Prophecy Series Part 2

When I was here two weeks ago, I started a series of sermons on prophecy. So we're going through two series at the same time. We started the series on prophecy. And we didn't start where we usually start when we talk about prophecy. And the reason I said I was going to do that is because when we talk about prophecy, usually what we're talking about is what Satan's plan is. 666, the mark of the beast, the beast of the false prophet. We study those things. We study what Satan's going to try to do. But he's doing this to derail, try to derail, God's plan. So we started with, let's look at God's plan, prophetic plan, which is salvation for human beings.

And we started with one verse, Genesis 3.15, in the Old Testament, which declares God's purpose, God's plan. All prophecy comes from this. This is the foundation of everything. And it's about how he was going to send a descendant of Eve to save humanity. It's a very cryptic little sentence, but we looked at how it's used in different places in the New Testament. And we looked at how it was expanded out in the Old and New Testament, that this Messiah would come, this anointed, this Son of God, the Son of Man.

And now He would come, and in doing so, He would bring salvation to humanity. We also showed how He comes twice, something that is not always understood in Judaism. And it's one reason why in Orthodox Judaism, they don't accept Jesus as the Messiah. They're still waiting for the Messiah to come, basically, to save the Jews, bring them up, and then rule over the earth.

So Jesus didn't do that. But when we looked at the Scriptures, we saw that there's two comings. The first is as a sacrifice for us, and the second is to establish God's kingdom on this earth. Now, we talk about those things all the time, but I wanted to lay that foundation. That is the basis of all prophecy. The basis of all prophecy is Adam and Eve got kicked out of Eden, and they began to degenerate.

We weren't supposed to get sick like this, by the way. That wasn't the plan. That's what happened once human beings followed a different plan. The whole creation began to degenerate, and Satan became the God of this world. And in all this, God is still carrying out His plan as salvation for all those who are willing to become part of the plan, willing to understand who Jesus Christ is, and willing to understand His first coming and His second coming, and what God is doing to bring people into His family.

That's the basis of all prophecy. When we look at this, we will then be able to look at what Satan's doing without so much trepidation and fear, because he doesn't win. If the God of the Bible is true, if you believe that God exists, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you believe in this book, you know He doesn't win.

So we'll get into all those prophecies, but first we had to look at that one, the Protoevangelium. Now we're going to talk about a little bit how God carries that out in covenants with human beings. And I have a handout I'll give you at the end of the sermon, in which I have 10 basic covenants and a few scriptures, so that you can start to do a study on your own on how God works with human beings through covenants. He comes into people's lives and says, you're now part of my plan.

I'm making an agreement with you. That agreement was made with every single one of you at baptism. You became part of a covenant with God. All covenants in the Bible between God and you and beings are made through His grace and His power. We don't bring anything to the table. We don't negotiate. We just say yes. And then we have to participate in the obligations of the covenant, and He gives us promises in that covenant.

We looked at the Abrahamic covenant. Now what I want to do today is look at the... take that a step further. We're going to look at the Abrahamic covenant, the old covenant, many times called the Sinai covenant, because it was made specifically with the descendants of Abraham, physical descendants of Abraham at Mount Sinai. And then the new covenant, and how each of these covenants are simple steps. Now we can go through all kinds of covenants. The covenant made with Noah, the covenant made with David, and that had to do with the Messiah.

These are all part of what God's doing. We can know what salvation is, and we can know what prophecy is from God's viewpoint, what He's carrying out by starting with Genesis 3.15, and then moving through the covenants. So we're just going to look at three. Now the problem is, there's so much information that, you know, it's like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. I'm just putting a few pieces together so you can start to figure out what it's supposed to look like, because we would be here for days if we actually went through all three of those covenants.

And when we look at a covenant that God makes with human being, we understand that He introduces it. The person doesn't say, I'd like to make a covenant with you. He introduces it. And there's always the sign of the covenant. Circumcision, sometimes it was sacrifices. In our case, it's repentance and baptism. Those are the signs that we have entered into a covenant. They all had signs involved.

Many covenants involved blood. This covenant, the new covenant you and I are under, involves blood, not ours, fortunately. It involves the blood of Jesus Christ. We enter into this covenant with God, and we become part of this plan.

We become part of what God is doing to bring about salvation. So let's now go back and look at the Sinai covenant in its institution and its basics. Once again, there's so much we could talk about in showing through the entire Sinai covenant because it starts at Sinai, called the Old Covenant. It's the extension of the Abrahamic covenant, and it still carries on today in some aspects. Not all of it. You and I are under the Old Covenant.

But there's aspects of that covenant that still exist today. That's a different sermon. The difference between the Old and New Covenants is, why do we keep the Sabbath and the Holy Days, but we don't wear tassels? Why? Because that's a command. There are 613 commands. Why don't we do that one? It's there. It's in the Bible. Why don't we circumcise? When Abraham was commanded to do so, and when Moses didn't circumcise his children, God threatened to kill his children.

That's how important it was. Well, Paul talks about that. We usually talk about that some before every Passover. Why baptism? Because it's the circumcision of the heart. So there are certain things that are continuous between these two covenants. The Ten Commandments are continuous, and that's proved in the New Testament. The Holy Days are continuous. That's proved in the New Testament. But certain things aren't. There are a lot of commands on what they were to do with their army.

