Hebrews Lesson 111 December 13, 2007

^NKJ Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.

Dr. Fruchtenbaum will be here. Everybody was quite excited about this – that he would be here for 3 weeks in January to teach his “Life of Jesus from a Jewish Perspective”. I want to continue to make this point that there are times when we’ll have guest speakers here that we will always treat with grace. They may differ with me on a point of interpretation here or there or what you’ve heard in the past. That’s fine. That’s how people learn to think through issues.

They hear somebody else that’s a respected scholar say, “Well, I don’t believe in X.”

You’ve always heard X was right.

Then you have to go learn how to think through the issue and think about it and say, “Well, what are the arguments behind it.”

That’s how you learn how to think. So, there are a few little idiosyncrasies to Arnold’s theology that haven’t been able to disabuse him of yet. The reason I point that out is when I had him come up and speak on this same subject at Preston City Bible Church somebody said, “Well, you know he doesn’t believe in X.”

I said, “Well, that’s okay. Some people don’t, but you do and I do and that’s all that matters.”

So let’s not get all wrapped up around the axle. If you hear something wrong that’s just the way things are out there. None of us agree 100% on anything. In fact, I may not agree a whole lot with what I taught 20 years ago. So we all grow, we all learn. There is that level of objectivity there.

Let’s open our Bibles to Hebrews 8. We’re going to get into an introduction tonight of the New Covenant. Now this is again a very important topic in relationship to prophecy. All the biblical covenants have significance in terms of prophecy, significance in terms of Israel, and therefore they’re going to have significance in terms of understanding the distinctions between the church and Israel especially since when we get into our passage right here in Hebrews 8 as we have been going through the first…actually we have covered the first 6 verses already but we’ll start with verse 6 tonight just to pick up the context. When we get into this we see that the introduction of this passage on the New Covenant, it is organically connected to what is covered in the first six verses which is that Jesus Christ is a superior High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek. That was what was established in chapter 7 so that when we start talking about the New Covenant in verse 7 the New Covenant in verse 7 can’t be separated from the present high priestly ministry of Christ at the right hand of Father which means that as we get into verse 6…

^NKJ Hebrews 8:6 But now He has obtained

“He” being the Lord Jesus Christ.

a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant,

Now if He is the mediator of a better covenant and the better covenant is the New Covenant in this context and He is the mediator of this New Covenant, then that’s very important to understand that you can’t mess with this in ways and try to invent other new covenants.

which was established on better promises.

^NKJ Hebrews 8:7 For if that first covenant

Notice that’s in italics because it is elipsized in the Greek, but obviously from context it refers back to that first covenant being the Mosaic Law.

had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.

^NKJ Hebrews 8:8 Because finding fault with them, He says: "Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah --

This is a direct quote out of Jeremiah 31:31f which is the key passage and the only passage in the Old Testament that uses the terminology “new covenant”. Now my point here is that if the high priestly ministry is connected to the better covenant and if Christ is the mediator of this better covenant and the context says that this better covenant is with the House of Israel and the House of Judah (that last line), then that means that Jesus Christ’s present high priestly ministry at the right hand of God the Father (His role as High Priest) is directly related to a covenant with Israel.

Now that ought to make you scratch your head a little bit because I think by understanding that and thinking about this a little bit, it’s going to help us understand a lot of things related to what God is doing with the church and what God is doing with Israel. It’s not saying that we’re not going to break down the wall of separation between Israel and the church. But we are seeing that this covenant with Israel with the House of Israel and the House of Judah is the foundational legal document enacted in human history that lays the foundation for what God is doing and what Christ is doing as our High Priest. Just to remind you of something that we have gone through quite a bit in the past that from Genesis 1 to Revelation everything that God does in history is based on some kind of legal structure. He has…theologians use the word condescended. What that basically means is that God has willingly limited and restricted Himself, lowered Himself in a sense to work within certain structures which man can understand in order to carry on His relationship with man.

It used to be that…I took a church in Irving many, many years ago and there were two or three guys in the church who were really positive. But, both of these guys had come out of some quasi-mystical/charismatic background and they would frequently ask questions related to the continuation of the sign gifts. The thing that you always heard (and I used to get (Of course I don’t go in an environment now where people would ask me the question, but I used to always get) these questions from people who were interested in the charismatic issue and they would ultimately end up saying, “How can you put God in a box? God can make anything happen. God can still do miracles. God can give people gift of tongues today if He wanted to. God could do all kinds if He wanted to. You are just restricting Him.”

