Covenants and Prophecy

Last week, I gave a sermon that was the first of a series of sermons on prophecy. And many people were surprised at how I started to talk about prophecy. Because where we started was in Genesis and went through the whole story of Adam and Eve and how they had a perfect relationship with God, they disobeyed God, they ended up kicked out of Eden, and from that moment on, they had a corrupted nature. All of the natural world was corrupted, and humanity came into the rule of Satan.

And in those events, there's one statement made by God that sets up what He's going to do, and that statement has to do with a Messiah that would come. And it's considered the first good news. I gave you a Greek word, you know, proto-Evan-Gellium, but it just means the first good news. And that is the foundation of everything that God is doing. That's all prophecy from God is based on that. And as I said so many times, we get so caught up in the prophecies about what Satan's doing, and we get discouraged, we get afraid, when the point is God controls the outcome of all this.

And when we looked at certain prophecies then about the coming of Christ in the Old Testament, and we looked at how they're interpreted in the New Testament and showed how the reason that those who believe in Judaism don't accept Jesus Christ, they don't have the New Testament. They don't believe in the New Testament. The New Testament interprets what those prophecies mean. And as we saw, the New Testament interprets that the Messiah comes twice. The first time as the suffering servant, and the second time to rule over all the earth. That's why the Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah, even Peter at the end of Jesus' life there before he was killed and resurrected, thought, what?

I brought a sword, we're bringing down the Roman Empire, and you're going to rule. He didn't understand he comes twice. They did afterwards, after he was resurrected, and they saw him and communicated with him and realized who he really was, that the Christ comes twice, he's the eternal Son of God, then all of a sudden they changed how they saw the Old Testament. And one of the things we looked at was the covenant made to Abraham, in which God told him that he would bless all the nations through his seed.

And then we looked at two places in the New Testament where that is quoted, and it's quoted to mean that seed isn't all the Israelites or all the Jews. That's not who blesses the world. It's one seed. It's Jesus Christ. So we looked at what Paul said, we looked at what Peter said, and they both are obvious that this one seed is how that covenant is ultimately fulfilled.

Now, there were lots of promises to the physical descendants of Israel. We'll talk about that in a minute. But that is the center, then, of the Abrahamic covenant. And in that covenant, we have, then, an explanation of the prophecies of God's plan. God made a covenant with David. We're not even going to look at that today. But in that covenant with David, the whole basis of the covenant made with David was who the Messiah was going to be.

He was going to be a Jew. He didn't come from Moses and his family. They were Levites. They were going to come through David and his family. And so the whole story of the Old Testament comes down to this is the basis, this is the foundation of all these things happening. And everything that God is doing is, here's what I'm doing to change what happened in Eden. He's going to change it. As we go through these prophecies, we'll have to end up in Revelation where He does change it. New Jerusalem comes to earth.

He changes it. And the center of, or the basis of what we need to look at before we look at all the other prophecies is what God's doing. So that's what we looked at last time. Now, we didn't go through all the details of the Abrahamic covenant, but we just looked at that one promise and how that promise ties back into Genesis 3.15 and goes all through the Old Testament, the New Testament, and ends up with the end in Revelation.

Now we're going to look at other covenants that were made. In the Bible study, we even mentioned, and I'll bring, I have a handout to give you, that shows all these different covenants that God has made throughout history that actually are prophetic. They're all elements of what's going to happen next, what's going to happen next. So what is a covenant? We talk about covenants today, and in the ancient world, it meant the same thing except it was very, very serious. A covenant was an agreement between two parties in which there were promises and obligations.

If you broke the promise or broke the obligation, then you were guilty of a very serious crime, very serious crime. When you gave your word for something, now there were signs. There were signs they would do. Today, well, we don't do it anymore. It used to be a handshake.

It used to be, you shook hands. That was a sign. When I was a kid, I could remember an old man had to say, his handshake isn't worth anything and nobody would ever make an agreement with that person. Because that was the sign. We made a shake on it. You made an agreement, you shook on it, that was it. That's all you had to do. That's the sign that we made an agreement, we made a covenant.

Now all the covenants that God makes with human beings, they aren't covenants between equals. God initiates all covenants through His grace. In other words, no human being says, I tell you what, my lawyers will get with your lawyers and let's make an agreement. It doesn't work that way. God says, I'm going to make a personal agreement with you and that's going to be part of what I do because He makes it with individuals.