The Church is not allowed to have an army. We fight a spiritual battle, so we don't have a physical army. So all the rules and regulations about army life doesn't mean anything to us in terms of directly doing it. And there are a lot of them. So we step back and realize, okay, the Sinai Covenant, we still understand parts of it. There's a continuity between the Old and New Covenants. That's why the idea of the New Testament and Old Testament, actually, that's a bad English word to put in there.

Because a testament means a will that happens at death. And it really isn't the death of one. I mean, that would be the death of the second one. A testament is not a good word to use in modern English. Covenant, the agreement between people and God, that's the word. That should be the Old Covenant, because there's a whole lot more in what we call the Old Testament. There's a whole lot more in there than just the Old Covenant. So the continuity is not what I'm going to get into as much.

I'm getting into the prophetic link between the three Covenants. So let's go to Genesis 2. We're going to run through a number of Scriptures here. Exodus 2. Yeah, let's go to verse 23. This is when God intervenes to get Israel, the descendants of Abraham, out of Egyptian bondage. Now it happened when 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 their bondage.

So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked down upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them. Now that doesn't mean He remembered it because He'd forgotten it. That's not what it means. What it means is God had made promises to Abraham. In fact, when you go back into Genesis, they were told that the descendants of Abraham would go into the ones to Isaac and Jacob.

Remember, there's lots of descendants of Abraham out there. Much, not all of the Arab world, but much of the Arab world are descendants of Abraham, they're different wives. But the promise came through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now remember what one of the promises was, that through His seed, all nations, all peoples would be blessed. So God looks down and says, it's time. I told them they would go into captivity for a period of time. And because it was a promise to Abraham, because of that covenant, that agreement, it's an amazing thing about God.

All covenants have responses from human beings. God is not always confined by those responses. Sometimes He carries out His promises in spite of human beings, in spite of us. But He looks down and He says, okay, it's time for me to carry out what I promised to Abraham in that covenant. And so He acknowledges them. So let's go to Exodus 19. Once again, we're just laying down pieces of the puzzle. Israel now is taken out of captivity under the leadership of Moses. They go out into the Sinai and they end up before Mount Sinai, where God is on top of this mountain, and there's thunders and lightning and an earthquake, and everybody is afraid as it's shaking.

Verse 1, So Israel camped there 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 tell the children of Israel, You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, He's now making agreement with them. He says, I want you to remember, I destroyed an empire to bring you here. That's what I did because the promise made to Abraham.

So I'm carrying out My covenant to Abraham, and I brought you here because now I'm going to make a covenant with you. And you shall be a special treasure to Me, above all people, for all the earth is Mine.

And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel. And so God gives them, then, the Ten Commandments from that mountain. Now, God starts to say them to them, but they can't take it. It's too overwhelming to hear this booming, thundering voice. So what they do is they ask Moses, would you take care of this force? Would you go up and talk to God for us?

And so Moses went up, received the two tables of stone, brought them down. And now we have the Ten Commandments. Now, when we talk about the Sinai Covenant or the Old Covenant, it's more than the Ten Commandments. But the basis of it are the Ten Commandments. And we know that because of the importance they were given in the worship of God in ancient Israel. Exodus 34. Exodus 34. Verse 27. He says, Then the Lord said to Moses, Write these words... Now, this is the second time he went up to receive the Ten Commandments.

Remember, he broke the first copy when he was upset when he saw the idolatry that was taking place. Write these words, According to the tenor of these words, I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. So he makes a covenant with Abraham. You know, there are certain aspects of the covenant with Abraham we're still doing today. We're not sacrificing animals, by the way, which was part of the covenant with Abraham.

But you and I are recipients of the covenant of Abraham. This covenant he makes with them is because they're the descendants of Abraham. Remember, he's going to bring about one person, and through that person, he would defeat Satan and create salvation. So he says, So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend, And he would return to the camp, that his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the tabernacle.

So he goes up there and brings down the Ten Commandments. When he did, his face was shining. From being in the presence of God, his face was shining so much that they had to put a veil across his face. People were horrified. I mean, you can imagine if someone you know walks in the room and it looks like their face is a giant spotlight, right? You would be afraid of them. So they had to put a veil over his face. Moses and his brother Aaron were of the tribe of Levi. And what would happen is, God would choose the Levites to be the priests of this covenant.

In addition to the Ten Commandments, which were now put into the Ark of the Covenant, a box that symbolized the covenant God was making with Israel, and it had the staff of Aaron that kept budding all the time. When a dead limb keeps budding, it's a miracle. Also a German was put in there, and the Ten Commandments, those two tablets, were put in there. This was the basis of the covenant. In addition to that, they were to write everything down into the book of the law.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, or the Torah, or the teachings, the law. In the book of the law, it was to be written down and set outside the Ark. This was to explain and help them as the people of this covenant, how to live under the Ten Commandments, and a covenant with God, because they're the descendants of Abraham.

This covenant with God, that was the basis of it, and this would tell them how to live. Now that book was added to for 40 years. When you look at Deuteronomy, they keep adding laws. Sometimes Moses would go to God and say, what do I do here? Sometimes you would just see a law appear. They don't seem to be in any order, except in a few places. Leviticus seems to put them more in order, and there's a reason why.

