Strong Man Of God Blog

God's New Covenant

On January 28, 2014 in Holidays by Robert Kelley

Originally Posted January 10, 2014

Welcome to the New Year 2014! The New Year like many things new provides a sense of freshness, excitement, anticipation and the promise of great benefits to come. While writing my December 2013 blogs, the Holy Spirit renewed great joy in me concerning God’s New Covenant with Israel that in “the exceeding riches of His grace” He has opened up to Gentiles willing to enter into its terms and conditions through the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:4-9, NKJV)! The surpassing greatness of God’s New compared with the Old Covenant include superior promises that bless those who enter into it with Him both now in this present age and endless ages to come!

A covenant is a binding agreement. The Bible shows God making covenants with men of His choosing. While there is no formal stating of a covenant with Adam, the Lord acts toward him in a way that will become His covenant pattern with some of Adam’s future sons. Adam’s first sight upon coming to life from the dust was his Creator as Ruler (Genesis 2:7). God then transports His creature to a garden He had planted with the expectation of relationship and the man’s obedience (Genesis 2:8-17). Adam disobeyed God rejecting His rule. God brought the promised consequence but not without providing a future hope for making things right again (Genesis 3).

Of Adam’s future sons, Abram found favor with God and He approached him with a covenant of promise to make him a great nation of innumerable size and to give them a land to live in (Genesis 12:1-3, 15:1-21). Later, after changing his name to Abraham as ‘“a father of many nations,’” the Lord makes an ‘“everlasting covenant’” with him promising ‘“to be God to you and your descendants after you’” and to give the land ‘“as an everlasting possession.’” For Abraham and his descendants through Isaac it was required by God that every male be circumcised as a perpetual sign of the covenant which if they did not obey, they would be guilty of breaking it (Genesis 17:1-22, NKJV).

After bringing Abraham’s descendants out of slavery in Egypt as promised, God spoke to the people from Mt. Sinai concerning His covenant made specifically with them as a nation. He would be God to them and bless them as a holy people if they for their part would keep the covenant by obeying His commandments (Exodus 19:1-9; Deuteronomy 4:12-14, 5:1-29, 7:9-15, 26:16-19, 28:1-14). But the people disobeyed the first two of His Ten Commandments written in stone before Moses had come down from the mountain (Deuteronomy 9:7-21). And they continued to sin against the Lord for centuries breaking His covenant until He sent them out of the land in judgment--Judah last (2 Chronicles 36:15-23).

In the midst of judgment, the Lord announced through Jeremiah the prophet that in future days He would ‘“make a new covenant’” with Israel that would not be like the one in key provisions He made previously with their fathers which they had broken. God’s offer of Himself to be their God from the Old remains in the New Covenant but He would do something supernatural to enable the people to obey if they would as their part. He says, ‘“I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts and I will be their God, and they shall be My people,’” (Jeremiah 31:31-33, NKJV). So pervasive would be God’s inner work in each heart, no one would need to be urged to know the Lord on an intimate basis and He would forgive (remove rather than just cover) their sins (Jeremiah 31:34).

Hallelujah! The New Covenant like the New Year has come, inaugurated through the blood Jesus the Jewish Messiah shed on the cross in the first century AD we who believe in Him mark in Communion (1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Hebrews 9:16-22)! The Old Covenant established the Levitical priesthood to intercede for the covering of the people’s sins once per year. However, the Lord Jesus is God’s appointed eternal High Priest of the New Covenant who has offered Himself once and for all to obtain forgiveness and blessings for the saints of old as well as mortal men that believe in Him now (Hebrews 7:1-9:15, 9:23-10:18). Forgiveness and cleansing through confession and repentance is only a prayer away at all times (Hebrews 4:14-16; 1 John 1:1-2:2)!

