Lesson 3 - PROCLAIMING GOD IN CHRIST - THE MISSIONARY MANDATE Part 2

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.