No, you’ve got it backwards here. What the Word of God does is God informs us how He is going to function in relation to man, what the bases are for his relationship to man, and what the conditions are for what He will do and what He will not do. It is God who as told us what the restrictions are. God has willingly restricted Himself and told us what those restrictions are. We’re not putting God in a box. God has put Himself in a box in order to let us know exactly what we can expect of Him so that as you go through the different dispensations from the dispensation of perfect environment or innocence in the garden to conscience to human government to the calling out of Abraham and the Age of the Patriarchs and then Age of Israel then the Messianic Era and then the Church Age and Tribulation all the way through when God is going to change the way He deals with people. He articulates it in a legal document called the covenant. So this is how He does things.

So He says that the New Covenant is going to be with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah. But there are some really important issues that have developed over the years in trying to understand just what this new covenant is and how the church relates to the New Covenant and in what sense if any are we seeing the New Covenant fulfilled today. There are those that have taken various positions which we will go into just so you can have an understanding of what’s going on here historically. So we will get into our introduction of the New Covenant tonight.

First of all the New Covenant is the 8^th and final covenant in the Old Testament. We’ve had the initial Creation Covenant, the Adamic Covenant, and the Noahic Covenant. Those are all modifications of the same permanent covenant. Those are gentile. Those are universal covenants for all mankind. The Noahic Covenant is still in effect. Every time you see a rainbow you are to be reminded of what? Haven’t I taught you all better than that? You are to be reminded that we have to execute criminals who commit murder. Oh yeah, and God’s not going to destroy the earth by water any more either. You can still enjoy good prime rib and good steak. All of that is part of the Noahic Covenant – all of it.

You can’t pick out one thing and say, “Well, we are going to ignore the other.”

So the Noahic Covenant is still in effect and we still need to be executing criminals and we still need to eat steak and God’s not going to wipe us out by water. That includes water from the sky and...Oh my, melted icecaps. Wouldn’t that come into that same category? It would make the oceans rise and flood everybody out. That’s not going to happen. We can just have confidence in that. So those are the first three covenants.

Then we get into God saying, “I am tired of dealing with the whole human race. They have rejected Me and rejected Me and rejected Me, constantly worshipping the creature rather than the Creator so I am going to call out one individual.”

God from that point on and approximately 2000 to 2100 BC, God says He is going to restrict Himself to working Himself primarily through the descendent of Abraham, specifically the descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He gives Abraham a covenant that has 3 elements to it. Those elements are land, seed, and blessing. The blessing part is what’s integral and important to understanding the New Covenant. So you have land, seed and blessing. That is a permanent covenant. That’s the fourth covenant, but it’s the first Jewish covenant. Then you have the land covenant, sometimes called the Palestinian or Real Estate Covenant. That’s the fifth covenant and the second Jewish covenant. Then you have the Mosaic Covenant which is the (I am going to lose track here.) seventh covenant, right? Sixth covenant...see I can’t count. Numbers are not good. I’m a liberal arts guy. The Land Covenant is the second Jewish covenant.

The Davidic Covenant is the third Jewish covenant and the 7^th covenant. And the New Covenant is the eighth and final covenant in the Old Testament and the fifth Jewish covenant. The Mosaic Covenant is the fourth covenant…comes in there. I probably screwed that up.

So the only temporary covenant in the Old Testament is the Mosaic Covenant. We sometimes call it unconditional, but the key issue is it’s temporary. That’s what Hebrews 8:7 is all about. It was not to be a permanent covenant.

So, just some introductory concepts here. First of all, some of this is very familiar; some of it’s not. First of all a covenant is a legally binding obligation of God to man. These are the biblical covenants. A covenant is a legally binding obligation of God to man. God is committing Himself to something. One of the reasons we use that term unconditional is because He’s not putting a condition on man to fulfill the obligation of the covenant. He is binding Himself to fulfill the obligation of the covenant. He promises Abraham that He is going to give Abraham land. He is going to give Abraham descendents that would be as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore. Yet there is still a condition in there that Abraham can never lose that title deed, but his descendents won’t fully realize it and appreciate its blessing unless they are obedient. It is a permanent unconditional covenant in that God has sworn that He will never forsake that covenant. He is not going to go back on it. There will be a time when it is fulfilled and Israel has that land.

