GYC SE 2009: More

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GYC Southeast

The Myths and Reality of the Old and New Covenants

Skip McCarty

The Myths and Reality of the Old and New Covenants, Part 1

Father, thank you for this opportunity to share this time together today.

I pray that your spirit will be with us in a very special way.

As we look at the subject of the covenant and what this means to you.

And while this is a heady subject, God, and it's not easy.

I pray that you'll somehow make that translation from our heads and the heart, and just the technical stuff we have to look at and apply it to our hearts.

We know if that happens, it'll be at the work of your spirit.

And so we're very dependent upon you, God.

We're dependent upon your Holy Spirit to do for us what we can't do for ourselves, to take this more than just academic knowledge and to somehow make a difference in our lives.

I know that no one's come to this conference just to gain a little knowledge.

They've come to have an impact on their lives, and we don't want this seminar to be any different than other things you're doing at this conference.

So, and we're dependent on you, God, for that.

I cannot do it, nor can just information do it, but your spirit loves to do it.

So thank you, we're depending on you and thanking you for this opportunity.

All right, here's what I would like to do.

How many here, how many Bibles do we have?

The way this works best is if there's participation.

So if we're up close together, I'd like to be passing this.

Actually, if we only have this many, it's not gonna be too difficult to hear each other, but they would also like it on tape because this is being audio taped.

I don't wanna just be up here talking the whole time.

What that's gonna mean is, you're gonna need to be reading.

Ordinarily when I do this, when I'm asked to go to a workers meeting and speak to ministers or to groups now, I ask for a minimum of 6 to 8 hours to do this.

And what I do want is for you to read the scriptures.

You read the scriptures, if you have your Bibles, and I don't know if this chapel has Bibles, I didn't see any, but in order to do that, we need to, those who are closest, and you can just hand the mic down, I'll have you guys read the scriptures if you're willing to do that.

If you'd rather not read a scripture, just pass the mic on to the next person.

And we're gonna start out by talking about what the issues are in the covenants, in the old and new covenants.

Why even care about the old and new covenants?

And so to start with, I just wanna kinda give you what I understand to be after my research in this area, what I understand to be the basic evangelical model.

You understand what I mean by evangelical?

The fundamental Christian understanding of the old and new covenants.

And I think we can get that rather quickly, but we need to nail this down because this is what makes the subject relevant, is when you see this and you can understand this.

So let's turn first of all, somebody, Genesis 15, let's start over on this side.

What we'll do, we'll just alternate sides with the microphone.

And somebody over here will be ready to go with Deuteronomy chapter 4, and verse 12 and 13, and 5, verses 2 and 3.

Did you get the outline when you came in?

Okay, so we're on page 1, we're starting right at the top, and we're gonna start working our way through.

I may need to, I'll be skipping some stuff later on, but for now, we'll just follow right on through and we'll just go bang, bang, bang and read several scriptures here together.

Genesis chapter 15, verses 6 and 18, as soon as somebody has that, if you would read that please.

And he believed in the Lord, and he accounted it to him for righteousness.

Then verse 18, on the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, to the river of Euphrates.

Okay, so this is a covenant of faith because Abraham believed God and God counted it to him for righteousness, and God made promises to Abraham, so it's a covenant of promise, and also a covenant of grace, theologians say it's a grace covenant, Because Abraham wasn't, in those particular instances we just read, wasn't asked to do anything.

God made certain promises to him, and that's the very nature of grace.

Okay, let's go to the next 1 now, Deuteronomy chapter 4.

And verse 13, and give just a moment for people to turn to that.

We're gonna read another covenant here that God made with his people.

Then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire.

You heard the sound of words but saw no form.

He declared to you his covenant, the tenth commandment, which he commanded you to follow.

And then he wrote the 1, 2, stone tablets.

Okay, so that's Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 12 and 13.

Deuteronomy chapter 5, and chapter, 2 and 3.

The Lord our God made a covenant with us at birth.

It was not with our fathers, but the Lord made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today.

Okay, so what did, what is this covenant called?

What's it called in the scripture we just read here.

The law, yes, and even more specifically?

It says he wrote, he declared to you his covenant with 10 commandments, which he ordained you to follow, and then he wrote them on the 2 shoulders of the earth.

Okay, so here we have another covenant that God made with his people, covenant that he made with Moses and Israel at Mount Sinai.

And this was a covenant, it was the 10 commandments were the kernel of the covenant.

Now there's more to it than that, but the 10 Commandments were the heart of it, and an emphasis on obedience.

And so there's something that looks not a perfect match here, but what does it also say about the relationship of this covenant God made to the relationship he made with their fathers.

So there's something different about this.

Now let's skip over to Hebrews chapter 8, New Testament.

And we're back over on this side, Hebrews chapter 8, let's just take a moment to turn to it.

And we're gonna read verses 7 through 9, and then verse 13, Hebrews chapter 8.

Verse 7, for if that first covenant had been followed, then no place would have been sought for a second.

The covenant's finally followed, and he says, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand and lead them out of the land of Egypt.

The Myths and Reality of the Old and New Covenants, Part 2

All right, we're gonna go ahead and begin.

So we can spend some time on this particular model.

First what I wanna do, I'm gonna explain the model to you and then we're gonna go back and We're going to take at least 2 of those very difficult passages we looked at.

We're going to take Galatians 4, and I hope we can do 2 Corinthians 3, which are 2 very difficult passages that directly refers to Sinai in a very kind of derogatory way.

And we're going to look at how that fits in this model and helps us actually get this model.

And you have here a chart that also occurs in the book.

And what we're going to do now is just kind of explain the whole process here.

But I wanna go back before the creation of our world and just think with me for a moment.

If we could zoom back the video or DVD and keep going back in segments until it was before the creation of anything.

