babylonian Empire.

That means Judah now had to pay tribute to Babylon and serve the interests of the Babylonian Empire under threat of war and destruction if they didn’t.

And we are told after this seige, Nebuchadnezzar took some of the vessels of the house of God and brought them into the house of his god.

Nebuchadnezzar’s God was Marduk. He was the chief God of the Babylonian Empire.

They believed he was the creator of the world, and stronger than all other powers and all other gods.

Now they had other gods, but Marduk was their Creator. The Almighty One.

So when Nebuchadnezzar took the vessels from God’s temple and put them in them temple of his god, Nebuchadnezzar was doing what kings normally did when they conquered a nation.

They would take the idol representing that nation’s chief god and put them under their god, in their own temple.

Now this might sound like a silly game of capture the flag, but there was real theology behind this.

What this said was that the god of the defeated nation was either 1. personally defeated by the stronger god of the conquering nation, or 2. that the god of the defeated nation had forsaken his people and switched sides.

Now Israel did not have an idol of Yahweh, because that would have been a violation of the 2nd Commandment, so Nebuchadnezzar took the next best things. He took the worship of Yahweh.

And not only that, but he also took men of the royal family who might be able to rally the people to resist Babylon’s new control to keep Judah under their thumb.

Verse 3 Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility.

This is where Daniel comes in. He was one of the men taken out of the Promise Land to live in a pagan nation as a foreshadowing of the Exile Judah was about to face in the Babylonian captivity.

A few years later, there was a new King in Judah named Zedekiah who rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar. And in 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar laid another seige against Jerusalem, but his time he burned it to the ground.

He even went so far to destroy the temple, and he took the people of Israel into captivity for the next 70 years which is the context that runs throughout the book of Daniel.

And the Bible is clear, all of this was the work of God to bring judgment on his people.

This is clear even in Daniel 1:2 the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand.

The Lord did it. Nebuchadnezzar might have had the victory, but that victory was the Lord’s!

Why did God do this? Why did God let this evil, wicked, pagan nation conquer His people?

Why did He let them think their gods were stronger the the Lord God Almighty?

That is the key question. And I think if we answer that question, it will help you to see what the overall hope of the book of Daniel is.

What all the stories and the crazy visions are really pointing towards.

And to answer that question you need to understand a little bit about the Mosaic Covenant.

Mosaic Covenant

Exodus 19:3-6 While Moses went up to God, the Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”

God established the Mosaic Covenant, at Mount Sinai when He gave Israel the Law.

Now immediately when I say that, you’re mind is going to jump ahead to some kind of works based legalism, but to properly understand the Law and the Mosaic Covenant, you need to see the Covenant in context.

The people of Israel were descendants of Abraham.

And God had made a Covenant with Abraham that basically said, I will bless you and make you a blessing, I will give you the Promise Land, make you a great nations, and in you, in your offspring, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

And before God ever gives the Law, he roots the Law in Israel’s redemption from Egypt. He says, You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.

So God is rooting the Mosaic Covenant in Israel’s redemption from slavery in Egypt.

Well why did God redeem them from Egypt?

Exodus 6:2-5 God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.”

What Covenant? The Abrahamic Covenant!

Well wait. I thought we were talking about the Mosaic Covenant?

2 Minute Covenant Theology

I think most Christians look at the covenants of the Old Testament and think they are all separate with little to nothing to do with each other.

But Instead of thinking the Covenants run parallel to each other, you need to see them as building on each other.

They are all moving the same direction: Jesus Christ.

Look what Paul says in Ephesians 2:12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise.

Multiple covenants. One Promise. Well, What Promise?

Jesus Christ. All the covenants after the Fall are part of what is called the Covenant of Grace. The Covenant God made with Adam and even when he promised the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.

So when you think of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, don’t make the mistake of making a hard break between the two.

Think of Anticipation, and Fulfillment. The Old Covenant Anticipates Christ, the New is the Fulfillment in Christ. Shadow and Substance.

That’s is Covenant theology 101.

And all the other covenants build on that promise ultimately culminating in Christ.

So the Context of the Mosaic Covenant is God’s Covenant with Abraham. His promise to bless him, give him the Promise Land, and bless all the families of the earth through him.

So the ultimate end of the Mosaic Covenant was to bless Israel so that through them all the families of the earth would be blessed.

Well how would that happen? That’s where the promise of the Mosaic Covenant comes in.

Exodus 19:5-6 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.

Here was the foundational promise. The Mosaic Covenant promised Israel a Kingdom. A Theocracy where they would be the people of God and God would rule over them as their King.