He makes it with groups, too. We're part of a covenant that He's made with us as a group. Ate you at Israel. But it all goes back to the Abrahamic covenant. And so He makes these agreements in which He says, here's what I will do and here's what your response must be.

What's interesting is, as human beings, sometimes our response is not what it's supposed to mean. He does what He's going to do anyways. Israel's response throughout their history, much of the time, wasn't what God wanted. And yet Mary was there at the right time, in the exact place He said it would happen, at the exact time, and God put Jesus in her.

I mean, the Jews had become... He had already destroyed the northern ten tribes by the Assyrians. He let the Babylonians come in and take out the Jews and then brought them back. Why did He bring them back? Well, they're not doing their part, but I'm going to do my part.

Now this gets a little bit more complicated when we get into salvation because we can lose it. And God is not working directly in the Jewish nation today or the Jewish people like He used to. He's not. Now that doesn't mean they're lost. It doesn't mean He's throwing them away, but He's not working with them. They haven't kept the covenant. They have denied the Messiah. They haven't kept the covenant. So He's not working with them the same way anymore.

So let's look at the covenants that come out of the Abrahamic covenant and we'll be able to understand the prophetic message, once again, as the foundation of what He's doing. And it all goes back to Genesis 3.15. So we have to talk about then what we call the Old Covenant, sometimes it's called the Sinai Covenant, that God made with the descendants of Abraham.

With the descendants of Abraham. So we're going to be jumping through some Scriptures. I'm trying not to get bogged down into...I mean, I had like 20 pages of notes, so I got it down a whole lot less than that.

In some cases, we're just going to look at a couple verses to capsuleize what we need to look at. When we do, we will keep seeing this is what God's doing. It leads to another series of events. Then He does something else, at least another series of events. And in the chaos of Satan's world, God's doing something that most people don't even notice, but it all ends up with Satan being removed. It all ends up in the same place. It all ends up with Jesus Christ on earth, but it had to end up with Him coming the first time too.

And that means there had to be physical people there with a physical mother, and there had to be descendants of David. Let's go to Exodus 2 and look at what God says. Let's look at this too. We're in the story of how the Israelites, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they end up going into Egypt over the course of a couple hundred years, they end up being slaves. And now they're slaves in Egypt thinking they're abandoned by their God.

And in verse 23, now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out, and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. Now listen what it says here, because this shows you the thought process of how God is doing things. So God heard their groaning, and God remembered—it's not like he had forgotten—the point is, God said, I have a promise here, I have an obligation, I made an agreement. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and God looked upon the children of Israel, and what did he do?

He acknowledged them. He said, yes, you're the descendants of Abraham, but I need to take care of this. Now, we don't have time to go there, but if you go into Genesis, there's a prophecy that the descendants of Abraham would end up in Egypt, and God would have to bring them out. It's there. He said, yeah, you'll end up there, but I'll bring you back. And the time has come—like I said, it's hard sometimes, especially in English—it's not like he forgot them. It's like, ah, it's time now.

It's time that I take the next step in what I'm doing. The Messiah won't be born in Egypt. And he's a long ways away. You know, this is more than 1,400 years before Jesus comes, and he decided to bring them out. So he does. So it goes back to those promises. It goes back to Genesis 12, which we read last time, about his seed would bless all nations, but all said he would make a great nation of the descendants of Abraham. So those people were always being taken care of by God. So let's go to Exodus 19.

Exodus 19. Verse 1, Israel now is at Mount Sinai. So we're jumping through the history, and you know this history. Moses comes onto the scene. God uses him and Aaron to lead them out. The Red Sea opens. They end up in front of Mount Sinai.

And God shows up. The mountain's on fire. It's rumbling. They hear what they call thunder, as these people probably at this point numbering in the couple of million or more are there. In the third month, verse 1, after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day they came to the wilderness of Sinai. For they departed from Rephidim and came to the wilderness of Sinai and camped in the wilderness so Israel camped before the mountain. 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 to the children of Israel.

Now these people are here for a very specific reason. I brought them here. You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you in eagle's wings and brought you to myself. He says this was all miracles that got you here, and I brought you here for myself. Now therefore, if you indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you will be a special treasure to me above all people, for all the earth is mine.

And you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel. So he tells them, I'm going to make you a special people and a special nation, which is exactly what he told Abraham in Genesis 12. You will be a special nation, a special nation. He says, I'm here, I remember Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, I remember the promises I made, this is part of the covenant.

