2 + 2 = 5

 "I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" John 3:12

If you believed that 2+2=5, how would that affect transactions you engaged in requiring mathematical calculations? Nothing would function properly. Your bank ledger would not balance. You would put the wrong amounts of ingredients in your recipes. The things you build would not be structurally sound. And so on. Jesus Christ admonished the disciples because they could not figure out His physical examples were used to explain spiritual truths. This continues to this day. Christians struggle with God's apparent lack of revelation regarding scripture, the circumstances of their lives, and current events. The reason may be that they don't understand the things God has revealed in scripture. So, how can He reveal further truths that depend on them understanding the things He has already shared? Nowhere is this problem more obvious than when it comes to the differences between the Old and New Covenants. Here are a few examples of this problem that I have experienced.

New Covenant

Many Christians believe the New Covenant begins with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It could be due to them equating the birth of Jesus  Christ with the beginning of the New Covenant or because most Bibles separate the covenants at the start of the Gospels. Therefore, they end up believing that things like the Sermon on the Mount is the Lord giving Christians the standard by which to live their lives. That repeating the words to the "Lord's Prayer" is praying to God. And other incorrect assumptions have led to a myriad of beliefs permeating the body of Christ. 

However, the New Covenant began after the death of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 9:16-17 says, "In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living." A will is another way of saying covenant. An inheritance is not received until after a person dies. Therefore, the New Covenant did not take effect until after the death of Jesus Christ. Understanding this truth will determine how one rightly divides the scriptures. This goes a long way in how they approach the Christian life.

Forgiveness 

When you don't understand where the separation between the two covenants is you will not understand forgiveness. How often have you heard Matthew 6:14-15 referenced as evidence to support how God views us in light of His forgiveness? Jesus says, "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." This is Jesus burying His audience under the impossible requirement to forgive everyone who has ever sinned against you or else God will not forgive you. The only conclusion that can be reached is that your sins will never be forgiven by God. Besides, how will you know? Nobody has kept track of every sin committed against them. If you did, how long would it take to track all of these people down? What if they are no longer alive? Plus, how does God notify you that you're forgiven? Do you see how difficult this becomes?

After Jesus died on the cross, the forgiveness issue between man and God is over. In Ephesians 4:32 Paul writes, "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." Do you notice the difference? We are told to forgive others because God has already forgiven us. We don't forgive others prior to receiving God's forgiveness. That is a huge difference that is often unrecognized by Christians. Not only are you free to forgive others who sin against you, but the separation between you and God is gone. You now have access to your God because He is no longer counting your sins against you. Your entire Christian life changes. No more doing penance. No more bloodless sacrifices. No more streaming down aisles to rededicate your life again. No more keeping of short accounts. No more making appointments to see the priest in the confession booth. No more saying the Lord's Prayer endlessly. No more fear of God. It is finished!

Tithing

The subject of tithing is taken for granted. For the majority of Christians, it is a given that tithing is as central to the Christian life as the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. One of the passages used to support this belief is Matthew 23:23. There Jesus said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone." Who was Jesus talking to? He was talking to scribes and Pharisees, not to Christians. The scribes and Pharisees were Jewish leaders who taught the Old Covenant law. They weren't elders and pastors teaching New Covenant grace. Furthermore, Jesus was talking about their lack of love, not their tithing record. 

Tithing was done to support the Levitical Priesthood, not your local church. Under the New Covenant, there is no law requiring us to give a tithe of our income to a church or ministry, much less the Levitical Priesthood that no longer exists. The New Covenant teaches that "Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7)." When you are required to do something it can lead to being reluctant to give because you may not have the resources available or you don't want to do it. Under the New Covenant, God has set us free to decide what it is we want to give and to whom we want to give it. It is the difference between giving to get something from God and giving from a heart that has been given everything by God. 

Conclusion

When your premise is off your findings will be off. In mathematics, this is discovered quickly as you get wrong answers. However, when your premise is based on the Old Covenant what you will find is that you are living a life you cannot live as you try to get things from God He never promised to give you and missing out on those things He has freely given to you through faith in Jesus Christ. You will spend your life trying to live under a Covenant given to the Jewish nation that they could not obey. You won't understand those things that God has given to you as an inheritance of your faith. As a Christian author, Major Ian Thomas writes, "There are those who have a life they never live. They have come to Christ and thanked Him only for what He did, but do not live in the power of who He is. Between the Jesus who "was" and the Jesus who "will be" they live in a spiritual vacuum, trying with no little zeal to live for Christ a life that only He can live in and through them, perpetually begging for what in Him they already have!"

The Two Covenants

When reading through the history and testimony we have in the Old Testament, I think it is important to start with what we have recorded.  It is easy to assume that because these people had a degree of communication with God, they had an exceptionally profound relationship with God that we might discover and embrace ourselves if we study carefully what was recorded.  They might have had a closeness with the Lord that is greater than what is recorded, but we really need to rely more on what we do know, than what we would like to know or what we would have liked to see happen.  For example, if I were to ask Noah to tell me about the Lord while he was building the ark, what would he say to me according to the record we have?  He might say something like, "Well Aaron, God feels really bad about what people have done with the good things He has created.  He seems to feel as if He has some responsibility for the evil being perpetuated, so He has decided to make a correction to what He has done, and flood the earth to kill everyone."  Has He shared anything else with you? "Besides the instructions of how to build the ark and what to put in it, He just hasn't been so talkative.  Maybe when I finish the work He gave me to do He will open up and tell me more about what's on His heart, or maybe after He kills everyone, but until then I am just going to stay focused on my part in all of this."  God spoke with Noah shortly after it was all over, but we don't know if Noah ever heard from the Lord again after that.

