1490 - "The New Covenant-Don't miss this!" Jeremiah 31

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 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_00 0:20

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1490. Let me say at the outset that this may be one of the most important podcasts that I have done, certainly this year, but perhaps of all time. As you know, I have been dealing with the covenants, the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, the Davidic covenant, and today I want to begin to deal with the new covenant. And I pray that some things come to light in your life as you listen to this. All I ask you to do is to follow me in the scriptures. Not what you and I have preconceived and been taught down through the years, but just taking the Word of God as it is written. I want to remind us all of some things as I go through this podcast today. Let's go back to how we interpret Scripture, what Scripture is, to whom it was written, and let's get some context, some historical theological context. Now what I'm about to tell you is not anything new, as a matter of fact, it's very old. But we get into a mindset that certain things have to be a certain way and we have basic presuppositions. Some of those are accurate, others are not. And so God help me as we go through these passages because the new covenant is not controversial. As a matter of fact, it is one of the clearest teachings in all of the Word of God. But we have in many ways as Gentiles made the new covenant about us instead of as it was written and given in the Bible. The new covenant is delineated, is detailed in Jeremiah 31. That's right. The Barit Hadesh, the New Covenant, that is, the New Testament. Jesus said, This is the new covenant in my blood, to whom was he speaking? You say, Well to everybody, actually that is the effect. But he was speaking to his disciples, who were all Jewish. And they knew exactly what the new covenant was. You and I are Johnny come lately when it comes to covenants. The apostle Paul said, What is the great advantage to the Jew? Well, as he named those off, one of them was they received the Jews, that is, they received the covenants. They received the oracles of God, the words of God. They received the promises. Who is he speaking of? He's speaking of the Jews. And so you have heard me say, and some of you don't like it, you've told me so. It aggravates you when I say it. But please understand whether I like it or you like it, the Bible is a Jewish book. It is written by Jews to Jews, primarily for Jews. And you and I are grafted into the covenant. What covenant? Well, you say the Abrahamic covenant, okay? If that's the case, does that mean that we are spiritual partakers of the Abrahamic covenant? Well, in a sense, but the Abrahamic covenant had to do with a land promise, with a lineage promise, with a people that God would bring forth from the Jewish people, not the Gentiles, the Savior, who would be the Savior of the Gentiles, but first of all to the Jew. The gospel is to the Jew first, and then to the Greek, then to the Hellenists, then to the Gentile. And so the Bible is a Jewish book. The covenant, the Mosaic covenant, that was primarily to the Jewish people. The Davidic covenant that relates to the Jewish people. It has to do with the throne that would be set up in Jerusalem. Not just the Jerusalem past, but Jerusalem now and the Jerusalem in the future. Jesus, the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah, who is the root of David, but also the offspring of David according to the last chapter in the book of Revelation, the last chapter of the Bible. Jesus said, I am the root of David, I am the offspring of David, I am the bride and morning star. And so the promises in the Word of God are primarily to the Jew. And so what are we grafted into according to Romans 9, 10, and 11? What is it that we're grafted into? Well, when Jesus said this is the blood of the covenant, he was not talking to Gentiles, he was talking to Jews. Why? Because the new covenant was a promise made primarily to the Jews. It is going to be a spiritual covenant. It's going to be not written in tablets of stone, it's going to be in the heart. It's going to be a spiritual thing. And so therefore the grafting in has to do with the new covenant, not the Abrahamic covenant as such, not the Mosaic covenant as such, not in the Davidic covenant as such, but the new covenant. It is the one that is spiritual in nature. But it's primarily to the Jews. You say, Well now I just don't see that. Doesn't matter if you see it. Jeremiah was a Jew. He lived before the captivity, the Babylonian exile. He lived during that captivity, that Babylonian exile. And Jeremiah 31, where the new covenant is expressed clearer than anywhere in the Bible, is to Jews. He was speaking primarily to the Jewish remnant. Let's just look and see if that's not true. I hope you have your Bible and you can follow along. I'm not making this up. Someone might say, Well, you're acting like you're a Jew. No, I'm acting like I'm a child of God that is grateful to the Jewish people, and just reading the Bible as it's written without putting a isegetical meaning to it and reading in to a template that I've been taught. It just simply says that Jeremiah said in chapter 31, at the same time says the Lord Yahweh, I will be the God of all the families of Israel. Now you can underline Israel every time it's mentioned here, and it's not talking about the Gentiles, he's talking about the nation of Israel to whom Jeremiah was speaking and writing. At the same time says the Lord, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. Thus says the Lord. The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness, Israel, there it is again, when I went to give him rest. The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness, that's the word Hesed, I have drawn you. Who's he speaking to? He's speaking to Jews. They wandered away. God with his great loving kindness drew them back to himself. Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt. Who's he talking to? O Virgin of Israel. You shall again be adorned with your tambourines and shall go forth with the dances of those who rejoice. You shall plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria. Those are Jewish mountains. That is part of the Abrahamic covenant. That's part of the land covenant. It's the mountains of Samaria. That's not spiritual Samaria, that's literal Samaria. And where are the mountains of Samaria? They're in the center of the land of Israel. And the mountains of Samaria is where Sheloh is. Shelo for 369 years was the place of worship, the central place of worship. It's the place where Joshua divided the tribes. That's where the tent of meeting, the tabernacle, was stationed for close to 400 years before the great temple was built in Jerusalem. That was the capital of Israel. And so he's talking about the literal mountains of Samaria. And he says, You shall plant vines. He's talking about after they came back from captivity. Yes, that was when Cyrus said you can go back and build the temple and so forth. But as you know, biblical prophecy doesn't usually just have one fulfillment. It is fulfilled sometimes with a second fulfillment, a more full fulfillment, and then sometimes it has a tertiary fulfillment. But he says the planners shall plan and eat them as ordinary food, for there shall be a day when the watchman will cry on Mount Ephraim, arise and let us go to Zion, to the Lord our God. Zion was the name of the stronghold, that's what it means, the stronghold where David captured the old Jebusite city, that is that ten acre city that's called the city of David today. That was Mount Zion. Now today, for those of you who have been to Jerusalem, you know that there is a Mount Zion. It has, quote, the tomb of David, end quote. That's not the tomb of David, and that's not Mount Zion. That is a Johnny come lately from several hundred years ago. Mount Zion in the Bible is synonymous with the city of David and what is called the city of David today. And that's the old Jebusite city. And Sion is the word for a stronghold, and that's what the Jebusite city was. Verse 7, for thus says the Lord, sing with gladness for Jacob. Now that is one of the sons of Israel, that's not a Gentile. And shout among the chief of the nations, proclaim, give praise, and say, O Lord, save your people. Who is your people? It's the remnant of Israel. Behold, I will bring them from the north country, gather them from the ends of the earth. Among them the blind and the lame, the woman with child, the one who labors with child together, a great throng shall return there. Return from where? Return from exile, from captivity, not just the one that is talked about with Babylon and with Persia, but also there is a greater fulfillment, and that is when God began to bring back his people from all over the earth, that great ingathering really gathered steam about eighteen hundred and eighty, just a couple of hundred years ago. They shall come with weeping and with supplications, and I will lead them, and I will cause them to walk by the rivers of water, and in a straight way in which they shall not stumble. Why would God do this? For I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn. Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, O Goim, that is the word for Gentiles, and declare it in the isles afar off. He who scattered Israel, his people, will gather him and keep him as a shepherd does his flock. For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, that's another name for Israel, and usually referring to him in the unconverted state, and ransomed him from the hand of one stronger than he. Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Sion, streaming to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat and new wine and oil, for the young of the flock and the herd, their souls shall be like a well watered garden, for they shall sorrow no more at all. Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance and the young men and the old together, for I will turn their mourning to joy and will comfort them. Does that sound familiar? Yes, it did to the returning captives, and it did in nineteen forty eight as the people came back in from being in the ovens of the German Hitler that tried his best to wipe out the people of God. You see, the devil was filling Hitler, it was the devil who filled Mussolini, it was the devil who filled Stalin, and it is the devil who will fill the Antichrist and embody him. But Jew hatred is as old as the Garden of Eden, because Satan hates God and he hated Abraham and tried to kill everyone from the descendants that would be truly the ancestry of Messiah Jesus. And the Bible says, and he will make them rejoice rather than sorrow. I will satiate the soul of the priest with abundance, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, says the Lord. Now listen to this. Thus says the Lord, a voice heard in Ramath, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children because they are no more. Now when is that quoted? That's quoted from this passage in Jeremiah when the babies were killed by Herod the Great after the wise men had come, when the Messiah would have been probably a young toddler eighteen months old, the Lord Jesus, who was not in a stable. He was in a house, the word is Oikas, and the word is Podion, a toddler, not brefos, not a babe in a manger. And thus says the Lord, refrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. Now look at verse seventeen. It says there is hope in your future, says the Lord. That your children shall come back to their own border. It's talking about the land, that not only during the days of the exile would they return and come back from Babylon and from Persia, but there is still a time when that would be fulfilled, and we're living in that time. And now more than ever before, Aliyah is being made, and Jews are returning in unprecedented numbers as anti Semitism rises all over the earth. I'm going to have to stop, but we're going to pick up right there tomorrow, and I want to talk to you about the new covenant, because that's what we're grafted into. And the new covenant was made with the house of Israel. And that was a spiritual covenant. That is what we are partakers of. That's what we're grafted into, not the Mosaic, not the Abrahamic, not the Davidic covenant. Oh, we will be blessed by that and benefit from it. But God had a better thing for us, and that is we get to know God in a personal way and have his law written in our hearts and our minds. Why? Because God Himself will live inside the very being of the Jew and Gentile together. Don't miss tomorrow as we walk on the way. This is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

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 TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.