That’s what it means when it says you will be my treasured possession. You will be my people. The people of my love, grace and salvation who get to enjoy the riches of my blessing.

They would be a holy nation. That is a nation, consecrated to God. A nation that exists solely for the glory and honor of the Lord.

And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests. In other words a royal priesthood. They would be kings who would reign with God in His Kingdom over the nations to turn them to the Lord and his ways.

And they would be priests. As priests they would worship God with holy and acceptable sacrifices, and they would stand as a mediator between God and the people. Well what people?

You shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine.

Remember God’s promise to Abraham. I will give you the Promise Land, I will make you a great Nation. That’s the I will bless you part. I will bring from you the Kingdom of God.

But then whats the other part. In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Israel was blessed with the Kingdom of God, and made a royal priest hood so that the blessings of God’s Kingdom would go forth to all the nations.

From the beginning, God’s purpose was to save the nations, and to do that Israel was to be a light.

To be royal priests proclaiming to the nations the Kingdom of God that they may turn from their idols and worship the God of Israel.

That’s the ultimate aim of the Mosaic Covenant. To save the world and bring the nations into God’s Kingdom.

Now you’re probably wondering, “What about the Law? What about all those commands?”

Well God said, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant then you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples.

The blessings of the Promise Land and the Kingdom of God were conditional on Israel’s obedience to the Law.

If they obeyed the Law, they would live long in the Land. If they didn’t the Land would spit them out.

And that’s exactly what happened.

The Babylonian subjugation and eventual exile was a direct result of the covenant curses of the Mosaic Covenant.

2 Chronicles 7:19-22 But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, "Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?” Then they will say, “Because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them."

Babylon was judgment for God’s people forsaking the Lord.

God had brought Israel into the Promise Land to bless them. To be their God and for them to be His people. To make them a Kingdom. A holy nation and royal priesthood through whom God would bless all the families of the earth.

But when the people of Israel forsook the Lord. They made the land unclean.

And so, just like Leviticus 18:28 promised, God made the Land vomit them out. He he exiled them to Babylon.

But where people get confused about the Mosaic Covenant. When you hear that the Mosaic Covenant was conditional, its normal to immediately assume that the Mosaic Covenant taught a works based salvation.

But the Mosaic Covenant was never talking about individual salvation. How a person is saved.

It Was talking about how Israel, as a nation, would enjoy all the blessings of God’s Kingdom promised to Abraham.

How they would have peace in the Land. Blessing in the Land. How they would remain a Kingdom of God’s special people and enjoy the blessings of that Kingdom from generation to generation.

As individuals, though, the people of Israel were still saved by faith. In fact, the way God expected the people as a nation to obey his commands and keep his covenant was by faith.

Deuteronomy 30:10 when Moses is re-giving the law to the wilderness generation before they enter to Promise Land to enjoy the blessings of God’s rest and Kingdom said For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, 10 when you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that are written in this Book of the Law, when you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

Did you see it? Israel would keep the commandments written in the law when they turned to the Lord with all their heart and soul.

If Israel wanted to obey, they would need to turn to the Lord in faith.

Does it not say even Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness (Rom. 4:3).

God was calling them to gospel obedience.

The Old Covenant was not a works based legalism for individual salvation. It was a national covenant with a nation.

God called Israel to obey, not with a carrot and a stick, not with legalism, but with grateful hearts. God called Israel to wholehearted covenant loyalty for saving them from Egypt and holding true to his promises.

We even see this when God gave the 10 commandments.

God doesn’t just start listing off commands. He says I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and then the first command, you shall have no other gods before me (Ex. 20:2-3).

God never intended the Law to be a stairway to heaven. He gave it to show Israel their need for a Savior.

How no matter how hard they tried, they could never keep the Law.

God did not give them the Law to say to themselves, “Ok. I’ll try harder,” trusting in a righteousness of their own.

He gave them the Law so that they would see their sin and realize, “I could never keep this.” The Law was meant to drive them to Christ.

That’s how, Paul says, the Law was our tutor and guardian. Every command pointed to our need for Christ and our inability to keep the Law and earn salvation by our works.

When they saw all the temporary laws about the animal sacrifices for their sin and how every time they slit the throat of that animal that the wages of sin was death, it was to drive them to Jesus’ once for all, perfect sacrifice.

You see, the saints under the Old Covenant were saved the same way the saints in the New Covenant are today.

Faith in the Messiah. Turning to the Lord and relying only on His grace.

They looked forward to a future Messiah who would save them from their sins. We look back to Christ who paid for every transgression of the Law on our behalf.

