"Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?" Acts 15:10
Have you ever heard of the word sophistry? If you haven't, don't worry. It is a word that over the last couple of centuries has diminished in its use. There are many similar definitions of sophistry, but the one I like is, "reasoning that seems plausible on a superficial level but is actually unsound, or reasoning that is used to deceive." Basically, it is something that appeals to the emotions but doesn't deliver on its promise. One of the areas of life where sophistry shows up is the spiritual world of religion. Recently, a friend of mine shared a quote with me that could appeal to a person's emotions, but would not deliver what it promises. "Every promise in the Word of God is for us. In your prayers, present the pledged word of Jehovah, and by faith claim His promises. His word is the assurance that if you ask in faith, you will receive all spiritual blessings. Continue to ask, and you will receive exceeding abundantly above all that you ask or think. Educate yourself to have unlimited confidence in God. Cast all your care upon Him. Wait patiently for Him, and He will bring it to pass." My friend sent this to me because a red flag went up in their mind after reading it. After they sent it to me, they followed up with the rhetorical question, "Every promise?" I noticed that too. Furthermore, what caught my attention is when it says, "if you ask in faith, you will receive all spiritual blessings." On the surface, this quote sounds great, but in reality, it is vague and, ultimately, unattainable. First of all, it misses the fact that we have already been given everything we need for life and godliness and received every spiritual blessing in Christ. In 2 Peter 1:3, Peter writes, "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness." Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3)."If you already have everything you need for a godly life and have received every spiritual blessing through faith in Jesus Christ, what else do you need to ask for from God? Secondly, many of the promises of God are conditional on our perfect obedience. How many times do you read God say, "If" you fully obey, then I will bless you? In Exodus 19:5, God declares, "Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession." Here we are thousands of years later and the nation of Israel is still not fully obeying God and keeping His covenant. The lesson is clear, we aren't fully obedient and never will be. So, these promises will never be received. Third, and what often goes unmentioned, is that the promises God makes aren't always beneficial to us. One only need to read Deuteronomy 28. The list of "promises" for disobedience, starting in verse 15, is nearly three times as long as the blessings for obedience. God promises a literal hell on earth for disobedience, but, this is never mentioned by those appealing to our emotional desire to be blessed. For example, God says, "The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me (Deuteronomy 28:20)." Do you really want every promise of God, especially when the chances are likely you will only receive His promised curses?
People are deceived into believing they can obtain the promised blessings of God if they are just obedient enough. And the Law of God is rarely the measuring stick, it is usually the "law" of some religious organization or church that a person is measured against. Regardless, that won't be perfectly obeyed either. The result is you are struggling for promises you will never receive, believing God is disgusted with you for your continued failure, and missing out on the promises you already have received through faith in Jesus Christ and the rest God has for you. There is also a difference in the promises you strive to achieve in the energy of your own flesh and those you have been given as a blessing of your faith in Jesus Christ. What does God promise for your obedience to His commands? He promises things like, ""Your towns and your fields will be blessed. Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed. Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed (Deuteronomy 28:3-6)."" These are wonderful blessings, but they are all blessings of the flesh that God will never have to deliver on. In contrast, what does it mean to have everything you need for a godly life and to have been given every spiritual blessing in Christ? 2 Peter 1:4 says, "Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." Did you notice that God has given us His "great and precious promises." He gave them to us as a gift of our faith in Jesus Christ, not as a reward for our fleshly obedience to His impossible commands. However, these promises we have been given aren't the blessings of the flesh as promised under the Old Covenant. Ephesians 1:4-5 says, " Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ." The promises God has given us in Christ are His love, holiness, forgiveness, and best of all, Himself. When we try to be obedient to the commands of God in order to receive the blessings of the flesh, it is because deep down we hope that in receiving them, we will meet the deep, spiritual desires of our heart for love, forgiveness, holiness and a relationship with our Heavenly Father. But, God didn't design us to receive those things through our obedience. He designed us so that through the pursuit of those things we would fail and realize that only through His grace and mercy would those things be received. That is why we so easily fall prey to those who offer us the promises of God as if they are something still to be obtained if only we obey Him. It is a yoke of slavery that the Jews couldn't overcome and neither can we. Yes, claim the promises of God. But, claim those spiritual promises He has freely given to you through faith and not the promises of the flesh you will never be obedient enough to claim and don't measure up to what you truly need from God. It is not an act of faith to ask God for what He has already given to you.