It's case law. They're dealing with specific cases that come before them, and it's like, oh, we've got a new case. How do we deal with this? That's why you'll see if a person steals, they pay back four times, and another person steals, they pay back seven times.

You think, why would there be two laws? Two different cases. Even Solomon said, when a person steals because they're hungry, it's different than the person who steals because they're greedy. You have a different penalty. So they're working through case law. It's interesting, the United States has a government of case law. So we're working through case law, they're compiling the cases. That's much of what the Talmud, or parts of the Talmud is, just case law.

Well, this is how Rabbi so-and-so dealt with this case. Well, this rabbi dealt with it differently. And so they studied the case law. Of course, that's all added to the Bible. None of that's part of the Scripture. So we have a system for a nation. It's a system for a nation, all based off of the Ten Commandments. So why did God then create Israel for what?

Historical and prophetic purpose. I mean, obviously, he promised Abraham he was going to do this, and that he did it. Three basic reasons. God chose Israel as the family that was going to produce the Messiah. We read Genesis 12 last time. I won't go there. We did read Genesis 3, but I'm going to go back to Genesis, I'm sorry, Acts 3. Acts 3. So we look at the New Testament. Remember two weeks ago. I know it's two weeks ago. It's hard to remember everything we talked about two weeks ago, but we talked about how we kept looking at the New Testament as the interpretation of these prophecies.

We would not know Jesus was the Messiah simply by looking through the Old Testament. We look at the New Testament and we find out He's the Messiah. They believed He was a Messiah, and they showed how those Scriptures are fulfilled in Him. And as I said then, most Jews, serious Jews who are people who are part of Judaism, who convert to Christianity, they don't convert to Christianity simply because they read the teachings of Jesus or read the Gospels. They convert because they look at the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah and say, oh, He is the guy.

It's the prophecies that lead them to belief in Jesus Christ. So it's important that we study how the New Testament, how these people, under inspiration of God, interpreted those Scriptures. And remember, we read this last time, but He says in verse 24 of Acts 3, Yes, and all the prophets from Samuel and those who follow, as many have spoken, have foretold of these days. He's telling people what's happening now because of Jesus, because of the formation of the church.

Your sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, and your seed, all the families of the earth, shall be blessed. To you first, He says to them, God, having raised up His servant Jesus, sent Him to bless you and turning away every one of you from your iniquities.

He says to you first. That's important. Because we're going to look in a minute how there was going to be another major covenant beyond the Old Covenant. And it was for more than just the Israelites. And all this, your seed, all the nations will be blessed. So He says, you first. That blessing starts right here. And He was talking to all these Jews, all these physical descendants of Abraham.

From that family line. There are other prophecies, by the way, and promises made to the other physical descendants of Abraham. And they also can become part of the New Covenant. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're a descendant of Esau. It doesn't matter if you're a descendant from Ishmael. You can be part of the New Covenant. They were, for the most part, outside of the Sinai Covenant. But they can be part of the New Covenant. Second thing was Israel was a witness of the true God to all people. Remember in Exodus, we read Exodus 19, I will make you a special nation. All the people will look at you and know you worship Me. And I will be your God, and all people will say that God must be the true God. If they did it right. So through this family, the Messiah was going to come. What we see through history of the Old Testament, it gets more and more narrow. It starts with Abraham, then there's 12. But the Messiah doesn't come through the line of Moses. It comes through the line of Judah. And He was a Levite. It comes through the line of Judah. And that's why Mary was in Bethlehem at that moment in time. Because all we're talking about here is for that moment to happen. That this woman, nobody would think she's special. She was special. She's obviously a very righteous person, very wonderful person. But who would think that this young girl, probably in her late teens, is going to be the mother of the Messiah? And yet all of it keeps coming down. It keeps narrowing down. David comes along. It's going to be through your family. Not only is it going to be through Judah, it's going to be through David's family. That specific family was in Judah. This was going to lead to these events. And then number three, they were to preserve the teachings of God. They were to preserve the Ten Commandments and the book of the law, the Torah. At the time of Jesus, the Sadducees believed the rest of what we call the Old Testament was important. Even the Pharisees believed this, just not as much. But the only thing that really mattered was the first five books. The book of the law, because that's what is the covenant, or explanation of the covenant to them. And so they held on to that. And we have the Old Testament today, including those first five books, because they died by the thousands over the years to make sure those things were preserved. Because that was the covenant God made with them. But they miss other things in the Scripture. Look at Deuteronomy 4. Deuteronomy chapter 4.

