NoCovButGrace

[0:00] Thank you very much, and thank you again for your presence. If you will open your Bibles to Romans chapter 3, we are going to take a brief hiatus between studies that are usually verse by verse in one of the books of the Bible.

[0:15] And our intent is, without too much more delay, we will be engaging the epistle to the Hebrews. That is an absolutely stunning document.

[0:28] And I think you will be amazed at the things that are located therein, and will come to develop a whole new appreciation for the letter to the Hebrews. But in the meanwhile, we're dealing with some other issues that are kind of in between.

[0:45] And frankly, gentlemen, I consider this groundbreaking kind of material. And I hope it is for you, because I know it has been for me.

[0:56] And my discovery of this was realized a number of years ago, several years after I had become a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[1:07] What I am sharing with you now was completely unknown to me at that time. But I must confess that as a young student of the Scriptures, and I'm talking about young, in my early 20s, and as a student at Cedarville University at the time, engaged in different Bible studies and classes, etc., I must confess as I look back on it, there were certain things in Scripture that troubled me.

[1:35] Now, I can't say that they troubled me a great deal, because they didn't. It didn't dissuade me from my faith or anything like that. But I had so many loose ends that I was unable to connect, and there were a number of things that didn't seem to fit.

[1:54] And I'm not suggesting that everything fits and I understand it all now. No, no, I'm not saying that. But I am saying that through the discoveries, the likes of which I'm going to be sharing with you during this interim time, the Scriptures have come alive to me in a whole new way.

[2:14] And I've developed an entirely new appreciation for them, as I have come to understand how so many things fit and make sense that I couldn't make sense of before.

[2:27] And my attitude toward them was, I know there are answers out there, because I know the Bible is true, and I know it's not going to lead me astray, but I don't understand, I don't see how these things connect.

[2:40] And yet, I'm convinced God does not speak out of both sides of his mouth. So there have to be answers. And I am convinced that perhaps the greatest asset to realizing discovery is a hunger.

[3:01] A deep abiding hunger, a desire to know and to follow the truth wherever it leads you. And that was pretty much my attitude, and still is.

[3:11] And I think, frankly, that it's the only reasonable one to have, because our greatest commodity, our greatest treasure is truth. And the Scriptures are the fountainhead of that truth.

[3:24] So what I want to begin sharing with you today, in one essence, one sense is very basic and very elemental, but in another sense, it is really breakthrough stuff.

[3:35] And I want you to look, first of all, to Romans chapter 3, and we'll just look at verses 1 and 2, and your fingers are going to get some exercise this morning, because we're going to be in several portions of Scripture.

[3:47] And what we're going to be revealing, I trust, is the extremities involved in the separation between Jew and Gentile, and then, in their right out of the blue, the uniting of the two in this one body concept.

[4:12] This is of such critical importance, and has been missed, I mean missed, by so many, including myself, for many, many years, that, well, when you discover it, and when you get to the place of where you can say, hey, I get it, I see it, it is amazing how things start coming together.

[4:39] But until that time, there's just this plethora of loose ends out there, that are dangling, and you can't find a connecting point for them. You believe each one of them in and of itself, but you cannot see how it fits with other portions.

[4:55] And I think that this will be a key, at least it was for me. In Romans 3, verses 1 and 2, the Apostle Paul, who, by the way, is a Jew, emphatically a Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin, and he is called upon, given a special commission, to bear witness to Jesus Christ, to his fellow countrymen, Jews, and Gentiles alike.

[5:25] He is called to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. And in verses 1 and 2, he is addressing the issue about the position of the Jew as opposed to the Gentile.

[5:41] And in verse 1, he says, then what advantage has the Jew? What's the big deal about being a Jew, anyway? Or what is the benefit of circumcision?

[5:56] And the reason he inserts that is because circumcision was very much integral to the Jewish belief system.

[6:07] and it was performed upon every baby boy born into a Jewish family on his eighth day of his birth. And it was the seal.

[6:18] The removal of the foreskin of that eight-day-old baby was a token of the covenant that existed between the Jew, goes all the way back to Abraham, who was the first one circumcised, and God.

[6:34] And it's very, very important. Very critical. So he says, in answer to the question, what advantage has the Jew? What's the benefit of circumcision? What's the big deal about that?