A second introductory principle, a covenant is God’s solemn pledge. That’s another word. We saw this back in the seventh chapter, the concept of pledge. God swore an oath. So this indicates that this is something that has a legal basis to it. A covenant is God’s solemn pledge to fulfill His promises to those included in the covenant.

Third point, a covenant is a word for a legal contract or covenant or compact. It is a legal document. So you are going to have two parties, the party of the first part and the party of the second part.

A fourth observation is that a contract can be between two parties of equal stature or of one person who is superior and the other is inferior. What we have in the biblical covenants is that God is the party of the first part and He is superior and He willingly binds Himself. He doesn’t have to. As the Creator He doesn’t have to do it that way at all. But He set up this whole legal thing is integral and integrated into every aspect of creation, every aspect of God’s dealing with man - our salvation, our sin, our eternal punishment. Everything is stated in legal terms. So these contracts, the biblical covenants, are always between a God who is superior and man who is inferior.

Now the Old Testament word is berit. That means a contract or a covenant. When you get into the Greek there are a couple of different words. The most common Greek word for a covenant was suntheke. The word that we have in the New Testament is diatheke. Suntheke had the idea communicated that it was equal partners. That sun is “with” and has the idea of equality. The rabbis who translated the Old Testament into Greek didn’t like that word so they used the word diatheke because it has more of the idea of a unilateral enactment where a superior was giving something or dedicating something or willing something. That’s the idea of a will or testament to an inferior person. It’s even used for a covenant by classical authors such as Aristophanes going back to classical Greek. So it has a rich heritage and that’ the point. They chose a word that specifically emphasized the kind of covenant where superior entered into a legal contract with an inferior.

Okay the sixth point, though covenants have often been categorized as unconditional and conditional (and that’s how you’ve heard it for most of your life and how I have heard it for most of my life.), this leads us into some traps because there are some conditions in unconditional covenants. As I have stated already, Abraham’s descendants don’t get to enjoy the full breadth and depth of the land and the blessing of the covenant if they’re disobedient. But, God’s not going to renege on the covenant with Abraham and the generation that does enjoy that will be a generation that is 100 % obedient. How does that happen? Because of the New Covenant. So when the New Covenant is enacted it’s going to bring about a radical change with Israel as we will see.

The seventh point, the New Covenant is the third permanent covenant with Israel that’s based on the Abrahamic Covenant. The three parts of the Abrahamic Covenant are land, seed, and blessing. The land part is expanded in the Land Covenant, Deuteronomy 30. The seed portion is expanded in the Davidic Covenant, II Samuel 7. And, the blessing aspect is expanded in the New Covenant.

The blessing was that God commanded Abraham, “Be a blessing to everyone. Those who bless you I will bless. Those who curse you I will curse.”

So what God is doing is He is saying, “I am part of the first part. Abraham, you’re party of the second part. As a result of this legally binding contract that I am restricting Myself to and granting to you because it fit the format of a royal grant in the Old Testament. On the basis of this legal document, I am going to bless the gentile folks over here that don’t deserve anything. But if they are good to you, I will bless them. If they are not, I won’t. If they treat you well…”

How has this worked out in history? If they have respect for Abraham and his descendents, they will trust Christ as their savior and also have respect for Israel. If they don’t… literally that curse clause says, “Those who treat you lightly.” There are two different words there. In the English it says, “Those who curse you I will curse.” In English you have the same word. In Hebrew, you have two different words. The first word has more the idea of treating lightly, despising, just treating casually.

“If they treat you lightly or despise you I will curse them harshly.”

That comes down to someone who just treats Christianity and Jesus Christ in a somewhat frivolous manner. God says that He will curse them in a harsh manner, eternal condemnation.

So the New Covenant is on that model. I will say this again and again because you have heard it the wrong way for a long time. That is that when God enters into this covenant, it is with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. You can’t come in and say that really means the church. It’s with the House of Israel and the House of Judah, just like He made the Abrahamic Covenant with Abraham. But what he is saying is that on the basis of this covenant (this legal contract that I am making with Israel and Judah), I will bless soteriologically all the Gentiles. That’s where the church comes in. So, you don’t have two New Covenants.