Before there were any planets or any universe or any angels.

What would we have as far back as you could conceive?

If the Bible says God is love, how do we understand God?

We understand God in terms of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right?

I'm gonna kind of accelerate this just a little bit.

And if we could somehow observe Father, Son, and Holy Spirit interacting before they brought anything into creation, we would have, you would be watching, you'd be observing for the first time the concept of covenant.

Because the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were in covenant relationship with each other.

And what that means is they were totally given to the welfare of the other.

The statement Jesus made that all the law and the prophets is summed up in this, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, that essentially is the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

That's the way they relate to each other.

And so that's the origin of the everlasting covenant.

And as they began to bring creation into being, They just essentially enfolded creation into the covenant relationship they had with 1 another.

They made that same commitment to their creation, to the angels to begin with, and then ultimately to mankind, to humankind.

When Adam was created, Adam and Eve were created, God was in covenant relationship with them.

And so covenant isn't something that just began with Adam, it began eternally back.

That's why it's called in scripture everlasting covenant.

There are a couple places in scripture that refer to everlasting covenant.

I mean, there are 13 places, but 2 or 3 of them are very clearly referring to this primordial covenant, even before this earth.

And you have Adam, and this is the period I call this little thing here is the covenant of creation, where God's in covenant relationship with Adam and Eve, and then you have the fall.

And at the fall, you have God instituting or just adapting his everlasting commitment to the welfare of the human family into what theologians refer to as The covenant of grace.

The everlasting covenant is the covenant of grace, which is God now dealing with sinful creation.

This is the first time that we know of this ever happened in the universe.

That you have beings coming into existence.

But now Adam and Eve's children come into existence with sinful natures.

And as far back as we know, that's been revealed to us, in eternity past, this has never happened before.

And so God has a totally new situation, not something he didn't think about prior to that, not something he hadn't made provision for, but it's a totally new environment now where God has children coming into existence and it's just gotten worse as time goes on.

It gets even worse yet in some areas of, even in a city you have areas where you have children born into wonderful families and children born into ghetto situations where as Sebastian has been telling about, you're thinking gang from childhood up because that's the way you survive and it's just life.

And his covenantal commitment to his human family deals with all of that.

And These promises that constitute the new covenant, this is the promise that God made.

And the Bible says in order for a will to take effect, someone has to what?

And so when Jesus dies, essentially this becomes, Jesus' death is the center of gravity.

The effect of his death reaches all the way back, the forgiveness it provided reaches all the way back to the beginning and all the way forward.

And the death of Jesus, in a sense, we could say the new covenant is God's will.

And we are not only benefactors of that will, but Once we come to faith in Christ and are baptized, we become benefactors of that, not only benefactors of that will, but we become administrators of the will, become executors of the will.

And the first job that an executor has is to contact the people who are in the will.

If you had a relative died and left you in their will, you would get a notice from the executor of that will that you were in the will.

It wouldn't spell it out yet exactly what that's about.

They have to go through a legal process where they can reveal the details, but that's what an executor does.

Part of our mission is to let people know that God has these promises has made to them.

There's many people in the world today who do not know this.

They do not know that God has left them this.

Because of his covenantal commitment, every human being has this birthright.

Now we have to buy it just like someone can be, can have a provision in the will, but if they're never notified about it, if they never know anything about it, and people, and they can't find them anywhere, so they can't notify them, they can't claim their portion of the will, they could be billionaires and not know it and die in poverty.

So that's why God says, I want people to know it.

I'm inviting you to be an executor and go tell them.

Well, that's what's going on during the covenant of grace.

And then you have these various other, He makes a covenant with Noah and a covenant with Abraham and a covenant with, then it's Sinai.

And with each covenantal relation, with each covenant that God makes with his people, he's revealing a little bit more and a little bit more than the covenant that he revealed at the fall.

In the fall you have in Genesis 3.15, you have the, where God is addressing the serpent and says that I'm gonna put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed, and you're going to harm the heel of her seed, but her seed will eventually crush your head.

And that's essentially, these provisions are encapsulated in that first revelation that he gave.

And then with Noah, you have the first reference to everlasting covenant comes in Noah in Genesis 9.

And then you have with Abraham, you have even more revealed the role of faith, and God makes certain temporal as well as eternal promises to Abraham.

And then you have, when you have Mount Sinai, when God gave the covenant at Mount Sinai, this was the fullest revelation of his character he had ever given to the human race.

It's the first time that the Bible records where God tells people he loves them.

Doesn't mean they didn't know that, doesn't mean it wasn't passed on orally, but it's not explicit until Sinai.

He tells them he's a gracious God at Sinai.

And for the first time, he tells them he's a merciful God at Sinai.

So the covenant at Sinai was a huge revelation of the character of God.

And you just have a greater and greater revelation of the character of God until you come to Jesus, who is God, and his revelation, of course, is enormous.

So we have, and during the period of the development of the covenantal revelations that God's giving, we have the historical Old Covenant and the historical New Covenant.

And what determined the difference between the historical Old Covenant and the historical New Covenant?

Yes, that Jesus Christ came in the middle.

Jesus comes in the middle, and that makes everything new.

It makes the commandment to love God new and to love 1 another, makes that new, makes the promises new, makes everything new.

That's why these are better promises after Jesus comes and we actually see them fulfilled in his life.

They're the same promises, but they're even better promises.

Hebrew talks about the new covenant promises being better promises.

And often that is thought of as the promise that Israel made that I'm gonna keep your law as opposed to the new covenant that God's gonna put his law in our hearts and minds.

But God made this same promise to Israel that he would put his law in their hearts and minds.

Series

The Myths and Reality of the Old and New Covenants

The Myths and Reality of the Old and New Covenants, Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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