And verse 5. Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, this is Moses saying this to them, that you should act according to them in the land which you should go to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of all the peoples who hear of all these statutes. And say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him. And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments that are in all the law which I set before you today? Only take heed to yourself, Moses said, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, unless they depart from your heart all the days of your life and teach them to your children and to your grandchildren. They were to teach them to their children and their grandchildren. And I will say this about Orthodox Judaism today. You grow up in an Orthodox home and you were taught the Torah. And in many Orthodox homes, the boys can read it in Hebrew, no matter what their native language is. They are taught the Torah. Why? It's the covenant God made with us. Sometimes I think, you know, they're misunderstanding of God's way as they don't understand the New Testament. We can still learn lessons from them, and one is that our children learn it. That they now have an opportunity to be part of a covenant. They're not baptized yet, but they have the opportunity to be part of a covenant with God. Because they're in a family that God is working with. And I think we don't do that as well as we should. Romans 3, it even talks about, well, it turned near, but Paul talks about how the oracles of God were given to the Jews and to be preserved by the Jews. The oracles just means divine teachings, divine speaking. What God said was given to them to protect and preserve. So that's our third reason. So what we have then in the Old Testament is predominantly the history of the Abrahamic and Sinai covenants. Leading towards a point in which God would bring into the world the Messiah. Because that was the next step in his plan. But as that happened, something became very, very apparent that he had actually told them. And that was there's something wrong with the Sinai covenant. Now, unfortunately, there's this in some strains of Protestantism, not all, the belief that the problem with the Sinai covenant was the law. That's not true when you actually read all of Paul's writings. That's not what he's saying. But there was a problem in the Sinai covenant that made it unworkable. And he told them from the very beginning, let's go to Deuteronomy 30. Deuteronomy 30.

I know I'm moving along here, but I have three hours worth of stuff. Deuteronomy 30.

Verse 1. This is where Israel is about to go into the Promised Land. And God tells them, if you obey the laws, you get all kinds of physical blessings. If you don't obey the laws, you get all kinds of spiritual curses, including the loss of the land. Because the old covenant was centered around that those people got to go to the land of Abraham that was theirs. That's why today, I think I mentioned it two weeks ago when I was here, that's why today you have... There will always be unrest in the Middle East. Because there's one group of people that says, God gave this land to us through Jacob. Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, whose name is Israel, was changed to Israel. And there's another group that says, no, this land was given to us through Abraham to Ishmael.

And one book says one, and one book says the other, and one of those books has to be totally false.

And until Christ comes back, they will never stop entirely.

Here they are, before the Promised Land. Oh, by the way, they just... They just... In the last month something's happened, they were able to... They found a grave, some grave sites, and the bones in it, what goes clear back to about the time of Jesus. And it's in modern-day Israel. And they were able to take some DNA samples out of that. And in doing so, they found out that they matched the DNA of Jews.

They could see that the Arabs like to say they were never here, and the entire New Testament is made up. In fact, Solomon's Temple is made up. There never was a temple.

The DNA proves, no, they were here. That's causing a little bit of a shockwave through certain parts. Although, if you live in the Islamic world, you don't believe it. That's just made up Western science. It's not true. It can't be true. We know the truth. So, I mean, there's no way to convince people of that. Here they are, standing before the Promised Land. They haven't even gone into it yet. And verse 1 says, He said, Now, off in the future, when you've received lots of blessings from me, and lots of cursings from me, because you're not doing the covenant, you're not doing what you're supposed to do in the covenant, He says, I'm going to drive you out all over the place, and you won't even know who you are.

And much of Israel lost its identity. Things lost its identity. And you returned to the Lord your God, and obey His voice according to all that I command 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. He says, I'm going to bring all the descendants of Israel back here to the land that that's supposed to be theirs, which goes from the basically the Euphrates to the Nile. He says, you will get your land.

He says, if any of you are driven out to the farthest part of 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 the Lord your God will circumcise your heart, and we have to figure out at some point when that starts, how does that happen, of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, that you may live.

So He's going to circumcise their heart.

And it goes on and says that they will obey His commandments.

How does that happen? See, there's a problem. There was a problem in the covenant made with Israel. Numbers, chapter 11.

We're just reading basically the Torah here, and skipping to the New Testament once in a while. Numbers 11. God tells Moses to gather 70 men in verse 16, who are great elders and leaders of the people. And in verse 17, He says, Now this is the Spirit of God. And we'll take of the Spirit that is upon you, and we'll put the same upon them. And they shall bear the burden of the people with you, and you shall not bear it for yourself alone.

And so He gathers 70 men together, and He gives them His Spirit. Moses had His Spirit. The Spirit of God was indwelling in Him. Abraham, Sarah, had God's Spirit indwelling in them. What's interesting here is two of the 70 men didn't get to the meeting on time. And they're moving through the camp of Israel, and suddenly they start preaching. They start being able to tell the words of God. They're suddenly able to start going around, and in other words, God's Spirit has come upon them. And Joshua being Joshua, you know, Joshua's first reaction to anything, any situation was, let me punch him in the nose. Okay, that's Joshua. So Joshua goes to Moses. Let's go down to verse 28. So Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, one of the choice men, answered and said, Moses, my Lord, forbid them. You want me to stop them? I'll go stop those guys. Who do they think they are to go around preaching? They're not even Levites.

And Moses said to him, are you zealous for my sake? Notice this, because there's an emotional impact to what he's saying. Oh, that all the Lord's people were prophets, and the Lord would put his Spirit upon them. All of everybody just had God's Spirit, more than just a few of us.

The problem with that Sinai covenant is that they did not, as far as the great majority of people, they didn't have God's Spirit in dwelling in them. It was there in the cloud, but it wasn't in them. David had it in him. Others you'll find people all through the Bible that have it in them, but not the great majority of people. The great majority of Israelites never had God's Spirit in them. And Moses said, oh, think how easy my life would be if everybody had God's Spirit.