Eighth point, the New Covenant is an unconditional covenant, meaning that the fulfillment of its promises does not depend on the obedience or the will of Israel although in time, that is eventually, the covenant will be the new covenant will be the cause of their obedience. We will get into what that means when we get into the Ezekiel passages.

What I am saying here is that God promises to give them a new heart and to put the Word of God in their soul and under the New Covenant there are principles there that no one will need to teach their neighbor the Word. No one will need to give the gospel because everyone will know it. I mean it’s different. God is not only going to die for them, He is going to put it in their soul for them. He will regenerate them. There are some issues there that we have to discuss that I think some people aren’t real clear on. We will work our way through some of those things. But again, the emphasis is God is the one who is going to do the work for them. It’s not based on their own native ability.

The ninth point, whereas most of the other covenants are material and national in nature -I have talked about that before how they are very physical in their blessings. It’s a land covenant- very, very physical. It’s the seed. It’s the descendents.

The New Covenant is primarily spiritual. “I will give them a new heart. I will put the Word in them. I will give them the Spirit. I will sprinkle water on them and they will be cleansed.” It is a spiritual factor.

Tenth, the New Covenant is everlasting in nature. It is a permanent covenant especially in contrast to the old covenant which is a temporary covenant.

Those are 10 points to kind of give you a little bit of a summary and orientation in our introduction to the New Covenant.

Now let’s look at some basic elements related to the New Covenant itself. First of all, Scripture…now that is a lot of Scripture. I want everybody to get that written down because I am going to go to the next slide in 30 seconds so you’ll just get writer’s cramp. Jeremiah 31:31-4 is your key passage. That’s the only passage in the Old Testament that uses the term New Covenant. This is the passage word-for-word that the writer of Hebrews quotes verbatim in Hebrews 8 starting in verse 7. That’s all he does. He quotes the whole thing from verse...excuse me verse 8…verse 8 down to verse 12 he quotes Jeremiah. But he doesn’t expound on everything that’s in here. He doesn’t develop everything. He hardly develops anything that’s in here. He doesn’t talk about anything here. He says,

^NKJ Hebrews 8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.

Then he starts the quote in verse 8 and he quotes the whole passage down to very 13. Then he makes his point. Then he says:

^NKJ Hebrews 8:13 In that He says, "A new covenant," He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

See what he has done? He has only focused on one thing. He quotes 5 verses there.

See he used the word “new”. Because he used the word “new” that means the old was temporary. He only focuses on that one word. But we’re going to focus on more because we need to talk and understand the New Covenant. So the key passage in the Old Testament is Jeremiah 31:31-34. But that’s not the first time chronologically that there it is an indication that God is going to give Israel a better covenant. It is referenced in a number of other passages in the prophets. You have Isaiah 49:8, Isaiah 54:10, Isaiah 55:3, Isaiah 59:21, and Isaiah 51:8-9. We have Jeremiah 32:37-41, Jeremiah 32:39-40, Ezekiel 11:19, Ezekiel 16:60-63, Ezekiel 18:31, Ezekiel 34:25, Ezekiel 36:25-28, Ezekiel 37:21-28, Hosea 2:17-20 and Amos 9:13-15.

Probably the oldest passage there is Hosea 2. In chronological order you have Hosea 2:17-20, then Isaiah passages, and then Jeremiah, then Ezekiel and Amos. So, these are the key passages. Several of those we’re going to go through in detail. We are just doing a flyover tonight.

Second thing is who are the persons involved. What is very clear in the Jeremiah 31 passage and the Hebrews passage (It doesn’t change the wording at all.) God says:

^KJV Jeremiah 31:31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:

I didn’t hear “with the church” in there. I didn’t hear Peter. I didn’t hear Paul. I didn’t hear John. It’s with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah.

Importance

The importance is that this New Covenant provides for the regeneration of Israel in the Millennial Kingdom, and the fulfillment of all other covenants and promises to them. Part of the New Covenant secures them in the land so it’s not just isolated to that spiritual regeneration. So it’s going to provide for all these things. It’s the culmination of everything that has been going on from the Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis 12. It all points to that and when that New Covenant is enacted at the return of Christ at the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom that’s when all these promises, all these prophecies, everything finally comes to fulfillment in relationship to Israel.