Showing posts with label New Covenant. Old Covenant. Law and grace.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Covenant. Old Covenant. Law and grace.. Show all posts
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Saturday, June 3, 2017
The New is not like The Old
"But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 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— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”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." Hebrews 8:6-13
For many Christians, the Christian life can be described as finding ways to improve their quality of life as can be measured by what benefits they can receive in the flesh. For example, if they have more money to spend, better food to eat, are free of illness and so on, then they can believe God is blessing them for the manner in which they are living. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, what it does say is that people are looking at the Christian life as an opportunity to indulge the flesh. Despite the fact that Jesus said, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal (Matthew 6:19)," many Christians live their lives in an attempt to store up treasures on earth and even use the Bible as justification for it. The Word of God is full of scriptures referring to the promises and blessings of God. And when these people point to the scriptures to justify this pursuit, they often turn to the Old Testament rather than the New Testament. You may even hear them use words like "appropriate" or "claim" when it comes to these Old Testament promises and blessings. Many books have been written and ministries created that teach that all of the promises and all of the blessings offered to the nation of Israel are things that we can now experience, embrace and profit from today. God can most certainly bless His children in the ways described in the Old Testament. However, to assume that He is obligated to do so or that we can somehow earn these blessings by our behavior is a false belief. The promises and blessings of the Old Testament all had to do with the issues of the flesh and relied upon the individual's ability to live up to the standards of the Old Testament in order to receive them. However, the New Covenant deals with the issues of the heart. The promises and blessings of the New Covenant are not based on what we do, but on what God has chosen to freely give to us through our faith in Jesus Christ. When God gave the Old Covenant, He said nothing about knowing who He is. Many Christians are fine with that because they only want God in their lives for what He can give them that will benefit their flesh and their pursuit of gaining the world. For those people, perhaps that is a good thing because someday they may reach the point where they realize the emptiness of that pursuit in life and finally turn to God for what He truly desires for them to have; Himself.
What is better about the New Covenant, its promises and blessings, is that we now have the opportunity to truly know our God. Through the New Covenant, God has promised to forgive our sins and that He will no longer remember our sins. This gives us the opportunity to get to know Him for who He is because our sins no longer separate us from Him as they did under the Old Covenant. It is no wonder that under the Old Covenant, the most we could hope to get from God is blessings of the flesh. He, in essence, becomes a spiritual Santa Claus. We know He exists, but the most we can hope to obtain from Him is the occasional gift based on whether or not our behavior was good or bad. His love for us boils down to the size of the gift and whether or not we feel He accepts us. Under the New Covenant, God has given us Himself; the ultimate gift. Through Jesus Christ, and His indwelling Holy Spirit, God has met the deepest desires of our heart for unconditional love, total acceptance, meaning and purpose to life. We now have our God. Under the Old Covenant, you could never have your God. You could be identified with Him, but you could never have a relationship with Him. It had to do with you trying to live in obedience to something you cannot. And in trying to live that way, you will come to realize that there is something wrong with you and not with God. There is nothing wrong with the Old Covenant, the commandments, the promises or the blessings. One of the main reasons God gave the Old Covenant was to show us our sinfulness and inability to live up to its requirements. That was so we would realize that we are spiritually dead to God and in need of His life being restored to us in Christ. So, if the covenant you are living under looks like the Old Covenant than it is not the New Covenant. The Old Covenant has no relevance in the life of believer. Yes, we can study it to see that mankind is incapable of living up to its demands and that it increases the sin in our lives and how it presents the foreshadows of Jesus Christ and how God would accomplish His plan of salvation, but it is not the Covenant we live by as Christians. That is why the Old Covenant is said to be obsolete and growing old. However, it is not obsolete in that we can use the Old Covenant to show the lost their need for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Through our faith in Jesus Christ and the New Covenant we now live under, we have been given everything we need for life and godliness and been given every spiritual blessing. God has left nothing out. If you have everything you need and every blessing, there is nothing else you need and nothing else He needs to promise. It is time to stop trying to live a life you cannot, that God isn't asking you to live, in order to receive the promises and blessings of the flesh He has not promised to give and start discovering the promises and blessings of your heart and spirit He has freely given to you through your faith in Jesus Christ.