So there is a connection here. If the nation of Israel was going to enjoy the blessings of God’s Kingdom in the Promise Land then they would need to keep the Law.

But the only way that would be able to happen is if individual Israelites turned to God in faith.

And it is that tension that shows us the weakness or the fault of the Old Covenant.

The Law did not guarantee the Kingdom blessings God had promised Israel.

It did not save them. It did not forgive their sin. It did not give them the power to obey.

And in fact, it left them enslaved to their sin even while they were free from their slavery in Egypt.

Like Moses and the Prophets said time and again, Israel needed circumcised hearts. New hearts of flesh that loved God’s Law because His Law was written on their hearts instead of two tablets of stone way out there (Deut. 30:6).

Hebrews 8:7-9 “For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.”

The fault of the first covenant, was not with the covenant itself. The fault was with the dead stony hearts of the people of Israel who forsook the Lord, loved their sin, and broke the covenant.

What that meant is because of sin, the blessings and promises of the Mosaic Covenant would always be out of reach.

As long as they were dead in their sins the people of God would always disobey. Always forsake God. Always deserve the judgment of exile.

It was hopeless.

They needed new hearts. They needed to be redeemed from their slavery to sin, not just their slavery to Egypt.

Because remember the ultimate purpose of God blessing Israel with the Kingdom and making them a royal priesthood: To save the world and bring the nations into God’s Kingdom.

It was the redemption promised to Adam and Eve. An offspring who would crush the head of the serpent and restore the world back to Eden.

They needed a Messiah, a Royal Priest, to keep the covenant and bring all the blessings of God’s promises and Kingdom to God’s people once and for all.

That’s how the Mosaic Covenant pointed to Christ.

As Paul said...

Romans 10:4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Israel was promised a Kingdom of righteousness, peace, and blessing. But because of their sin, Israel failed to receive that promise.

And now here is what I want to do. I want to show you how Christ is the end of the Law. How He is the True Israel.

The True Offspring of Abraham who would bless all the families of the earth with the salvation of His grace and bring the people of God once and for all in to the fullness of God’s Kingdom promised in the Mosaic Covenant.

Jesus - The True Israel

Now many of you have probably never heard Christ called the True Israel.

But that is a theme that the gospels take pains to help you see time and time again.

And what I want to show you is that Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of the Mosaic Covenant. He is the one who obeyed. He is the one who established the Kingdom. He is the one who blesses all the families of the earth.

So to help you see that, I want to do two things.

First, I want to show you some specific ways the gospels present Jesus as the True and Faithful Israel.

As the One who obeyed God and became a blessing to all the nations.

And then I want to show you why that matters. What is the significance of Jesus being the True Israel.

Genealogy

Matthew starts his gospel with the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Right off the bat, Matthew is wanting you to see Jesus is the True Israel.

He is the promised King descended from David who would keep the Covenant on behalf of his people thereby guaranteeing all the blessings of the covenant to them.

And he is the promised Offspring of Abraham who would bless all the families of the earth.

Flight to Egypt

Then after he was born, Herod gave a decree to kill every boy under two years old to try and stop King Jesus from ever removing him from his throne.

But God sent an angel to Joseph to warn him to take Jesus and Mary and flee to Egypt.

Then Matthew says This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” (Matthew 2:15).

This is a quote from Hosea 11 about how God redeemed Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus.

But when you read that verse in context it says Hosea 11:1-2 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.

So here’s what Matthew is doing. He’s highlighting Israel’s unfaithfulness to the covenant after God called them out of Egypt to show how Christ, the True Israel, is the faithful Son of God who perfectly keeps the covenant and worship’s God alone in his sinless life.

Baptism

Next you have Jesus Baptism. Why did Jesus get baptized? John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance.

But Jesus was sinless. He didn’t have any sin of his own to repent of.

What Jesus was doing was identifying with Israel. He was replaying their history.

Remember the Exodus. God parted the waters and Israel walked through the Red Sea on dry ground to deliver them once and for all from their slavery in Egypt when he buried their slave masters under the water after Israel had passed through.

And then, when they entered the Promise Land, God parted the waters again, this time in the Jordan River, to bring his people into the Promise Land of His Kingdom and rest.

In his baptism, Jesus was saying he was the new Exodus.

He was Israel’s true deliverance. Not from slavery in Egypt, but from slavery to their sin.

And He was Israel’s true salvation. The door into God’s Kingdom and spiritual rest of the heavenly Promise Land. The New Heavens and New Earth.

Temptation

And then, after his baptism, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights to be tempted by the devil.

