I spoke
about the means and the end. The means being the Jews and the end being all
men. What is the place of the Jews in the promised land of God? Are the Jews
superior to the Gentiles? Do the Jews have a special place in the church or is
the church superior to the Jews or is the church the new Israel?
I want to
begin with this understanding.
Genesis 12:1-3
1 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go
from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will
show you.
2 “I will make you into a great
nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
When we
look at these verses, we have traditionally named it as the Abrahamic Covenant.
What was promised to Abraham?
God
promised Abraham land - bless you. He will be blessed. He was promised all
people group. All people will be blessed.
Genesis 15:4-6
4 Then the word of the Lord came to
him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood
will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and
count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall
your offspring be.”
6 Abram believed the Lord, and he
credited it to him as righteousness.
He was
promised a seed - offspring of a whole nation. Verse 6 is a fundamental verse.
What was
on the apostle Paul's mind when he read these verses? I can break it up into
two phases.
Paul
before the Damascus Road and Paul after the Damascus Road.
Before Damascus Road
Paul will
view this from the perspective of a Pharisee. He only had the OT unlike us.
Paul will be looking at this from the view point of Israel. The land would be
when Joshua entered the land of Canaan. It was already fulfilled and they
already have it. His understanding was based on the law. His main concern was
for the Jews. The Gentiles are welcomed to join them but they'll be second
class citizens.
What have
not been fulfilled is "all people groups will be blessed".
Exodus 24:4-8
4 Moses then wrote down everything
the Lord had said.
He got up early the next morning and
built an altar at the foot of the mountain and set up twelve stone pillars
representing the twelve tribes of Israel. 5 Then he sent young Israelite men,
and they offered burnt offerings and sacrificed young bulls as fellowship
offerings to the Lord. 6 Moses took half of the blood and put it in bowls, and
the other half he splashed against the altar. 7 Then he took the Book of the
Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the
Lord has said; we will obey.”
8 Moses then took the blood,
sprinkled it on the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that
the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”
This is
the blood covenant that God made with us. We describe it as the Mosaic
Covenant, Sinaitic Covenant or the Old Covenant. Some may call it the covenant
of the law. Paul would have read and seen all these as law, works and
obedience. This is Paul the Pharisee. He is someone who follows the detail of
the law. Faith and grace doesn't play a part here.
I spoke
on the hyper-grace movement. And the old covenant is the law and the letter of
the law will kill. So now in grace we don't go back to the law. To the
untrained eye it looks very believable. The Pharisees of the time understood it
primarily in that form. Even Paul got it wrong. But today I want you to know
that after the Damascus Road he re-interpreted all these.
Paul is
someone who looks at the OT and is an expert in it. He does not throw the OT
into the rubbish bin after the NT.
Paul after the Damascus Road
Romans 4:9-12
9 Is this blessedness only for the
circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s
faith was credited to him as righteousness. 10 Under what circumstances was it
credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but
before!
11 And he received circumcision as a
sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still
uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been
circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them.
12 And he is then also the father of
the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also follow in the
footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
Verse 9
was referred to at Gen 15:6. Paul was addressing both Gentiles and Jews.
Abraham was credited as righteousness at Gen 15:6 before circumcision. He was
circumcised in Gen 17:9-11 at 99 years old. That is 25 years later.
Circumcision was just an affirmation of the law becoming active in you. And you
become under the Mosaic law. Paul is very clear that if you circumcise you go
back to the law. The Jews were shocked because of this. This is very important.
Paul is
saying they have misunderstood the Abrahamic Covenant. It is actually for all
those who believed. Now Gentiles appears in Paul's line of thinking. You now
enter not by the law but by faith.
Romans 4:16-17
16 Therefore, the promise comes by
faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s
offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the
faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. 17 As it is written: “I have made
you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he
believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that
were not.
Paul Before / Paul After
Israel - Gentiles
Law - Faith
Works - Grace
Obedience -
Obedience
Ephesians 2:19-22
19 Consequently, you are no longer
foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also
members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the
whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the
Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in
which God lives by his Spirit.
Verse 19
are the Gentiles and is no longer foreign but together with the Jews forms a
nation.
Ephesians 3:6
This mystery is that through the
gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one
body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.