For many Christians, the Christian life can be described as finding ways to improve their quality of life as can be measured by what benefits they can receive in the flesh. For example, if they have more money to spend, better food to eat, are free of illness and so on, then they can believe God is blessing them for the manner in which they are living. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, what it does say is that people are looking at the Christian life as an opportunity to indulge the flesh. Despite the fact that Jesus said, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal (Matthew 6:19)," many Christians live their lives in an attempt to store up treasures on earth and even use the Bible as justification for it. The Word of God is full of scriptures referring to the promises and blessings of God. And when these people point to the scriptures to justify this pursuit, they often turn to the Old Testament rather than the New Testament. You may even hear them use words like "appropriate" or "claim" when it comes to these Old Testament promises and blessings. Many books have been written and ministries created that teach that all of the promises and all of the blessings offered to the nation of Israel are things that we can now experience, embrace and profit from today. God can most certainly bless His children in the ways described in the Old Testament. However, to assume that He is obligated to do so or that we can somehow earn these blessings by our behavior is a false belief. The promises and blessings of the Old Testament all had to do with the issues of the flesh and relied upon the individual's ability to live up to the standards of the Old Testament in order to receive them. However, the New Covenant deals with the issues of the heart. The promises and blessings of the New Covenant are not based on what we do, but on what God has chosen to freely give to us through our faith in Jesus Christ. When God gave the Old Covenant, He said nothing about knowing who He is. Many Christians are fine with that because they only want God in their lives for what He can give them that will benefit their flesh and their pursuit of gaining the world. For those people, perhaps that is a good thing because someday they may reach the point where they realize the emptiness of that pursuit in life and finally turn to God for what He truly desires for them to have; Himself.
What is better about the New Covenant, its promises and blessings, is that we now have the opportunity to truly know our God. Through the New Covenant, God has promised to forgive our sins and that He will no longer remember our sins. This gives us the opportunity to get to know Him for who He is because our sins no longer separate us from Him as they did under the Old Covenant. It is no wonder that under the Old Covenant, the most we could hope to get from God is blessings of the flesh. He, in essence, becomes a spiritual Santa Claus. We know He exists, but the most we can hope to obtain from Him is the occasional gift based on whether or not our behavior was good or bad. His love for us boils down to the size of the gift and whether or not we feel He accepts us. Under the New Covenant, God has given us Himself; the ultimate gift. Through Jesus Christ, and His indwelling Holy Spirit, God has met the deepest desires of our heart for unconditional love, total acceptance, meaning and purpose to life. We now have our God. Under the Old Covenant, you could never have your God. You could be identified with Him, but you could never have a relationship with Him. It had to do with you trying to live in obedience to something you cannot. And in trying to live that way, you will come to realize that there is something wrong with you and not with God. There is nothing wrong with the Old Covenant, the commandments, the promises or the blessings. One of the main reasons God gave the Old Covenant was to show us our sinfulness and inability to live up to its requirements. That was so we would realize that we are spiritually dead to God and in need of His life being restored to us in Christ. So, if the covenant you are living under looks like the Old Covenant than it is not the New Covenant. The Old Covenant has no relevance in the life of believer. Yes, we can study it to see that mankind is incapable of living up to its demands and that it increases the sin in our lives and how it presents the foreshadows of Jesus Christ and how God would accomplish His plan of salvation, but it is not the Covenant we live by as Christians. That is why the Old Covenant is said to be obsolete and growing old. However, it is not obsolete in that we can use the Old Covenant to show the lost their need for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Through our faith in Jesus Christ and the New Covenant we now live under, we have been given everything we need for life and godliness and been given every spiritual blessing. God has left nothing out. If you have everything you need and every blessing, there is nothing else you need and nothing else He needs to promise. It is time to stop trying to live a life you cannot, that God isn't asking you to live, in order to receive the promises and blessings of the flesh He has not promised to give and start discovering the promises and blessings of your heart and spirit He has freely given to you through your faith in Jesus Christ.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)