Of the superior promises too in God’s New Covenant through Christ is the spiritual new birth caused by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who puts God’s law into our minds and writes it on our hearts (John 1:12-13, 3:1-8, 14:15-26, 16:12-15; Romans 2:17-29, 8:1-30, 12:1-2; 2 Corinthians 3; Hebrews 10:19-25; 1 John 3:4-9). Even so, mortals that enter into God’s New Covenant can still break it as it was broken in the Old through unbelief driven willful disobedience without repentance or apostasy to their eternal destruction (Ezekiel 18:19-32; Hosea 8:1-8; Mark 8:34-38; Luke 12:4-12; 2 Timothy 2:8-13; Hebrews 3:1-4:13, 6:1-12, 10:26-39). God’s foreknown elect stand by persevering faith in Christ to the end (Matthew 22:1-14; Hebrews 11:1-12:2, NKJV)! The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, “Who is on the Lord's side?”

Tagged With: God's superior New Covenant Through Christ

Jesus: The Jewish Messiah, Pt. 2

On January 28, 2014 in Holidays by Robert Kelley

Originally Posted 12/29/2013

Proud and arrogant professing Christians among the Gentiles have failed to heed the apostle Paul’s warning not to go there. With the rise of manmade Christianity the religion in the second century already there were anti-Semitic voices among church leaders. By the 4^th century Catholic bishop, Augustine of Hippo, through his allegorical method of interpreting Scripture taught that every promise made to Israel was instead for the Church as its replacement. This wretched and bigoted heresy took hold in Rome and was not forsaken by famous 16^th century Protestant Reformation leaders Luther and Calvin nor has it been by many that idolize Augustine and the reformers today. Apparently, reform of the Catholic Church by them was intended to only be selective since replacing Israel with the Church is a sin of magnitude far exceeding for example, “indulgences” in wickedness and destructive damage given the apostle Paul’s plain and specific warning in Romans 11:16-22. ^{1, 2}
How could they miss the fact that biblical Christianity is not some new thing separate and different from Judaism, but in fact, is its completion through Jesus the Jewish Messiah (Matthew 5:17-20)? The New Testament writers to a man certainly understood this to be true. The apostle John in the rich prophetic symbolism of the Lord’s Revelation, records ethnic Israel as His persecuted mother and Christians as “her offspring,” (Revelation 12:1-6, 13-17, NKJV). Interpreting God’s Word and especially prophecy as allegory where not warranted by the text itself is sin because He gave it to be taken literally or else why are we celebrating the prophesied birth of Christ and all that unfolded at His first coming as literal fulfillment? And why are we foolishly even waiting for His prophesied literal Second Coming if all biblical prophecy is obscured in the murky waters of allegory which is open only to speculative, subjective interpretation? ³

Just because a prophecy is hard to understand or has not yet been fulfilled, does not mean it is not to be taken literally! But with Israel something more sinister is going on as it concerns professing Christians denying God’s continuing distinct love and promised future blessings for them as His chosen people (Jeremiah 31:3). Well-known among those who have persecuted the Jews in history are professing Christians and church leaders; impostors and men quenching the Holy Spirit as loveless, self-absorbed religionists. Guilty professing Christians and so-called "theologians" who hold to the corrupt doctrine called “Replacement Theology,” purposely misinterpret and misapply prophetic Scriptures that plainly refer to God’s yet future dealings with Israel through her Messiah-King, Jesus, among their reasons to justify their humanly unexplainable contempt for and persecution of the Jews. Spiritually, as Revelation 12 makes plain, we understand that the historic irrational hatred of the Jews springs perpetually from Satan who has hated them as he hated Adam: because God loves them and through them has kept His promise of a Champion for us all to defeat him (Genesis 3:15; Deuteronomy 7:6-8)!