Why did
Paul use the word mystery? The focus is the hidden. It is because to the Jews,
Judaism and the Pharisees, it's not for the Gentiles. Second class may be okay
but not the same heir. Even if they accept that the Gentiles can come in they
will still view the Gentiles differently. That is why Paul was politically
correct and called it a mystery because it's hard for them to understand.
Galatians 3:26-29
26 So in Christ Jesus you are all
children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ
have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile,
neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in
Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and
heirs according to the promise.
All have
the same father through faith, Abraham. He used language to describe the
mystery. I may be a Christian but it does not mean I am no longer a Chinese.
Paul is trying to say the status is the same. No racial superiority over
others. Functional difference and status is different. A man and woman is the
same status before God but authority is different because that function.
Galatians 3:13-14
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse
of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone
who is hung on a pole.” 14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to
Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we
might receive the promise of the Spirit.
When Paul
wrote the promise of the spirit, where did he draw from it?
Ezekiel 36:26-27
26 I will give you a new heart and
put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give
you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow
my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
This is
where the promise of the spirit comes. This is when Jesus said when I go I will
send the Holy Spirit. The spirit is in everyone of us.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
31 “The days are coming,” declares
the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.
33 “This is the covenant I will make
with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will they teach their
neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the
Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the
greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no
more.”
The new
covenant is described and it will not be like the old covenant. God works the
promise of the spirit into all of us. Jews and Gentiles. The purpose is to keep
the left and follow my decrees. That is why obedience is part of the new
covenant.
Gen 12,
15 and Exo 24 is the old covenant. It was meant to be faith and grace.
Jer 31
and Ezekiel 36 is the new covenant. It was also meant to be faith and grace.
Abraham
was chosen by grace, it was God's sovereign will. Faith and grace. Before
Damascus Road, he saw the old covenant as law and works but after Damascus Road
he saw the old covenant as faith and grace. The Pharisees sees it as based on
law and got it wrong. Not God's old covenant. That's why the hyper-grace
movement got it wrong.
God gave
the purpose of giving us the Holy Spirit. It is to move us to obedience to the
law. It is not to bless us. The challenge of the faith is that believers may
often go back to the law. Look at Martin Luther, the reformation and the 16th
century. The church went back to the law. Even Martin Luther fell into this. He
then read this word.
Romans 1:17
For in the gospel the righteousness
of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as
it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
The
righteous shall leave by grace was from Hab 2:4. And this was what he wrote.
Habakkuk 2:4
“See, the enemy is puffed up;
his desires are not upright—
but the righteous person will live
by his faithfulness—
When I
discovered that it is by grace I was born again of the Holy Ghost and the doors
of paradise swung open and I walked through it. It was like I was born again
and became a Christian, it's just that he was more flowery. The just shall live
by faith.
What
motivates us to share the gospel? Matthew 28 is our mandate. We have been
commissioned by God and we stand on that mandate. Paul did not have Matthew 28,
so his mandate came from Genesis 12. This became his missionary mandate.
Paul
grounded his theology on Gen 15:6. Without it, it would be difficult for Paul.
The Pauline gospel was grounded in Gen 15:6. To come to God by faith. Faith was
the only door. If it is faith, then it is by grace. Grace came from the
understanding that it's faith. If by works it won't be by grace. Faith and
grace came together.
Galatians 3:6-9
6 So also Abraham “believed God, and
it was credited to him as righteousness.”
7 Understand, then, that those who
have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify
the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All
nations will be blessed through you.” 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed
along with Abraham, the man of faith.
When God
called Abraham he already had the church in mind. God already had all men in
mind, both Jews and Gentiles. God's promised plan is the church. Israel became
the means in which the end is the church. And the Jews is also part of the
church.
The Old
Covenant and the New Covenant. Our Bible is labelled as Old Testament and New
Testament. What is the connection. Testament is the Latin word that has a new
connection to the Hebrew word covenant. The Old Testament is the Old Covenant
and testament of the prophets and patriarch while the New Testament is the New
Covenant and testament of Jesus Christ.
The Bible
(OT & NT) is a single document. And Christ stands at the centre. The OT
looks to Christ while Christ defines the NT. Christ puts everything together.
You will
have caught it if you catch that in the Mosaic Covenant the denominator is
still faith and grace. And if you actually understand that God put his spirit
in you, is so that you will follow his decrees and his law.
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