But they didn't. And eternal salvation is the restoration of humanity back to our original purpose, and we can't do that on our own. And we can't do it even if God gives us the knowledge, even if God teaches us. The change can only happen when this corrupted human nature can only happen when God's Spirit is in us and changes us. And we have to submit to that. Our commitment to the New Covenant is to submit to God's changing power in us.

Sometimes I still find people thinking, well, if I can earn my salvation, if I can just do this, this, and this, God will be happy with me, and now I'll be in the first resurrection if I just do this, this, and this. So we say, well, these are the standards by which I live. Now, we all have spiritual standards, but the point is, we have to have certain spiritual standards and not be converted because you see that in the Old Testament, Israel. Sometimes they did some amazing things and didn't have God's Spirit, so they always failed.

That was the problem.

Eventually, the northern Teb tribes were taken into captivity, lost as far as history is concerned. God says He's going to gather everybody back together when Christ runs back.

The Jews were taken into the Babylonian captivity. Eventually, they were restored. The reason why is the family of David had to be at that place in that time when the next step came along. He made sure they were there. He made sure they were there so the Messiah could come into the world. Let's look at a couple other prophecies then in the Old Testament. Ezekiel 36.

Verse 16.

It's talking about when God once again brings back the physical descendants of Abraham.

And then he goes on and he says, And when he went to those countries, they profaned me. You think they would have called out and I could have had him return, but he says, No, they profaned my holy name.

Verse 31 says, But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations wherever they went. Therefore, saved on 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, you have profaned among the nations where you went. When the Messiah gathers the physical descendants of Abraham from Jacob, at the end, it won't be because they are a righteous people. It'll be because he made a promise.

That's why. And they will have to repent.

They will have to repent. It's because he made a promise at Abraham to Abraham. He made a promise at Sinai. He made a promise to David. And he carries out his part here. Now, remember that he says, I'll give you salvation if you do... We all have to participate in salvation. But still, even that, if we don't submit to him doing the workiness, we can't do it. So that's even his work. It's us submitting to him. But here he says, I'm carrying this out in spite of these people.

I'm gathering them together.

Verse 23, And I will sanctify my name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. And the nations shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, 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. And he talks about how he's going to clean them. He's going to sprinkle them with water. It's a symbol here of a type of baptism. Verse 26, And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my judgments, and do them, and dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. And you will be my people, and I will be your God. I promise it to Abraham, I'm going to do it in spite of you. That's the message he gives to Israel all through the ages, until the time when he does this. And when he does this, what does he do? He pours out his spirit. The missing ingredient in that old covenant was God's spirit internalized. Except for a handful, we can see them. I mean, we don't know all of them. They're obviously more than what we see in the Bible. But they were always a very small minority.

And there's the missing ingredient. And what does that mean? If the Sinai covenant has a missing ingredient, something has to happen.

Well, the Old Testament tells us. Jeremiah 31.

Jeremiah 31.

Verse 31.

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, with the house of Judah. Now, he's talking specifically to them, and we don't have time to go through it. But all the prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, which brings a new covenant, always includes all people.

So he says, look, those who are the descendants of Abraham, I will have, by the time the Messiah comes, you're going to be scattered all over the place. And I'm going to gather you back together into the land I promised to Abraham, and I'm going to give you an opportunity to receive the Spirit. That means I'm going to have to make a new covenant with you, because that never was promised in the Old Covenant. The pouring out of God's Spirit was never promised in the Old Covenant. It is promised in the new one. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, and the day that they 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. He says, I made a covenant with you about Sinai. But you know, without my Spirit in you, you can't do it. But this is the covenant they 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.

So there's the problem with the Old Covenant.

There was a problem with the people.

So now let's move into the New Testament and look at how the New Testament explains this. Let's go to Hebrews, chapter 8.

I'm obviously skipping a whole lot of things here, but this is the foundation. These are the building blocks that you build biblical history and biblical prophecy on.

Because this is God's plan in all this. Hebrews 8.

Now this is written to Jews. It says Hebrews, the only known Israelites in that day were Jews and Levites that had been part of that group. He says, For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Why did God say there would be a new covenant if the first one was perfect? Well, the first one was really good for teaching a nation how they exist as a nation in the ancient times under the rule of God. It was a theocracy. They were supposed to follow God. It failed because they weren't capable of following God.

Because finding fault with them. I've read where theologians have said that the entire slaughter of animals as part of the old covenant wasn't given by God. People had to make that up because God would never slaughter animals. No, the slaughtering of animals was given by God to help people understand, Your sins cost you your blood and there has to be a substitute.

That's why they were so serious about doing animal sacrifices. If they didn't do that, they would lose their relationship with God. Jesus Christ comes along and it's like we understand it's through His blood. And now we get it, right? We get it. So no, He told them to do that because the fault was with them and because the Messiah had not been, Christ had not been sacrificed yet. People have asked me, you know, they started doing sacrifices over in Jerusalem again when they built the new covenant. Should we get involved in that? And my answer is, why? I don't understand why we would want to.

We have one sacrifice for all, right? One sacrifice for all. That's what it says. We don't get involved in animal sacrifices anymore.

The fault was with them. He says, behold, the days are coming. Says the Lord, I will make a new covenant. And He quotes here everything we just read in Jeremiah 31. He quotes all these verses about a new covenant because the problem was with them. Until human beings are changed, as long as we have corrupt human nature, our response to God is limited. Always. No matter how hard we try, it's always limited. Even with God's Spirit is a process, isn't it? None of us are perfect yet. But we're the process of being changed.