And so you're here at this point in time. And it's here where he gives them the Ten Commandments. Now, there are a lot of things God gave Israel in terms of laws and ordinances, and I thought about giving a whole Bible study on that, and I'll wait to sometime in the future to do that. How do we go through the differences between, okay, we keep some of the things that God told Israel, we don't keep other things.

How do we make that differential? How do we decide that? How do we know that? And it's important to understand that, why there are some things we do and some things we don't. I always use this as the simplest example. People sometimes come into our community and they don't know why we don't wear tassels. They'll be wearing tassels, and we don't kick them out if people wear tassels. Why don't you people wear tassels? And I just go to the Scripture. God commanded them to wear tassels. He said, See, I will make a commandment of God.

And I said, I'll always ask them what for? It helps me have a better relationship with God. Well, let's read what it says. He told them the word tassels because he said, You just can't remember the law, so wear these tassels so you'll remember the law. Under the New Covenant, the law is written to our hearts and minds. So if I have God's law written on my heart and mind, and I can't remember it, I'd better wear tassels. But I shouldn't have to. So we have to understand the difference between the old and new covenants.

But there's huge parts of the old covenant, one being the Ten Commandments, that carries over into the new covenant. Exodus 34, so we'll skip ahead a little more here, going through lots and lots of biblical history in a very short period of time. Exodus 34.

And let's just read verse 27. Then the Lord said to Moses, Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words, I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. He says, I've now made a covenant. That's why we call it the old covenant, because there's a new covenant. I think properly you can just call it the Sinai covenant. He pulls all the descendants of Abraham together and says, I'm now making a covenant with you. I'm anyone with Abraham, I'm still doing the Abrahamic things. In fact, once again, why is it that God at times didn't destroy Israel when they rebelled? Because of promise he made to Abraham. And that promise guaranteed that the Messiah would come from his family. So you have the basis of all prophecy is, I'm going to make this work in spite of you. He says, so he was there with the Lord for forty days and forty nights. He'd either ate bread or drank water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant the Ten Commandments. This is the second time he had to go do it, because first time he broke them, remember? He came down and they were having a big party, and he was just so furious and so dejected by what he saw. He threw down the tablets and broke them. So God said, you got to come up and get another one set. So he brings down the next set. This is the covenant. Now added to that covenant would be all kinds of things, and it would be written in the book of the law. He was told to write these things in a book. And Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy is the book. So we have the book, we have the tablets, and all has to do with the covenant.

That's why there's the Ark of the Covenant, that Israel had to carry around with them every place they went, that went into Israel when they settled there and was in the temple with Solomon's Temple. The Ark of the Covenant contained the Ten Commandments, plus some other things. Some manna, arid's rod, that even though it was a dead piece of wood kept blooming flowers on it. That was all in that Ark of the Covenant. God says, remember, you and I have an agreement. And they were given that land because of the agreement.

This is why the Islamic world, the Christian world, and the Jewish world cannot settle the problems in the Middle East. Because one book says it was given to the descendants of Ishmael, and one book says it was given to the descendants of Jacob. And they both believe the other side has stolen it from them. As Christians, we believe that there's a big chunk of land there that belongs to the descendants of Israel. Now, that doesn't mean the other descendants of Abraham, as I said before, don't have promises made to them. There are promises made to them. And some of us land. It's just not that land. And they're going to fight about it until Christ comes back and fixes it. But this all goes back to these Covenants. It all goes back to Abraham, and it all goes back to Moses. So God had a historical, prophetic purpose for Israel. The first one is the Messiah was going to come through Abraham's family. And I keep saying that because that's so important. And we covered that last time when we went through Genesis 12, and then we went to Acts 3 and read where they said, look, this is who he is. And we also went to Galatians. Peter says it also. So we know that the Messiah had to come through that family. And God, the history of the Old Testament is always, that's going to happen. That is going to happen. It doesn't matter what the Amalekites do, or the Moabites do, or the Assyrians do, or the Babylonians do. It doesn't matter what all Satan's doing. It doesn't matter. In the end, Messiah came through those people at that time, just like He said it would. That's why this is what we have to look at sometimes, because we realize, yeah, God is actually in charge. And God's going to take care of things. And it may be difficult for us, just like it has been for people who are following God all through history. It wasn't easy for Abraham at times. Abraham and Sarah had a hard time at times. But we all know their names, don't we? Because God made sure their names were recorded. Secondly, Israel was to be a witness of the true God to all people. We just read in Exodus 19. That's part of the reason that they called Him. You were to show, you were to be my example to the world. In fact, there's times where He's so upset with them in the later years of Israel and Judah that He says, you've profaned me to everybody else. You've made a mockery out of me to everybody else. And you were supposed to represent me. And that they were also to preserve the teachings of God. They were to preserve the book of the law and the rest of what would become the Old Testament. And you know, all through history, those people died to do that. Even up into modern times in just the Jewish community. They died to protect those books. So they have kept them. Look what it says in Deuteronomy 4. Deuteronomy 4. I know I'm going through quickly, but we're just looking at high points. It's like this huge Old Testament story with all these different threads. But this is the foundation of all of it. This is what everything's built on. Deuteronomy 4. Verse 5. And I'm going to read the book of Deuteronomy 4. And I'm going to read the book of Deuteronomy 5. And I'm going to read the book of Deuteronomy 4.