[6:45] Great! In every respect. First of all, that they, that is the Jewish people, were entrusted with the oracles of God.

[6:58] And I might even add, they alone were entrusted with the oracles of God. And we'll look at that in just a moment, but I want you to go to verse nine of this same passage where we are, and his conclusion.

[7:16] I've got to skip some of these verses in between, but you can read them at your leisure. For time's sake, we've got a lot of references to cover. And by way of conclusion, he says, what then? In other words, how does all of this fall out?

[7:29] What's the bottom line of this? What then? Are we, that is Jews, are we Jews better than they? Not at all.

[7:40] For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. As it is written, there is none righteous, not even one.

[7:52] So, here he is making it very clear that insofar as their personhood is concerned, the Jews really know better off than the Gentiles because they are all under this thing called sin.

[8:06] And that is, of course, equally condemning. Now, then in chapter nine, and let's stay in Romans, come over, if you will, to chapter nine and see the case that he's making there.

[8:18] in verses one through five, he says, I am telling the truth in Christ. I am not lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit.

[8:29] I have great sorrow, unceasing grief in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh.

[8:45] Now, this is an expression of this enormous angst, this burden that he felt for his own countrymen whom he sees to be as spiritually blind as he was before the Damascus road experience.

[9:02] And what he is actually saying here is, if there were any way that I could forfeit my salvation so that they could have it, I would.

[9:13] Now, that's pretty strong, you know. Who do you know that you would give up your salvation for? That's what Paul is saying here. And verse 4, he says, Who are Israelites to whom belongs the adoption as sons, this is the legal term, the adoption of sons, and the glory, and the covenants, plural, covenants.

[9:43] This begins with the covenant God made with Abraham, that in you and your seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed. And it was reiterated to Isaac, his son, and it was reiterated to Jacob, his son, and a thousand years down the road, it will be reiterated to David in that royal line with the Davidic covenant.

[10:09] So we've got the Abrahamic covenant, we've got the Davidic covenant, we've got the Mosaic covenant, all of these were given exclusively to the people of Israel.

[10:22] And he says, to whom belong the adoption of sons, the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the temple service, and the promises, all of these sayings are Jewish, exclusively.

[10:42] Whose are the fathers? And when he uses that term, whose are the fathers, virtually every time this phrase is used in the New Testament, the fathers plural, it's not talking about the writer's earthly father one generation removed.

[10:59] No, no. The fathers always refers to the same big three. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are the fathers.

[11:11] And there are others that are regarded as patriarchs of the faith, but these are the big three. These comprise the very origin of the nation of Israel, who are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, and there he makes it clear that Christ is of these fathers only insofar as his flesh is concerned.

[11:40] That is, only insofar as his humanity is concerned, because humanity is flesh. But he, of course, came from the father, and the father is none other than God himself whose spirit impregnated the womb of the Virgin Mary, and so on.

[11:58] According to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Now, to just reinforce this a little bit, I want you to come back, if you will, to Luke's Gospel, chapter 1.

[12:15] Luke's Gospel, chapter 1. Very familiar portion. And let's look at verse 30, if we may.

[12:26] This is in connection with the angel's visit to Mary and the announcement and Mary's response to the Magnificat.

[12:37] And again, for time's sake, I'm going to have to omit a number of verses, but let's start with verse 30. Luke's Gospel, chapter 1, verse 30. The angel Gabriel appears to Mary and says, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall name him Jesus.

[13:04] He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David.

[13:18] Now, bear in mind, David, at the time Mary and Joseph were on the scene, David had been dead and buried for a thousand years.

[13:30] He's far removed from the picture. But there are descendants between David and Christ, all of whom came through that same line and that is the line of Judah and partly through Solomon and partly through Nathan.

[13:49] Mary came from the line of Nathan and Joseph came from the line of Solomon. So, Solomon, Solomon was a direct descendant of David, his son of David, as well as Nathan and then Joseph and Mary many, many generations later.

[14:08] So, in chapter 1 of Luke, look, if you will, at verse 54 and 55. This is referred to as the Magnificat.

[14:19] This is Mary's response to what the angel Gabriel told her. Now, first of all, you've got to realize that this girl, probably just a teenage peasant girl, initially was absolutely overwhelmed when this angel appeared to her and the first thing he said was, it's okay, Mary, don't be alarmed, fear not, fear not, angels always have to tell everybody that because they're usually scared witless and that would have been the case with her.