Paul describes this in 2 Corinthians.

I told Kim, this is about twice as many scriptures as I usually do in a sermon, but this is important. I know it's not new. Boy, we have to go back and look at this stuff every once in a while.

And this is the basis of prophecy. It's God's carrying out this plan to bring salvation to humanity. All peoples have an opportunity at some point, as we know, the second resurrection is the opportunity for most people, to say yes to the new covenant.

2 Corinthians 3.

Paul starts this chapter, of course it's not a chapter, it's just a letter he wrote, it's the middle of the letter. And he talks about letters of condemnation. Commendation. Letters of commendation. He says, I don't need to bring a letter to you from some other minister that says, this guy's a good minister. He says, I don't need to do that. And it's very interesting, he says, verse 2, You are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read by all men. He says, the proof of that God's working through me is this congregation. He says, the congregation, of course, that's the proof. Look what God's done. There was a mess, it was still growing. He was still struggling with sins and all kinds of problems. He said, no, the fact that you've come out of paganism, some of you have come out of Judaism, most of you have come out of paganism, and you're together trying to live this way, that's my letter, because God's doing something here.

And then verse 3, he says, clearly, you are an epistle of Christ, a letter written by Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh, that is of the heart.

He says, you all here have become part of the new covenant, is what he's talking about. And he says, the Ten Commandments that were the basis of the old covenant still exist, they're not done away with. The difference is, you don't read them off of two tablets of stone and say, oh, God said to do that, and I have to do it, even though I don't want to. Now God's inside our hearts and minds writing those things on us so that they become our nature. It is our nature to live the Ten Commandments. When we are changed, understand, when we are changed at the resurrection, it will be impossible for us to sin, because God's Spirit will be in us forever and we'll have developed the very nature of God and we'll be incapable of sin. Wouldn't it be great to never be capable of covenants-ness? Never be capable of a violent thought.

That's what we'll be like, because we'll have had the nature of God developed in us, written inside of us. That's the New Covenant. That's why the Old Covenant failed. It never got inside of them. That's why there were so many rules and regulations by the Pharisees. We may get enough rules and regulations. You can never break one of the big laws, because everything's always protected. He says, verse 6, This is the New Covenant, and that only can happen when God's Spirit is in us.

Because of glory of His countenance, which glory was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit be more glorious? For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. The New Covenant takes God's play into its next step, which is greater than the original one. For even that was made glorious, had no glory in this respect, because of the glory that excels. He says, and he talks more about Moses having to put that veil on, and how that veil is still there in the Jewish community because they don't accept Jesus Christ. That's why he comes down here at the end of this passage, verse 17. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, just as the Spirit of the Lord. He said, this is the thing about the New Covenant. We have a spiritual mirror, and as we live our lives, we're supposed to be looking more and more like Jesus Christ, because that's what the indwelling of God's Spirit does. That's what having the laws of God written in your hearts and minds does. It turns us into images of Jesus Christ.

That didn't happen under the New Covenant, or Old Covenant, except for with a handful of people. Because it was made to help a nation run. And all those laws have important meanings to us today, but we don't keep a lot of them. We don't do animal sacrifices. We don't have an army. There's a whole lot of things about how the government was supposed to run, that we, you know, isn't how the church runs. Although we are similar in that we do have sort of an elder. We're very tribal. We're not a...we're very tribal in the church. We become a family. We're connected to each other. Whether deacons or elders or the pastor, we're all still connected to each other. And that's a little bit like that. So in the New Testament, they really go into great detail to show how the importance of how the Old Covenant is replaced by the New Covenant, which is happening right now in the church. If you go to the Old Testament, I read a couple last time how there's so many prophecies about the Messiah would come, that Christ would come for all people. Now, in my series of Bible studies on Ephesus, the church in Ephesus, the message to them, like the one...like the message to Colossians, the one to Galatians, and four chapters in Romans, all have an importance with explaining the New Covenant. He doesn't do away with the Ten Commandments as some people interpret Galatians and just throw out the Ten Commandments. You have to put Galatians in the context of Ephesians, Colossians, and Romans, and you find out what he's talking about. He's talking about how the physical administration of a nation isn't what God's doing anymore. We're not a physical nation. I don't have the right to tax you, okay?

We as a people can't carry out the death penalty. Yet God, back at the time of Noah, in a covenant he made with Noah after the flood, said that physical nations can carry out the death penalty for murder. In the church, we don't have the right to do that.

So we have a totally different administration of the law of God as it is being written in our hearts and minds. We're still here on the Sabbath, right? Because we still keep the Sabbath.

But this covenant has opened up Ephesians 2, and I've taken a long time. I'll do 12 studies to get through the book of Ephesians. For me, it's been a very worthy—I mean, I really learned a lot from going through the book of Ephesians about the mystery of Christ, the mystery of the Gospel. But I now understand—I can read Colossians, I can read Galatians, I understand what Paul's saying. And it's not what so many Protestants say he's saying. His teaching about predestination isn't what Calvin taught about predestination. It is about when God predestines that he calls somebody. When God says, okay, Abraham, I'm calling you. Okay, Abraham, in the future, I'm going to call into a covenant your descendants, but I'm not going to give them my spirit. He didn't say that, but that's what happened. But David was part of that. I'm calling you now, David, because it's through your family that the Messiah's going to come. He's working this out step by step until you get to the church. The Messiah came the first time. He died. He was resurrected. He fulfilled Isaiah 52 and 53. He fulfilled Psalm 22. All these things he fulfilled to take the next step. And the next step is basically, you haven't seen anything yet.

