1423 - "Discerning differences between the Abrahamic & Mosaic Covenants". Genesis 12; 15; 17

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1423. This is the second in a series that I call the place of Jew and Gentile in the great plan of God's redemption. And we're going to look at Abraham, at Isaac, at Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. We're going to look at David. We're going to look at Moses because to these three men, that is, Abraham and Moses and David, were made covenants. And two of those men, David and Abraham, unconditional covenants were made. In other words, God said, I'm going to make a covenant with you, and the duration of it is not dependent upon you, it's dependent upon me. God said it's an everlasting covenant long after you're gone, Abraham. It is going to be your descendants that I'm going to deal with, but I'm going to deal with them according to the covenant I made with you. He said the same thing to David. So they had covenants made with them by God Himself, and they were sealed by God Himself, and the duration of those covenants were to be everlasting. In other words, they were irrevocable. They were inviolate. They could not be violated or taken back. And I believe that is why the Apostle Paul used Abraham as an example in the book of Romans to help us to understand that it is by trusting God's word and trusting in his promises and his provision that we obtain salvation. That's what Romans chapter 4 talks about, that Abraham was justified by faith and through faith. He trusted God, he trusted his promise, he trusted his word that God would be faithful and do what he said he would do. And many times, if you're familiar with the Old Testament or the New Testament, God says, I'm treating you in the way that I'm treating you, not because of you, sir, not because of you, ma'am, but because of a covenant that I made, a promise I made to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Same thing to David. However, the Mosaic covenant was not one that was based upon the same kind of promise that God made to Abraham and David. The Mosaic covenant was a conditional covenant. What do I mean by that? It was a condition covenant of obedience. God said, I'm going to give you the land that I promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, whose name is Israel, and I'm going to let you stay in that land and enjoy that land based upon your obedience to the covenant that I'm making with you right now. And this is why God allowed the people to go into exile, to experience defeat, to be disciplined, because God said, I'm going to treat you as a father, not as a grandfather. And I'm going to make a covenant, Moses, with you. And Moses told the people in the book of Deuteronomy, he said, You're going to break this as soon as you go into the land. And as a matter of fact, Solomon told the people, he said, God, these people are a stiff-necked people, and they're going to go astray. It's not if they're going to go astray, but when they go astray, if they do, and you exile them to a foreign land, or you spew them out of this land that you promised to our fathers. If they would humble themselves and turn to you, would you hear from heaven? Would you bring them back if they repented? Would you heal the land and heal them? And you remember in 2 Chronicles 7.14, God made that assurance to Solomon. But they would be spewed out of the land, and they were out of the land for seventy years during the days of the Babylonian exile. And they were out of the land from the time of the Hasmoneans. They were under their own rule again from the Greek period to the Roman period, which was about a period of about a hundred years when they were under their sovereignty. But when the Romans came in and Pompeii came in in 63 BC and made the land of Israel, Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee part of Rome, it was from that time until 1948 until Israel was back in the land, at least part of the land, in their land under their own sovereignty. So where did all of this begin? I think sometimes this covenant theology that we are dealing with, replacement theology and supersessionism, comes from not understanding that the promises God made with Abraham are unconditional and David unconditional in duration. But the Mosaic covenant that has to do with the people being in the land and enjoying the blessing of God was a conditional covenant, and that's exactly what Jeremiah was talking about that we'll look at in the days ahead when God told Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 31, and it the new covenant passage begins in verse 31 of chapter 31, where he says, I'm going to make a covenant with you, not like the covenant that I made with your fathers when they came out of Egyptian bondage. Now he says that very clearly, so he's talking about the Mosaic covenant. He said, I'm going to make a new covenant with you that's not going to be like that. No, it's going to be like the one that he made with Abraham and with David. That covenant is going to be different than the Mosaic covenant, which we call the covenant of law. And so we'll get into that in the days ahead. I'm telling you, you need to listen to these, not because it's me, but because if I don't answer some questions, I'll sure stir up some questions in your mind. But let's go back to the Abrahamic covenant, beginning in chapter 12, where Abram comes on the scene, Genesis chapter 12, and that is what many people call the Abrahamic covenant. It's not. That's when God called Abraham and introduced what he was going to do with Abraham. But God did not strike the covenant with Abraham, cut the covenant with Abraham until Genesis 15. In Genesis 15, God took Abraham out. If you'll recall, he was still called Abram then. This was after his encounter with Melchizedek, after his rescuing Lot from the Viasco at Sodom. Remember they separated and Abraham took what Lot did not take. And so God said to Abram in chapter