[14:46] And in verse 54, she's giving her response. Actually, it starts in verse 46, and Mary said, my soul exalts the Lord. But again, for time's sake, come down, if you will, to verse 54 where Mary says to the angel Gabriel in response, he, that is God, has given help to Israel, his servant.

[15:12] She's talking about the nation, Israel, in remembrance of his mercy.

[15:24] In other words, she's simply saying God has not forgotten. In remembrance of his mercy. And look at verse 55. as he spoke to our father, to Abraham and his offspring, that's Isaac and Jacob, and it also included Mary, many, many years down the road, because she's an offspring, and his offspring forever.

[15:52] She is doing nothing more than recalling and recounting the fact that this one who is to be born of her without her knowing, sexually, without her knowing a man, this one who is to be born is in reality the fulfillment of a promise that God gave to our fathers 2,000 years ago.

[16:17] Now, keep that context in mind and the time frame in mind. Let's come back now to Exodus chapter 19.

[16:30] Exodus 19 and verse 1 Now we're going back now we're going back approximately 1,500 years prior to Joseph and Mary, prior to the birth of Christ.

[16:55] And give or take a couple hundred years, I'm not real sure about the time frame because scholars are still arguing over the exact date of the Exodus and it's hard to pin down. But at any rate, we know that this is in the book of Exodus, this is shortly after the children of Israel came out of the land of Egypt and the birth of Christ is as much as 1,500 or 1,600 years in the future from what we're talking about here in Exodus.

[17:22] 19 In the third month after the sons of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. When they set out of Rephidim, they came to the wilderness of Sinai and camped in the wilderness and there Israel camped in front of the mountain.

[17:41] Now remember, they had been in Egypt for 400 plus years. Now Moses is bringing them out under the leadership of the Lord. In verse 3 we read, And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the sons of Israel.

[18:09] And I want to point out something that ought to be very obvious to us. The specificity of this audience. He's not saying, Moses, this is the message you are to take to the world.

[18:24] He's not saying that. He's not saying this is the message for all people. He's not saying that. He is saying, say this to the house of Jacob, to the sons of Israel.

[18:38] You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bore you on eagles' wings, brought you to myself. Now then, if, this is a proposition, God is making a proposition to the nation of Israel.

[18:55] Please understand, and I tried to make this point in the past because it's very, very critical. God is not imposing his law upon the Israelites. He is proposing, not imposing.

[19:12] If, and that's a big condition, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples for all the earth is mine.

[19:33] And you, exclusively, you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you, Moses, shall speak to the sons of Israel.

[19:48] Got that? Moses said, got it. I'll tell them. So, verse 7, Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words which the Lord had commanded him.

[20:04] Now, the question is, what's going to be their response? And, verse 8 says, all the people answered together.

[20:14] They had a consensus among the group. Everybody's looking at each other and saying, what do you think? What do you think? And people are nodding their heads. Yeah, sounds like a good deal to me. Let's buy into this. And they had a consensus.

[20:26] And the text says, and all the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. Now, that is tantamount to saying, Moses, you go back up the mountain and you tell God he's got a deal.

[20:42] We'll sign on. A covenant is a contract. God has proposed the contract and the terms of the contract. And he is presenting this contract through Moses to the children of Israel.

[20:58] And he is asking them, will you sign on to this? Will you agree to this? And we read on. Verse 9, And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, I shall come to you in a thick cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe in you forever.

[21:22] And then Moses told the words of the people to the Lord. And the Lord said to Moses, Go to the people, consecrate them today, and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments.

[21:34] This is ceremonial purification. And let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people, and you, Moses, shall set bounds for the people all around, saying, Beware that you do not go up on the mountain or touch the border of it.

[21:56] Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. And this is pretty heavy stuff here. This is a real solemn thing that is taking place. And we've got to come over now to chapter 20.

[22:09] Chapter 20 is the record of the giving of the commandments. And we're not going to reiterate them because I'm sure you are already familiar with them. And by the way, under the Pauline administration that is exclusively for those in the body of Christ, under the Pauline administration, the essence, the commands of all of the Ten Commandments minus one are reiterated in the writings of Paul.

[22:43] So he incorporates nine of the Ten Commandments in his writings to the churches. And the one that is omitted, very important and very strategic, is the Fourth Commandment.