Satan's got to just be appalled if he understands the next step.

Verse 11. Remember most of the people in Ephesus, most were Gentiles. Most of them would have been Greek. The Turks weren't there yet.

The Turks moved into what is now Turkey a thousand years later when they moved in. Well, not quite a thousand years, but they moved in there and took that area. They were mainly Greek and some indigenous people that had been there in Asia Minor. There was even some Celtic people that lived there, related to the Scots and Irish, that lived in the center part of Galatia. So you have these people there.

Ephesians or Ephesus is an amazing city because so much of it they've been able to excavate. I can't wait till they excavate Colossae because it's never been excavated. Laodicea is amazing. So he writes to these people who were predominantly Gentile, who when they left paganism got so inspired, they burned a fortune of books, incantation spells, how to do pagan customs. They just burned their books. Public book burning. Can you imagine if we did that today as Christians? Now we're going to do a public book burning. They did because they realized that paganism separated them from God and they were coming out of it.

People were so inspired by them that paganism was dying in the church, I mean in the city. So much so they had a riot. And there were tens of thousands of people that were in this riot. This is the impact. The Jewish community who came out of Judaism into the church didn't have that kind of impact. They just sort of hid out. It was the pagans who came in. They were like, whoa, we've got to tell the world about this.

And so Paul now writes to them because they feel at times, and you'll see that in his writings, as more and more people come in. Remember, Gentile just means non-Israelite or non-Jewish. That's all it means. So as people came in from all these different backgrounds in the church, some of them felt like they were second-class citizens to the Jews. Those were the people who God had given the covenants with. He gave them the Ten Commandments. They were all descendants of Abraham, and they felt second-class. So here's what he writes to them. He says, remember, you had no idea of this truth. You lived totally in paganism.

He says, remember that? But now, in Christ Jesus, you were once where a far-off had been brought near by the blood of Christ.

He tells them here, and this is where predestination gets explained in Ephesians, because this is the biggest, the greatest number of verses about predestination. It's not about God saying, you go to heaven and you go to hell. It's about God determining when I'm going to call different people. I'm going to call Abraham. And now, I'm predesting some of the things that are going to happen here. Even if he messes up, I'm going to call Israel his descendants, and I'm going to make these things happen even if they mess up. And here he says, you were predestined, if you read chapter 1 and 2, you were predestined to be called now from the foundation of the earth. He tells them, you're the next step in the plan. You go back, clear back to Genesis 3.15. You go to Noah. Yeah, they're all messed up. I'm going to save eight of them, because they'll destroy everything before my plan's fulfilled. So I'll save eight of them, start over. Abraham's called, he carries out that. Israel's called, he carries out that. And they were predestined, he said. When the Messiah came because of Christ, you now are part of the promises of God.

It was opened up to anyone who comes to Christ to become part of this body.

So the early church was a mixture, Israelite, Gentile. And ever since then, that's what the church has been, because it's, that's why he kept saying it's one body. In fact, he explains here that, well, let's just read it here. Verse 16. For he himself is our peace, Christ, who has made both one and has broken down the middle wall of separation. That, almost all historians agree, that is a reference to, in Jerusalem, there was a wall in the temple. Gentiles could not go past that wall. If they did, they were subject to death, death penalty. And ancient writers tell of inscriptions that were there that told people, any Gentile that crosses here, and it was in like three different languages, I think it was Latin, Greek, and Aramaic, if you cross here, you will die, you forfeit your life. Now, today, in the Muslim world, they say that's all made up, it never existed.

I probably told you this, when we were in Turkey, in April, our tour guide, who was Muslim, but said he'd given up on Islam, and he wanted to become a Christian, but it was too pagan. It was interesting. All this Christmas stuff, it was just too pagan. Then he kept saying, you people are sort of interesting, because you're more closer to what I see in the Bible.

But one day, he says, we're in Istanbul, and he says, I've got special permission to take you into the museum here. So we went through the museum where everybody else was, you know, with all that incredible statue. I could have spent two days in that museum. And then we go up these stairs, and then we go into this dark room, and they shut the doors behind us with two guards, armed guard with us. And we're among all these ancient statues and obelisks and all this stuff, and we're afraid to touch anything. It's so dark, you know, we're afraid we're going to knock something over, these millions of dollars worth of stuff. And he takes us back, and he turns on the light. He says, see that? Well, he actually flipped on the light, because we're doing it by flashlight. And there's this plaque. He said, that's it. That's one of the plaques from the Temple of Jerusalem.

He says, our Arab brothers, talking to Muslims who are Arab, he says, they deny it exists. Us Turks know it exists because we took it. We're just one of them, but we took one of the plaques, because of course the Ottoman, they were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for a long time, which was Turkey. He says, we took it. We have it. We know the Temple existed, and we know the plaque that everybody says was there. He says, in fact, Israel keeps saying, would you please send us back the plaque? And he says every once in a while, you know, the Turkish government will say, well, why don't we? They all argue over it. And then our Arab brothers will be offended. Okay, so we'll keep it. He said, but it's here. He said, so yeah, that was the wall of separation.