Nevertheless, how clever the author of confusion, Satan, who has thoroughly confused, divided and conquered much of outwardly professing Christianity and theologians with all of their many theologies crafted out of the arrogant pride of the sinful flesh who reject God’s Word as it is written, instead imposing their thoughts upon and twisting it to suit their shameful ends to include the former enslavement of my people and murder! God is about to destroy both corrupt theologians and their theologies who have deceived and led many astray in His judgment upon manmade Christianity the religion already underway and soon to be felt hard in the West just as it happened to the wise in their own eyes in all of the major judgments He has brought upon the Jewish people (Isaiah 29:13-14; Jeremiah 8:8-12; Matthew 15:1-14, 23:1-33; 1 Corinthians 3:18-23; 2 Peter 3:14-16). In those days, no faithful Christian will stand by the power of what he and others he reveres think about God and His Word. But he will stand by what he knows of God and His Word in his faith tried and exercised in God’s strength supplied through His crucible of painful life experiences (Romans 5:1-5; Hebrews 5:12-6:12, 12:1-11; 1 Peter 1:1-9; 2 Peter 1:1-11). The word “theology” will never be used again!

Clearly, Jesus was born King of the Jews, believed He was during His life, died, rose again and returns the same (Luke 1:30-33, 22:14-18, 28-30, 23:1-3, 35-43, 24:13-49; Acts 3:13-26). As powerfully depicted to John in the Lord’s Revelation, when He comes, many crowns adorn His head representing the multiple realms of dominion from earth to Heaven His rule will encompass not the least of which will be the nation and people of ethnic Israel in fulfillment of every Bible prophecy declaring it to the glory of God the Father (Isaiah 33:17-24; Jeremiah 30:1-9; Hosea 3;1-5; Amos 9:7-15; Matthew 28:18; Revelation 11:15, 19:11-16)! Truly, the entire cultural character of the Lord’s global millennial reign is Jewish since the nations must come worship Him at Jerusalem during “the Feast of Tabernacles” with those that do not being severely punished (Zechariah 14:16-19). And even with all of the nations (ethnicities) of those saved bringing their glory into the new eternal order after the Lord’s millennial reign, things honoring of Jewish heritage such as “New Jerusalem” as the true eternal city, a wall of “twelve gates” with the names of Israel’s “twelve tribes” written on them and twelve wall foundations with the names of Messiah’s twelve exclusively Jewish apostles written on them are prominently displayed forever (Revelation 21:1-14, 22-27)!

It is for good reason during this season of grace that the Lord left us no images of Jesus the Jewish Messiah since men are called to look to Him in faith and worship in spirit and truth (John 3:16, 4:20-26, 20:24-29). Therefore, let all who have tried to make the Lord Jesus over into their own ethnic image repent! Repent also from every form of Jewish bigotry. For with reverence and an overflowing debt of gratitude we Gentiles that are saved are to love the people of the Lord’s ethnicity caring for their physical welfare as fellow saints and longing for the salvation of the unsaved as those that have been grafted into their olive tree (Romans 15:25-28). None of this means we are to look the other way when individual Jews or Israel now in the land sin. The Lord Himself is sober about His own people calling those that oppose the Gospel and persecute persons who have turned to Him, “a synagogue of Satan,” (Revelation 2:9, 3:9, NKJV). Finally, let every guilty soul repent from holding to “Replacement Theology” understanding that your corrupt thinking is not only heretical, but also denies and makes a mockery of Israel’s literal hope in Jesus the Jewish Messiah expressed by godly Zacharias in his Holy Spirit inspired prophetic utterance over his son, John, we count precious at Christmas (Luke 1:67-80).

1 For additional insight on Replacement Theology as a heresy, see the article in the May-June 2013 Zion’s Fire Magazine, Replacement Theology: Disdaining God’s Character by David Ettinger though in it, I was saddened to learn that some contemporary thinkers I greatly admire through ignorance of biblical prophecy cannot see modern Israel’s place in God’s steadily unfolding work paving the way for the return of Jesus the Jewish Messiah.
2 To learn more about Augustine of Hippo see the Wikipedia Encyclopedia article of the same title.

3 See the article featured at the Web Site, Bible Study Tools, The Rise Of Allegorical Interpretation.

Tagged With: The Church does not replace Israel

Strong Man Of God Blog

Robert Kelley's weekly instruction, observations and reflections inspired by the Lord posted each Sunday night.

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