You’ll remember how Israel wandered the wilderness for 40 years.

God had brought the Exodus generation to the Promise Land, but after the report from the spies, the people of Israel shrank back in fear, and Hebrews tells us that they were unable to enter the rest of the Promise Land because of their unbelief (Hebrews 3:19).

And so they wandered the wilderness for 40 years, until that generation died for their lack of faith.

And in the wilderness Deuteronomy 1:31 says God carried Israel as a man carries his son.

And it is not by accident that when Satan came to tempt Jesus, two times he says “If you are the Son of God.”

And what happened? Jesus obeyed. Where Israel failed to trust God and obey His Word, Jesus the, True Israel, the True Son in the wilderness, quoted the Law 3 times from Deuteronomy and held fast to God’s Word.

After this, the Devil left him. Now this is significant because what did Israel do after the wilderness? They conquered the Promise Land under Joshua.

And did you know that Joshua is actually Jesus’ name in Hebrew.

What that tells us is that Jesus is the greater Joshua.

Because of his victory as the True Israel over Satan in the wilderness, Jesus is now the greater Joshua who will lead God’s people into the greater Promise Land of the New Heavens and New Earth once and for all.

Not just some land in the Middle East, but the whole world. Jesus said The meek shall inherit the earth.

So the temptation in the wilderness was Jesus’ first victory in his new conquest of the new Promise Land to drive Satan out of the world and establish God’s Kingdom to the ends of the earth like Joshua drove the Canaanites out of the land of Israel.

Fulfillment

Jesus is the True Israel. He is the fulfillment of the Mosaic Covenant. He is what the Old pointed to in a shadowy form.

But here’s what I want to do. Why does that matter? Sure its interesting theology but what’s the point?

Well remember the promise of the Mosaic Covenant.

Israel was promised to be God’s Kingdom. To be a Holy Nation in the Promise Land of God’s blessing to serve God as a royal priesthood.

And in this royal priesthood, they would worship God and be a light to the nations of God’s love and salvation.

Israel failed. But Christ as the True Israel succeeded.

And because of that God promised Him, in Psalm 110 You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.

In Genesis, we are told Melchizedek was the King of Salem, the King of Peace, and he was a priest of God Most High (Gen. 14:18).

He was a royal priest which makes Jesus’ priesthood a royal priesthood.

You’re starting to see why Christ is the end (telos, ultimate aim) of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

The Law demanded two things. Number 1. It demanded perfect obedience. Perfect righteousness according to God’s Law.

And under the Old Covenant, this was the King’s job. To keep the covenant on behalf of the people. As the King goes, so goes the Kingdom.

If the King obeyed God’s law and kept the people obeying God’s Law the blessings of the Kingdom rained down on God’s people.

Number 2 it demanded payment for sin.

The wages of sin, the debt owed to God for breaking God’s Law is death.

Leviticus 17:11 The life is in the blood…it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.

This was the Priest’s job. He offered sacrifices acceptable to God to atone for sin.

And in every way, Christ fulfilled the Law.

As our King, he lived a perfect and sinless life on our behalf. He kept the covenant and loved God with all of his heart mind soul and strength.

And as our Priest he offered his life as sacrifice on the cross to pay for our sins and satisfy the wrath of God on our behalf.

He fulfilled the Old Covenant and by fulfilling the Old, he inaugurated the New.

As the True Israel he received the Kingdom of God and as we will see in Daniel, this Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom. One that cant never be lost because it rests on Christ’s righteousness and not our own.

Under the New Covenant, God forgives our sins and circumcises our hearts.

He gives us new hearts with new desires that love God’s Law more than our sin.

And in Christ, we now receive all the blessings of Salvation and God’s Kingdom.

Remember, God Promised that in Israel, in Abraham’s offspring, who the NT explicitly identifies as Christ, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

That blessing is God’s grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Christ, God forgives our sin. He reconciles us to himself. He adopts us as his own sons and daughters. And he seals us with the Holy Spirit as a down payment of our inheritance.

Well what inheritance? The same inheritance promised to Abraham.

Galatians 3:29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

In Christ, we are heirs of the Kingdom. Does the Bible not say that all the promises of God find their yes in Him? Their yes in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 1:20).

The Kingdom of God where all things will be made new. Where everything broken and painful and dead about this world will be put away forever and ever never to be remembered again.

That’s the guarantee of the New Covenant. It is an eternal covenant. A guaranteed covenant.

That’s because the New Covenant is built on better promises than the Old, because its not conditional like the Old. The New Covenant doesn’t depend on our obedience.

It only depends on Christ!