It was well known at that time. And if you were a Jew, you go beyond that wall to God. If you were a Gentile, you had to stand outside that wall to go to God. He says, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances so as to create in himself one new man from the two making peace. He said, okay, this is what the Church is. It's people all coming together to make peace, no matter what their ethnic background. Now, the law of commandments contained in ordinances. It's the ordinances of the problem. It's not the commandments. And we just read where Paul said, it's written in us. We don't give it up. We don't do away with them. Now they become part of us. So once again, he put the two together. He's not doing away with the commandments, but the ordinances, the structure in which they were enforced. And that he might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, therefore putting to death the enmity. He says, and he came and preached peace to you, who were afar off, and to those who were near, in other words, both Jew and Gentile. For through him both have access to what? One spirit to the Father. The spirit has been poured out on people to create the next step in the plan. We're part of that next step, and we don't really get it at times.

And this step is that all people who receive God's Spirit become the family of God. They all become the children of God. All of them. And then that is the basis for the next step. The Messiah comes a second time. He resurrects and changes all the people who've had his Spirit from all through time period, all through human history, to be resurrected to serve Jesus in Jerusalem. He brings back all the physical descendants of Abraham, brings them there, and says, okay, this is your land and you represent me in a physical way.

And that group that's resurrected from every part of the world, we don't even know the people God's worked with throughout the years. That's the next step. It's the first step in bringing salvation to the world.

So why the church? To function as the community of those called by God, to become Spirit-filled Christians, and to represent God. Remember how we read that he told them you'll be a special nation, a special people? He told Israel? It's like what Peter says. We've been reading a lot of Paul because Paul quotes the Old Testament constantly. His knowledge of the Old Testament is just amazing. And sometimes he's paraphrasing. That's why sometimes he's quoting the Septuagint, and sometimes he's quoting the Hebrew text, but he knows the Old Testament. 1 Peter 2, verse 4.

He talks about how, in this whole letter he talks about how we've all lived like Gentiles. We've all lived away from God. He's talking to Gentiles, and some of the point here is talking to Israelites. We've just lived like everybody else. We haven't fulfilled what God was supposed to do in us. And so he says in verse 4, He talks about that purpose of each of us in serving God, our whole lives. Then verse 9. Remember, Hosea had three children, and God told them what they had to name them, and it all had a prophetic importance. So this is a play on words from Hosea that Peter uses here.

You see, in one way, the church is a new nation. When I mention that in one of the Bible studies, someone texts me and says, Exciting! God's creating a new nation. And I wrote back, yes, it's called the Kingdom of God.

He's created the Kingdom of God.

And we're in a remarkable stage. We have the privilege of being in a remarkable stage of that, where God's Spirit is given to us. Now the very laws of God can live in us as we are transformed and converted. And this thing's open to anybody God calls. Anybody and everyone that God calls come in, and they become part of the family of God.

So that's the first reason. The second function of the church is to be the temple of God, which we just read. The third is to preach the gospel, make disciples of all peoples. Go to the world, he said. Go to everybody. When I was at the home office last week, Steve Myers had just been over in the Philippines to work with the ministers over there. He said, Gary, I want to show you a picture. One of the guys showed me. He was coming to the meetings in a bus. And it was a bus full of people, and a big screen TV at the front of the bus, and they're watching Beyond Today. He said, in our little way, we're going to the world. Those people driving in that bus, going to work, and I don't know what, Manila, I don't know where they were. They're watching Beyond Today program on the bus.

We were like giggly happy, you know. Wow!

And number four, to prepare a people to rule with Christ as resurrected spirit beings. And that's why there has to be people from all backgrounds. There's to be people from all ethnic groups and nationalities coming together. Because we'll have a world. Christ has got a world to repair that is just going through the Great Tribulation.

It's going to take people who understand to interact with all these different people. That is amazing! When we think of prophecy, we don't think of that. You're calling into the New Covenant, which is part of Genesis 3.15. With all these things happened, all these covenants that bring about the first coming of Christ, all these things have to happen to the New Covenant, to bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ. And you're part of it! I don't know why we're all part of it. God's mercy. I can't explain that. I can't explain God's grace. I've tried. I don't know why He does what He does. I just know what the Scripture says. I know how important it is to be part of this.

And how important it is to be dedicated to it. Because God's not playing games when He makes a covenant with you. He has serious stuff when God says, I choose you to become predestined to be part of my plan.

And we've been called to be predestined to be part of His plan. The only way that can change is if we decide we don't want it. But that's our choice. He will do what He says, in spite of our failures, as long as we stay with Him. Because that's what He says He'll do.

So, next time what we'll start to talk about is the conflict, then, between this plan and Satan's plan. And in doing so, we will discuss...we'll start to see what Satan's plan is. Now, I do have, as I said, some handouts, just basic information about the covenants. I'll put them outside on the...so when you leave, you can pick up a coffee if you want one. But it just gives you a little bit to study. It's not everything. Believe me, it's not inclusive. I'd have to write a book. But at least you can start your own studies. So, this is two sermons on prophecy. We never even got to a beast yet. Okay, we'll be getting there soon.