Provisions

There are ten provisions in the New Covenant – ten provisions which reinforce a unique state of salvation to the nation in the Israel in the Millennial Kingdom. Some of these provisions sound a little odd to us because we are in a different dispensation. So, things are going to change. We just have to deal…we may not understand all of it or why it works the way it does but this is how God is bringing about the conclusion to His promises to Israel. To start off:

1. The covenant is made with the nation of Israel according to Jeremiah 50:4-5. It is not with anybody else. I keep hitting on that because even among dispensationalists in earlier generations, they thought, “Well, we have got to figure out the way the church fits in so they proposed a second new covenant called New Covenant to the church. But we have to deal with the text and what the Scriptures say and there is no place where the Scripture says there is a new covenant with the church. That was a theological speculation to try to figure out how to resolve the problem. It just didn’t work. There are a lot of things that we can do. Every now and then I run into people that start over thinking doctrine. They start getting into what sounds very logical and very consistent but somehow they sort of slip their anchor to the text. You always have to …no matter how far up you go in developing your inferences and your conclusions and your deductions from Scripture, you always have to be able to trace that line back down to where it anchors in the text. If you can’t do that then you need to avoid…God has clearly revealed everything He wants us to know. But, there are some things He has not thought necessary for us to know. Now I think that God wants us to know a lot more than most people think God wants us to know because they sort of scratch the surface and God wants us to think profoundly about what the text says and what its implications are. A lot of people are really afraid to do that. They want to stay at obvious conclusions. We need to put things together. We have done that in church history. We have put together passages that talk about Jesus as God, that Jesus is eternal and that the Father is eternal and that Jesus and the Father are one. Then the Holy Spirit is fully divine and the Holy Spirit is eternal. So the conclusion must be that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal and we have a multiple person trinity (a triune God) with the same essence, the same nature. But you don’t have the word trinity anywhere in the Bible. You don’t have the doctrine of the trinity laid out that specifically anywhere in the Bible, but it’s a deduction from propositions that are clearly stated in the Scripture. If one proposition is true and another proposition is true, and you can draw a deduction from those two propositions, a deduction will be true. That’s logic. But there are some people who are skittish about that. If you have proposition A and proposition B and you reach conclusion C; and then you have proposition D and proposition E and you reach conclusion F and A and B and D and E are all true and C and F are true then if proposition C is true and proposition F is true that leads you to conclusion G it’s still true. You can trace that line all the way back to the Scripture. You can get three feet off the Word of God going from deduction to deduction, but you had better make sure that you don’t…Once you start inserting some sort of speculative guesswork into that chain, you are hosed. So, you have to make sure everything is clear and true all the way back down to the text. That’s what theology is and why it’s so much fun. It’s why we like to go to conferences and argue about stuff. It sharpens our thinking and helps us get into the Word and really figure out what the Bible is saying. So we have a covenant that’s made with the nation Israel.
2. The covenant is in contrast to the Mosaic Covenant which depended on the obedience of Israel for its fulfillment. Jeremiah 31:32.

^NKJ Jeremiah 31:32 "not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the 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.

If they were not completely obedient to the Mosaic Covenant, they wouldn’t enjoy the land. They weren’t and they didn’t. They never had complete control of the land.

3. The major portion of the covenant (that is the New Covenant.) will be fulfilled …and I would rewrite that – the covenant won’t be fulfilled until after the tribulation, but there aspects of it that are applied to the church. Let’s say it that way. There are aspects applied to the church. Let’s rewrite that. The covenant itself will be fulfilled after the Great Tribulation when Jesus returns.
4. The New Covenant will take the place of Mosaic Covenant and will be written in their hearts instead of on tablets of stone. That’s one of the differences between the old covenant and the New Covenant. It says God will write it on the hearts of every Jew. He doesn’t say every Jew that accepts Christ as Messiah, because guess what. There is not a single Jew that enters into the Millennial Kingdom that isn’t saved. That is where it starts. They are going to have children and their children are going to have sin natures and that’s going to be a different issue.
5. The New Covenant will feature great spiritual blessings for the people of Israel. They will be head and shoulders above every other nation in the world and all people, all nations according to Isaiah 2 are going to go to the temple and look to the temple and Israel and go to the Temple Mount for worship.
6. The New Covenant will reveal the glory of God so that it will no longer be necessary to witness to others. Pastor-teachers will be unemployed. No one will need to teach their neighbor. That’s related to Israel. Now does that mean that out there are among the gentile nations you are going to have to have pastors? Possibly.
7. The New Covenant will feature forgiveness, grace and blessing. See there are some things that are very similar to today, very similar to the Old Testament. Every dispensation has certain things that are in common -forgiveness, grace and blessing. Salvation is always by faith alone in the object of faith for that dispensation.
8. In the covenant God promised the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Now this is where I think people get in trouble because there is going to be the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the New Covenant and there is indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Church Age. They conclude that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Church Age must be part of the New Covenant because after all Jesus said, “This is the New Covenant of My blood is given for you.” and Paul said, “I am a minister of the New Covenant.” That’s what some folks conclude. We have some New Covenant blessings today, but the operation of the Holy Spirit even though He indwells in both dispensations some of the operations of the Holy Spirit in the Millennial Kingdom are going to be different because you are going to have revelatory things happen. Your old men will dream dreams. Your young men will see visions and that’s part of the New Covenant. But, that’s not today and that’s linked to the Holy Spirit so we have to make these kinds of distinctions.
9. There will be a universal knowledge of Yahweh among the people of Israel. Everyone will know Him. Jeremiah 31:34.
10. The covenant includes a promise that Israel will obey God and have a right attitude toward Him forever.