[22:56] And that has to do with keeping the Sabbath, which was part of the Mosaic Law, and it is not part of the administration of the grace of God that God committed to Paul.

[23:12] We are not under obligation to keep the Sabbath. And there's a lot of misunderstanding there. Maybe we'll be able to deal with that later. And I want you to come over quickly now to chapter chapter 24.

[23:27] Yeah, still in Exodus, chapter 24. And let's look at verse 1. And then he said to Moses, Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and you shall worship me at a distance.

[23:42] Moses alone, however, shall come near to the Lord, but they shall not come near, nor shall the people come up with him. And then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the Lord and all of the ordinances.

[23:56] This is the second time around. And all the people answered with one voice and said, All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do. And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.

[24:10] Then he arose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the sons of Israel and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as peace offerings to the Lord.

[24:27] Now this is really important what's going to happen now. Verse six, And Moses took half of the blood, this is the animal blood, and put it in basins, bowls, and the other half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar.

[24:46] The altar is a representation of the presence of God. And then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people and they said all that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will be obedient.

[25:06] Now this is the third time that they've committed to that. Just a second, Joe, just a second. And Moses took the blood and he sprinkled it on the people, and said behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.

[25:26] That was the sealing, the ratifying of the covenant. That made it official. That is the present day equivalent of you and me drawing up some kind of a contract and we both sign it and then maybe we have it notarized to make it official.

[25:48] And once that is done, that becomes a binding agreement and both parties who signed on to that covenant are responsible for fulfilling the terms set forth in the covenant that they have agreed to by signing their name to it.

[26:06] So as the old saying goes, be careful what you sign. And always read the small print because the small print is almost never good news. So that's our equivalent today.

[26:16] But back then we had a very physical, visible way of enacting a covenant. And that was with animal blood and will not have time to go into the covenant that God made with Abraham and the severancing of the animal parts and the walking between them.

[26:35] That too is significant, but that's something else. Now, Joe, you had a comment or question. Well, that's a good question.

[27:04] Because the specifics are actually contained in the balance of Exodus, which includes the building of the tabernacle, and Leviticus, which is the handbook for the priests, and Numbers and Deuteronomy, that's going to be all part of the picture.

[27:19] And all I can say is that the initial part of the contract apparently was attractive enough to those people to be willing to sign on to it, and they're not given all of the details there, but God is telling them, this is the deal.

[27:34] If you will agree to my terms, I will be your God, and I will look out for you in a way that no one else could. And based on that, they were willing to sign on.

[27:46] Yeah, it says you obey my voice indeed. You obey my voice. In other words, they're trusting him, and they could do that, I think, because of what he just did for them, took them out of Egypt, that they would have some trust in his voice.

[28:01] Yeah, right. He's not asking them to buy a proverbial pig and a poke. He is saying, look, recall what I have done for you. How I have shown miracle after miracle to be operating in your best interest, beginning with bringing you out of slavery from the Egyptians.

[28:22] Now, do you think you can trust me to care for your needs and your future? And apparently they were convinced that they could. And they signed on, and the covenant is sealed in blood, and now I want you to come to Jeremiah 31, because this is going to be hundreds of years later, hundreds of years later, and approximately, in fact, it's going to be, it's going to be about a thousand years later from the giving of the law of Moses.

[28:54] years later. And what Jeremiah is going to be saying is approximately 600 years before the birth of Christ. So we've got an expansive time frame here.

[29:08] And in Jeremiah 31, and let's begin reading for time's sake again with verse 31. Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

[29:38] What is he implying? He is implying that he's going to provide a document that will supersede the old one.

[29:50] Now, up until this time, it isn't referred to as an old covenant. It's just referred to as a covenant. But the thing that is going to make the old covenant old is the introduction of the new.

[30:02] The old won't become old until the new replaces it. Then it becomes old. It's just like even here in this country. You know how everybody referred to World War I?

[30:12] Nobody called it that. Great War. Yeah, it was the Great War. The Great War. And then, when World War II got underway, they stopped calling World War I the Great War and they started calling it World War I.

[30:27] And now we've got World War II. So the thing that made it World War I was the reality of World War II. The thing that's going to make this the new covenant is that it is going to displace the old covenant.

[30:40] And I will sow the house of Israel. I'm sorry, verse 32. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers.