The Bible says, is that God has given you laws and a structure. He's given them a He's given them a government. That government was like no other government in the world because the chief executive officer was God. God was the king of Israel. Now, he had other king under him, but they were to worship him as their king. Therefore, be careful to observe them, verse 6, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is wise and an understanding people.

For what great nation is there, and God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whoever reason we may call upon Him. He says, why would even God allow us to do this? We get to represent Him. They were to be an example of God. It's very interesting that once the other tribes of Israel lost their identity, the Jews, there's been attempts at genocide on Jews for a couple thousand years to destroy them as a people because they're supposed to be the physical representatives of God on earth, but they denied the Messiah.

And that's because there's a problem with the Sinai covenant. So we have to figure out what the problem was with the Sinai covenant. I mean, there was no problem with the Abrahamic covenant, but something failed in that Sinai covenant. What was it? Deuteronomy 30, God told them what it would be. Looking at a prophecy here that hasn't yet taken place. See this is our foundation now. What happened to the Sinai covenant? Elements of it still exist. Some elements don't. We keep the Holy Days as part of the Sinai covenant. It makes perfect sense to do it as Christians. If we understand the covenant reasons and how each one is a step in what God is doing, each one contains elements of the one before it.

There are elements of the covenant you have with God that comes from the Abrahamic covenant, or we wouldn't have this agreement with God. He's still carrying out the Abrahamic covenant. There's even elements of the old covenant. They're still being carried out. But what was wrong with it? Deuteronomy 30 verse 1. Now, it's shocking them to pass. Now, they're standing at the edge of the Promised Land. They're about to go into the Promised Land, and they receive a renewal of the covenant. God renews the covenant with them. But before He renews the covenant, and you go clear back to chapter 28, He talks about blessings if you keep the covenant and cursings if you don't.

If you keep the covenant, you have a great land to live in. It's going to be wealthy. Kids are going to be great. I'm going to take care of you. That's what's going to happen. And there are all these physical blessings of being in the land. He says, and if you don't, your land's not going to feed you. You're going to work yourself sick. You're going to be miserable, and other people are going to impress you all the time.

And He gives all these blessings and cursings. They're concerned with the covenant. Then He renews the covenant with them. Now, you're probably pretty excited if it is right at this point. You've wandered around for 40 years, or you were born in the wilderness. If you were wandering around in the wilderness, you could be up to 60 years old. It's like we're finally going in. We're going to go receive this remarkable covenant. So they're all excited, and you bet they're all saying, we'll keep this covenant.

We'll never lose this covenant, not after what we just learned after spending all that time in the wilderness and watching all the old folks die off who just wanted to be there. They were the slaves. They died off. Some of the younger, some of the older people say, I remember as a child what it was like to be a slave.

And now here you are. God says, you do this, you get the blessings of the covenant, you do these things, you'll get cursings. They all say, yes, we accept the covenant. It's just a renewal of the Sinai covenant. And then he says to them, verse 1 of chapter 30, Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, he says in the course of time, there are times you'll sort of keep the covenant, I'll give you blessings, and there's times you won't keep the covenant, and I will curse you.

Which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you. Why do you, why do you, we haven't even gone into them, the promised land yet. And you're talking about when you drive us out of the promised land. Hundreds of years later, they were, the Assyrians of Babylonians, and you return to the Lord your God and obey His voice according to all that I have commanded you today, you and your children, with all your heart, with all your soul, that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you.

And if any of you were driven out to the farthest part under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you. Then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it, and He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. And then verse 6 tells us when this happens. Some say, well this happened when the Jews returned in 1948. No, that's not when this is fulfilled. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, that you may live.