He is the mediator. His blood, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot, is the blood that seals and guarantees the covenant forever and ever.

In the New Covenant God promised to be merciful toward our iniquities and remember our sins no more.

And he promised to write the Law of God on our hearts so that we might enjoy the blessings of his Kingdom forever and ever.

And he promised to be our God forever and ever and ever.

The New Covenant answers the fault of the Old because Christ kept it when we never could, and he fills us with His Spirit and writes God’s Law on our hearts to keep us in the blessings of His Kingdom forever and ever.

Follow the logic. If Christ is the True and Perfect Israel who kept the Covenant and fulfilled all the Law and the Prophets, then he has secured all the promises of the Old Covenant once and for all.

And know if we are in Christ, the we are Abraham’s offspring. We are grafted into the True Vine.

We become one with Christ spiritual offspring of the True Israel, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:13) which means all of those promises, that inheritance, the world, the New Heavens and New Earth that Abraham looked for, is now ours in Christ.

And now, in Christ, God says...

1 Peter 2:9-10 You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Where have we heard those words before? The Mosaic Covenant! This is exactly what God promised Old Covenant Israel when he promised them the Kingdom.

So it’s like Peter is saying, all of those promises, all the blessings of God’s Kingdom and all the rest God promised in the Promise Land, those are all yours in Christ.

God’s Kingdom is yours because you have trusted in Christ, the True Israel, the True King Priest who is the promised blessing to all the families of the earth.

If you believe in Christ. God loves you. He has forgiven you. He has reconciled you to himself once and for all to save you from your sin and the dead works of dead religion.

And now you are a chosen race. You are elected by God before the foundation of the world for salvation, no longer condemned in your sin as part of the human race dead in Adam, but a New Creation.

You are a royal priesthood. You are Kings and Queens who reign with Christ who through the preaching of the gospel bring the justice and righteousness of his kingdom to the nations.

Your priests of God on high offering to God Holy and Acceptable Sacrifices which Romans 12:1-2 tells us is our very lives.

You are a Holy Nation. A people consecrated to God by the blood of Christ dedicated entirely to his glory and honor.

And you are a people for His own Possession. You are God’s children who enjoy the blessings of his Love mercy and grace.

Or in other words, in Christ and through faith in his life, death, and resurrection, you belong to the Kingdom of God.

Conclusion

Jesus is the True Israel who fulfilled the Old Covenant to establish the Kingdom of God and bless all the families of the earth in the New.

Under the Mosaic Covenant Israel was promised a Kingdom of righteousness, peace, and blessing. But because of their sin, they failed to receive that promise.

But Jesus, the True Israel, fulfilled the Law on our behalf, and because of his obedience to the point of death, even death on a cross, God has given Him an Everlasting Kingdom and exalted His name above every other name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:8-11).

And the only way to enter that Kingdom is to be born again. To put your faith in Jesus’ sinless life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection.

By grace through faith, We are delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in whom we have redemption, and the forgiveness of sins (Col 1:13-14) to enjoy the blessings of God and his eternal Promise Land forever and ever and ever.

And that Kingdom will rule the earth. No matter how bleak or how lost or how wicked the world looks, Jesus will bring the blessings of God’s Kingdom to all the ends of the earth.

This is what the book of Daniel is all about. This is what the book of Daniel is looking forward to.

Daniel was written in exile. Israel was destroyed and it looked like the promises of God were lost forever.

Daniel isn’t a book about the end of the world. It was a book of anticipation. Of hope in the Messiah who would save God’s people and bring them into the blessing of God’s Kingdom once and for all.

Who would bring the New Covenant promised in Jeremiah and Ezekiel long ago foretold in Moses to answer the fault of the Old.

And by the grace of God Jesus came. He fulfilled the Old covenant down to the smallest jot and tittle.

And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed (Daniel 7:14 ).

Let’s Pray

Scripture Reading

Isaiah 49:1-6 Listen to me, O coastlands,

and give attention, you peoples from afar.

The Lord called me from the womb,

from the body of my mother he named my name.

2  He made my mouth like a sharp sword;

in the shadow of his hand he hid me;

he made me a polished arrow;

in his quiver he hid me away.

3  And he said to me, “You are my servant,

Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”

4  But I said, “I have labored in vain;

I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;

yet surely my right is with the Lord,

and my recompense with my God.”

5  And now the Lord says,

he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,

to bring Jacob back to him;

and that Israel might be gathered to him—

for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,

and my God has become my strength—

6  he says:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant

to raise up the tribes of Jacob

and to bring back the preserved of Israel;

I will make you as a light for the nations,

that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”