[30:52] That is, a thousand years earlier. Which I made with their fathers. In the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.

[31:03] My covenant which they broke. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. They fell into idolatry and every kind of licentiousness and sin and rejection unbelief.

[31:18] In fact, the main thing that God charged the nation of Israel with more than anything else was unbelief. Of refusal to trust in him.

[31:29] They trusted in the foreign gods, the foreign deities of their neighbors, the idols, and all the rest of that nonsense. Although I was a husband to them. In other words, I didn't flirt with any other nation.

[31:42] I was married as a father, as a husband to Israel, and I was a faithful husband to them. I never forsook them for any other nation, and yet they forsook me for other lovers and for other gods.

[31:59] So this new covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after these days, declares the Lord, I will put my law within them and on their heart, and I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

[32:19] And under this new covenant they shall not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.

[32:30] And again, these are all Jews. Don't make this all mankind. This is Israel. And I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. I will remember no more.

[32:42] Now, fellas, the question I have to ask you is this. When was this new covenant put into effect? Second coming.

[32:54] Second coming, Joseph. Okay? If the new covenant is put in effect in the second coming, then that means it is not effective now.

[33:06] That's right. Well, if the old covenant is has passed away in accordance with the tearing of the veil in the temple, separating the holy place from the most holy place, and the old covenant is defunct, and we are not under law, of course Gentiles never were under that law, then what covenant are we as Christians under now?

[33:32] what? Pat? You have the answer right here. What the new covenant did when Jesus died on the cross for our sins?

[33:43] If we believe that, then we will. Okay. The new covenant. When Christ said it is finished, what was he talking about? I think he was talking about the plan of redemption is complete in his death on the cross.

[33:57] And make no mistake about it, when Christ, the night before he was betrayed, took that cup and said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

[34:10] Remember that? And each of them drank of that cup, and I'm satisfied probably none of them really understood what was going on. They would later. So what I am saying, and this is a very important distinction, guys, I am saying that it was the death of Christ, that he ratified this new covenant with his own blood, not animal blood, with his own blood on that cross.

[34:38] He ratified that covenant and represented deity in doing so. But, when did Israel ratify?

[34:49] They haven't yet. They haven't. They still haven't. It is an unsigned document on the part of Israel. Consequently, the basis for the new covenant has been laid in the death of Christ.

[35:07] But the implementation of that covenant has not yet been realized. Revelation. And it won't be until Revelation.

[35:20] And that will be the establishment of the new covenant. covenant. So, we are a covenant-less people today. We don't belong as believers in Christ.

[35:31] We don't belong to the old covenant. We don't belong to the new covenant. It's a Jewish thing. Yes, it is a Jewish thing. We are an anomaly. We are a parenthesis.

[35:43] We are neither first covenant nor last covenant. We are members of the body of Christ. And so is every Jew who comes to faith in Jesus as their Messiah and Savior.

[35:57] Their mystery. They become part and parcel of the same body. And the middle water petition is broken down. This is an incredible concept. And we'll continue this next week, but we're out of time now.

[36:10] Dana. When Christ died, didn't that... Okay, so he introduced the new covenant.

[36:23] And then when we accept Christ, we are then accepting that covenant. So we are living under his covenant, whereas Israel is not the who had a covenant yet.

[36:37] Well, I don't want to be technical and split hairs, but I am satisfied, and I think we'll be able to see this, that we as believers in the body of Christ belong to an entirely different genre.

[36:52] We are not part of either one. We do derive direct benefits, of course, from the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, so that we are participants and recipients of the spiritual reality and benefits of that, in that Christ died for our sin and our faith and trust is in him.

[37:12] But insofar as the covenant is concerned, that is not applicable to us. Never was, never will be, and isn't supposed to be. It's an entirely different thing.

[37:24] And I cannot tell you what an eye opener this concept has been to me, and how it starts to make a whole lot of things fall together. And as the old saying goes, you ain't seen nothing yet.

[37:35] Wait until we get into Hebrews verse by verse, and this thing will stand out like a neon light. And you, as I will, I think, gain a whole new appreciation of these truths that just makes you want to praise the Lord all the more.

[37:51] Okay. Well, thanks, guys, for being here, and I appreciate your input, and we'll continue this thought next week, Lord willing. Thank you.