Circumcision, physical circumcision, was the sign of the covenant, a manna covenant and the Sinai covenant. All the male members of the family had to be circumcised, which with the entire family now is an agreement with God and in a covenant with God. And He says at that time, I'll have to change your hearts and minds.

I will change your hearts and minds. Something different has to happen because there's a problem with the Sinai covenant. We know in Numbers what it was. Numbers 11. I'm going through some scriptures quickly here, but this is all in that story flow of Israel coming out of Egypt, going through the wilderness, coming into the Promised Land. Numbers 11, verse 16. So the Lord said to Moses, because Moses was having a hard time, he couldn't get all the people of Israel. He was just worn out. He was trying to take care of this wondering nation, and he just couldn't solve the problems.

So the Lord said to Moses, Gather to be seventy men of the elders of Israel, who you know to be the elders of the people, and officers over them. Bring them to the tabernacle of meaning, that they may stand there with you. Then I will come down, and listen to what it says, and talk with you there, and I will take the Spirit because Moses had been given the Spirit of God.

I will take of the Spirit that is upon you, and will put the same upon them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear it yourself alone. And so these seventy men come together, they are ordained by Moses, and they receive God's Spirit. And a couple of the men that didn't make it to the meeting, only sixty-eight of them made the meeting, the other two were trying to get there.

Suddenly, they changed, and they started preaching in the streets. And Joshua shows up, typical Joshua, you know, always the guy looking for a fight, right? He shows up, runs into Moses, and said, there's some guys preaching in the streets, you want me to go shut them up? And what we have is his response in verse 24. Let me see, let me get what I want to go to here. First, because I just told you that, verse 26 talks about the two men who remained in the camp. And of course, Joshua shows up in verse 23, and he says, forbid them, Moses, stop these men they're preaching, and they're not even Levites.

And Moses said to him, are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them. He says, I wish all the people, all the descendants here of Abraham, the Holy Spirit had been given to them, but the Holy Spirit was not given to all His right. Some had it, some did not.

We're starting to understand that there is a flaw, not a flaw, a fault. The New Testament explains what the fault is. There is a fault in the Sinai covenant, and the New Testament explains exactly what it is. It's not God's fault, but there's a fault. Let's look at a prophecy in Ezekiel then. So now we're jumping ahead hundreds of years, and Israel has at times sort of followed God, lost their way, became pagan, got punished. The blessings, the cursings, the blessings, the cursings kept happening over and over again, as I said, until they would be taken from their land, scattered.

Some have come back because of the promise of the Jews are there today because of the promise that the Messiah would be there. So they were brought there. Now they were scattered again and they've been brought back again. And they were brought back in 1948, but that has to do with they have to be there for the second coming.

We'll get into that. But they have to be there for the first coming. So they were. But Ezekiel 36 talks about when they will be regathered as a people, just like it says in Deuteronomy, so that the Spirit can be given to them because the Spirit wasn't given to the great majority of Israelites. So all throughout their history. 36 verse 16, Ezekiel says, Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me saying, said a man, when the house of Israel dwelled in their own land, they defiled it by their own ways and deeds.

To me, their way was like an uncleaness and a woman in her customary impurity. Therefore, I poured out my fury on them for the blood which they shed in the land, and the idols which they had defiled it with. So I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed throughout the countries.

I judged them according to their ways and according to their deeds. And when they came to the nations wherever they went, they profaned my holy name. And they said to them, these are the people of the Lord. And yet, they're not in that land anymore.

They're Lord. And you know what the Assyrians and Babylonians most said? That God of Israel is a weak God. Yeah, there's a God there, but He's a weak God. But I had concern for my holy name. God sometimes carries out these covenants, like I said, in spite of human babies. For I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel was profaned among the nations wherever they went. Therefore, according to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went. And I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations which you have profaned in their midst.

And the nations shall know that what? I am the Lord. They'll know that God makes promises and He keeps them, even when people fail. When I am hallowed in you before their eyes, for I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you to your own land. That's a physical promise to bring physical people to the land.

And that land is around Jerusalem. It goes actually from the Nile to the Euphrates when you read the land that was given to them. So this has to be when the Messiah comes back. It's not going to happen anytime before that. The Messiah is going to come, and we're still in the Old Covenant. We haven't talked to the New Covenant yet because that's all there's a whole lot of promises that apply directly to you and me and those who are part of the church.