The New Covenant did not go into effect until after Jesus died and rose from the dead, so no one was saved through being made spiritually alive through the restoration of the Holy Spirit.  We don't have enough information to know the specific criteria God used to permit entrance into His kingdom before the New Covenant.  However, knowing that Jesus testified about people being in the kingdom, who lived during the history of the Old Covenant and before, a decision was made by God that gave people a place with Him.  It is my opinion that He used the same criteria of our recognizing that our right standing with Him would not be established by our works, but only by His grace and mercy.  On this basis, I have confidence that the condition of our hearts today to embrace salvation, could have been the same as the people's hearts generations before Jesus, and our God would embrace them as He does us, knowing He would be doing His part in the future as the Messiah.  This is as close as I can get to having an answer to this kind of question.

The Holy Spirit of God did not indwell people before the resurrection of Jesus.  The Spirit did come upon people, but no one was resurrected and made into a new creation.  The closeness we are able to have with the Lord is very different from what people were able to have before the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  For example, we are children of God individually, He is present with us and participating in our daily lives on a personal level, His presence gives us perfect love and acceptance knowing that He will never leave us.  We can ask Him questions in our daily lives and occasionally He will answer in a still small voice to give us wisdom, understanding, and perspective through His eyes and ears. This is a closeness and intimacy that was not possible before the complete forgiveness of sins.  Our God can certainly share with us additional insights concerning the events of the past when we study the Old Testament.  I always encourage people to continue to do so, just as I do, and to ask the Lord questions like, "What were you thinking, feeling, seeing, and what can you share with me about what happened that will help me understand the world I am a part of?"  This is a relationship that is very different from the relationship our God had with people before the New Covenant.

Aaron Budjen

www.livinggodministries.net

Sitting at the Lord's Feet

"As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”" Luke 10:38-42

To sit at the feet of someone is to be in a position of devotion or worship or to pay homage to or be reverential to them. When Jesus arrived at the home of Martha, we read where her sister, Mary, "sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said." You would think that everybody would be like Mary and worship the Lord; hanging on every word He spoke. Yet, there is Martha working away "distracted by all the preparations that had to be made" and being upset that Mary wasn't helping her. She was so upset that she was looking for Jesus to support her in her frustration to the point that she snapped at Him for not caring that she was working so hard. What did He say to her in response? "You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed -- or indeed only one." In other words, the important thing is to do what Mary was doing and focus on Jesus; worshiping Him, devoting time to Him, paying homage to Him and listening to what He has to say. This brief interaction between Martha, Mary and Jesus is a perfect picture of the contrast between law and grace, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant and between works and rest. Martha is an example of the Old Covenant; focused on works, judging others who are deemed to not be working as hard as she is, being bitter and angry and all the while missing out on what God has to say. Mary, in contrast, is an example of the New Covenant; resting from works, being available to the Lord and what He is saying to you and, unfortunately, being criticized by your brethren for doing so. There are those that have been left busy and barren by the Christian life. As one Christian author put it, "But, straying from Christ Himself as our life, we have no other option than to substitute furious activity and service.  It has gotten to the point where to be a member of many churches today, you don't need to pass a doctrinal exam; you need to pass a physical!" Martha was so busy focusing on tasks she felt needed to be done that she was completely missing out on cultivating her relationship with the Lord. In fact, it was Jesus who would many times say things to His followers that instructed them to focus on Him and not whatever worldly tasks needed completing.  "For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me (Matthew 26:11)." "Let the dead bury their own dead. You, however, go and proclaim the kingdom of God (Luke 9:60) .” "As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow Me, Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” And at once they left their nets and followed Him.…(Mark 1:16-18)." These are all examples where Jesus reminded us to focus on Him and not the current tasks we are performing.

When it comes to the modern Christian experience, how often are religious activities deemed to be the main focus of the Christian life? The "right things" to be engaged in are things like your church commitment; being at church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Monday night for visitation, Wednesday night service, plus other times for innumerable committee meetings.  Even things that you may want to do become burdens because they are cast as tasks to do rather than things you want to do; extensive Bible Study, memorizing hundreds of Scriptures, witnessing to everybody you meet, praying for everyone and everything, etc. Jesus is exalted and you are exhausted. Then you have to submit yourself to the Martha's of the world; fruit inspectors and members of "accountability" groups who make sure you are keeping up with all your responsibilities, tasks and promises. And if they deem your effort to be inadequate, judgment will soon follow. You literally want to tell them to, "Get off my back and sit down!" In Romans 12:1, it says, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship." Our "true and proper worship" is to offer our bodies as a "living sacrifice." In other words, we are to make ourselves available to the Lord to live His life in and through us as He sees fit to do it. This sounds a lot like Mary "sitting at the Lord's feet" listening to what He says. When you are resting from your works and getting to know Jesus, who you are through faith in Him and allowing Him to direct you, guess what happens? All those things the Martha's of the world criticize you for not doing will get done anyway. Instead of a Christian life of works where you are focused on doing things for God, you will begin to want to do those things because of God! As you bear the fruit of the Spirit the Lord produces in and through you the by-product will be to study the Bible more, memorizing Scriptures, witnessing to others, praying more and wanting to fellowship with like-minded believers (i.e. church activities). And you will begin to understand what Jesus meant when He told Martha, "Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." It is better to focus on Jesus instead of works because what you learn directly from God about Him, your identity in Christ and your relationship with God will not be taken away from you. The love of God, His forgiveness, His indwelling life and your inheritance in Christ is yours for eternity and can never be taken away. And this all begins when you rest from your works and sit down at the feet of the Lord. "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.  (Hebrews 4:9-11)." Do not follow the example of Martha. Be like Mary and rest.