Those are the ten provisions of the New Covenant.

Now let’s look at four points for contrasting the old covenant and New Covenant. First of all God will write the law in the minds and on the hearts of those in the New Covenant. That means that they are going to inherently know it. We do not have any kind of truth that is inherently and intuitively known today. If you think so, you’re a mystic. See, that’s the contrast. We don’t have that today. But this is part of that danger. If you start thinking we’ve some aspects of the New Covenant functioning today, then why don’t we have this? That does lead to...see in a lot of charismatic theology they have bought into this same kind of idea. Already-not-yet theology came along a little later, but they had an incipient form of this that we’re getting these New Covenant blessings Joel 2 already. So when I wake up in the middle of the night with liver quiver that’s God talking to me. He is writing it on my heart.

Second area of contrast, God will be the God of those in the New Covenant and they will be His people. There is going to be that final fulfillment of that intimate relationship between God and Israel. Those in the New Covenant will know God automatically, intuitively, directly.

Two basic characteristics

There is an internal spiritual transformation and a promise of a future regathering of Israel and restoration to the land. That’s part of the New Covenant that Israel will be regathered and in the land as a regenerate people. Now as we have pointed out before, Isaiah 11:11 and some other passages indicate that there will be a regathering of Israel in unbelief before the tribulation. That just stands to reason. If Daniel’s 70th week that 7 year period that is known as the Great Tribulation the time of Jacob’s Trouble, notice the emphasis on its relationship to Israel. If that begins when the prince of the people who is to come enters into a treaty with Israel, then there has to be a national entity in the land for Him to enter into a contract with.

Not only that, but half way through he is going to bring an end to sacrifices and offerings. It means that the people that are in the land are apostate not only because they returned in unbelief but because they are entering into a treaty with the ant-Christ. But they are going to have temple operations, sacrifices and offerings during that first 3 ½ years that end half way through and those sacrifices and offerings are just legalistic nonsense because it’s part of a reinstated apostate Judaistic worship that isn’t in obedience to God. But, there has got to be a national entity there.

So sometimes people have said this was wrong to encourage or try to encourage…let me tell you can try to encourage Jews to go back to the land all day long and until God opened the door they weren’t going back. They were movements all through the last 2,000 years to try to give Jews an opportunity to return to their homeland. None of them came to any fruition until starting in about 1835 to 1840. Little doors started to open on the one hand and on the other hand since 3/4ths of the Jewish population in the world lived in Eastern Europe and Russia, the czar began to ratchet up the intensity of these pogroms and running Jews out of Russia. They had to go somewhere. Isn’t that interesting that in the coincidence of God’s plan it just happened that the door opened to go into the land at the same time that God was kicking them out where they were. (That was dispensationalists who were trying to manipulate the fulfillment of prophecy, don’t you know.)

So the New Covenant has these two aspects to it. Okay.

In a quick conclusion, understanding the issues there are two new covenants. I’m not going to get into…this is the old thing that the position that there are two new covenants, one with the church and one with Israel. We have to figure out what’s going on there.

Second, how does the church fit? I would say the church participates in the New Covenant only by way of application.

What I want to do there is show the four positions on the New Covenant. There are four positions on the New Covenant. We will get into that next time. Okay.

Let’s bow our heads in closing prayer.