But these promises are, you get the land they promised Abraham, you people messed up, you're going to get scattered all over the place, just like I told you in Deuteronomy. You don't even know who you are. We'll bring you back, and I'm going to put you there, and you'll get the land, and guess who they'll serve? Jesus Christ, who will be King of kings on earth at the Second Coming.

See, the First Coming, Second Coming are all part of these prophecies. They're the foundation, how God fixes it all. Verse 25, then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean, and I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from your idols, and I will give you a new heart. He changes who they are. And I will put a new spirit within you, and I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And here goes back to what we've already read, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them.

And we really begin to understand the problem with the Old Covenant was the people. And the fact that God only gave His Spirit to some of them, some of them always were faithful. Many times, the majority of people were not. To the point where many denied Jesus as the Messiah.

Now, thousands accepted Him. I mean, there were 3,000 baptized, and one day, once the church started, just Jews in that area. But overall, Israel, all the tribes, are just scattered people, sort of lost. And they don't get it until they're brought back when the Messiah comes. And then they get it. That means something new has to happen. Jeremiah 31. We're now moving up into a link where we understand the broad purposes of the Sinai Covenant, the Old Covenant. But because there's a problem with that covenant, something new has to happen. Jeremiah 31. I know I'm moving fast.

And we're building this on last week's sermon. So we're moving fast. In the Bible study, we're going to have to build on top of this. We keep building what God is doing in prophecy so that the promise that all peoples on earth will be blessed because a descendant of Abraham, who is Jesus Christ, because of that, all people, everybody.

That's the whole plan. And it was carried out piece by piece all this time that Satan reigned on earth because Satan has no power over God. Satan just keeps messing up his plans and he keeps it going. Why do you think they tried to kill all the children when they found out that possibly the Messiah was born?

Why did they even in Egypt kill so many of the children? It's Satan's belief. I can't let this happen because it messes up my plans and God works it all the time. A baby put in a little makeshift boat put out on the Nile and that's how God does it. That's how he fixed the problem. He just keeps putting his fingers into this and he just keeps working it out. Well, Satan creates chaos and we think we can find God in the chaos and you cannot because it's chaos and God doesn't create chaos. Jeremiah 31, verse 31, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant.

So he starts with Abraham, a covenant made with him, carried on into the physical dissensus of Abraham and Sinai. But now he says, no, something else is going to happen. I'm going to make a new covenant, says the Lord, with the house of Israel, with the house of Judah. Not according – this is a different covenant – not according to the covenant I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. Now once again, that doesn't mean everything the old covenant was done away with.

We're here on the Sabbath because the Sabbath is the Sabbath is the Sabbath. It existed before Sinai. It was commanded at Sinai. It existed after Sinai and it existed in the New Testament.

That's why we're here. But the structure of certain things in that covenant has changed.

I mean, we're not sacrificing lambs today if any of you haven't noticed, right? And there's a reason for it. Not according to the covenant I made with their fathers in that day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. 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. Now we've already read in three different places, starting in Deuteronomy, there comes a time I have to put myself in you. I have to put my power in you for you to do and keep this covenant by yourselves. You can't keep this covenant with me. But you're serving a purpose and someday, and that's why in Ezekiel 36 we didn't read chapter 37. In chapter 37, you know what it says? There comes a time when all the people of Israel, of course we know it's all people, but specifically talk to them, are resurrected and given a chance to receive God's Spirit. That means all those Israelites through all that time period, wandering in the desert, going off in Babylonian captivity and everything, they're resurrected and said, now you want a covenant with me, I have to give you the power to do it because you can't. Just like that's why God isn't judging everybody yet, you know, going to the lake of fire. Some people do, but they're not being judged. People aren't being judged yet. In that second resurrection, that's when people have an opportunity to become part of the new covenant. They have an opportunity, they can reject it, but everybody gets an opportunity to become part of the new covenant. Jeremiah 31. So now we have a context for the entire Old Testament and all the prophecies of the Old Testament. Many of them deal with the end time. But it also is going to give us a context for Daniel 2, Daniel 7 when we get there. But before we do that, we have to explain the new covenant, which is the covenant God has made with you, and what it actually is that he's promising to do, and what it is that we're to participate in. So that's my sermon time. So we'll cover that in the Bible study. And it gives a chance maybe to have some discussion too. We'll cover the new covenant in its essential framework. I'm not going to get into all the details, but it is essential framework. We'll look at that in the Bible study, and we'll start to understand prophetic promises that are made to the people of God who are in the church today.