fifteen, After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. But Abraham said, Lord God, what will you give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house, the man that's going to inherit everything I've got is Eliasar of Damascus. Then Abram said, You have given me no offspring, no son, no child, indeed one born in my house is not my heir, one that is not even part of my lineage. And behold the word of the Lord came to him, saying, This one shall not be your heir, it's not going to be Eleazar, but one who will come forth from your own body shall be your heir. Then he brought Abram outside, and he said, Now look toward heaven, can you count the stars? If you're able to number them, he said, so shall your descendants be. And look what verse six says. This is what is quoted in Romans chapter four by the Apostle Paul to show that Abraham was a man of trust and faith, and that's how he was made right with God, not through works of righteousness and keeping the Mosaic covenant. It didn't come along till four hundred years after this. And so this covenant preceded, both in the Old and New Testament, this is mentioned, four hundred years afterwards. So the obedience or disobedience to the Mosaic covenant did not determine and did not annul the covenant of Abraham that God made with him. Verse 6 says, and he, Abraham, Abram, believed in the Lord. That's the personal name of God. Notice it's all caps in your Bible. And he that is God accounted it to him, Abraham, for righteousness. He put it on his account as righteousness, not because of any works that he did, but according to the grace of God and the goodness of God toward him in giving him the gift of a covenant promise. And then you have the blood ditch ritual. I have done two or three different podcasts. You can go back and look at these in the book of Genesis and the 365 Bible reading plan or in other on the way podcasts. But that's what chapter 15 was. In chapter 12 you have the covenant introduced, but it wasn't cut, it wasn't made until many years later in Abram's life. So God cut the covenant in chapter 15. Now in chapter 17, it says When Abram was ninety nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said unto him, I am El Shaddai. Walk before me and be blameless, and I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly. He's talking about his lineage. Then Abram fell on his face and talked with him, saying, As for me, behold my covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name will be called Abraham. One means exalted father, Avram, and then Avraham means multitude, father of multitudes, or many nations, as it's translated. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and he did. And I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. And look at this. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants, and your descendants, now listen to this, after you in their generations for an everlasting and eternal covenant. And this is to be to God, to you, and to your descendants. It is going to be like this, Abram, I'm going to be the God of your descendants. And he says, Also, I will give to your descendants after you the land in which you are now a stranger in the land of Canaan, an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. God says, I'll do this. I'm going to see that it's so. He doesn't say I'm going to cast them away if they'll do this. I'll spit them out of the land if they do that. No, that came along later with the Mosaic covenant, which was a totally different kind of covenant, and it was a different arrangement, but it did not annul the Abrahamic covenant, which is an everlasting covenant that God says I'm going to keep. And I'm going to keep not only my end, but your end, because it's not dependent on you, it's dependent upon me. Now this is very important for us going forward. The Abrahamic covenant, dealing with land, lineage, blessing, messiahship, all of those things, God said, I'm going to bring it to pass because of who I am, not because of who you are. Not conditioned based on what you've done. Now the new covenant that God made with the Jewish people. If you look to Jeremiah 31 and we'll be there before too many days, you'll see that this was a covenant. The new covenant is not about the Gentiles. It's about the Jews. That's why the gospel is to the Jew first. The new covenant was ordained at the hand of Jews, not Gentiles. And it was at least a decade after the ascension of Jesus before the first Gentile came in. So how do we get it that God just completely rejected the Jews after the first ten years, not after what they did to Jesus in rejecting him as the leadership of the nation? No, no, after they rejected him with the leadership of the nations, tens of thousands were saved in the first decade and they were all Jews. And so we're going to deal with this. You've got to deal with this because it is not up to you and to me. The Bible is not a Gentiles book. It's a Jewish book. And it was written by Jews, to Jews, primarily for Jews. And God, according to Romans chapter eleven, grafted the Gentiles in. They were wild. We were all wild. Wild olive trees that God took us, cut off a branch, and grafted us in to the root of the Abrahamic covenant. Not the literal we don't become Jews. No. It's a spiritual birth that we enter in to the spiritual promises of Abraham. But that doesn't annul the promises literally of land and lineage and of blessing to the original people. And so we'll deal with that as we go along. We'll deal with, I know what some people will, what about Jesus fulfilling this? Why Jesus fulfilled it all? Well, we'll see. And as we go through there, you can call me a heretic, whatever you want to. I'm just telling you, we're going to go through it. Again, I pray that if I don't answer your questions, I'll at least get you to asking some. So stick with me. As we walk on the way, this is Tony Crisp. God bless you.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.