The Old Covenant and I (1)

Jeremiah 31:31-34

“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— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

By the grace of God, I will be running three series on the power of covenant release and under this series the following topics will be carefully looked into: (1) The old covenant and I, (2) My place in the new covenant and (3) My Spiritual birthright. The reason for this teaching is just so you have a better understanding of the power of the covenant God has entered with you personally as his dearly beloved. May be you are a new believer, or you’ve long accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and savior, or maybe you’ve never known him personally, or you use to but at some point fell out of grace, dearly beloved, this message is personally design by God to bring you joy today. It doesn’t matter what you are going through or how what you’ve done wrong, what I know is that if you could just find your way back into the covenant of God, then the solution to your joy will be released. Now back to the topic! What is a covenant? According to the Webster dictionary a covenant is a formal agreement between two or more persons to do or not to do something specific. A second definition says a covenant is the conditional promises made to humanity by God as revealed by the scriptures. Combining both definitions, I came up with this; a covenant is a promise, an agreement, or a testament between one person and another or between God and man and based on my definition, a covenant is God’s promised word to you personally.

The Jeremiah 31:31-34 is a document of prophetic promise called the new covenant. In this text God made a solemn promise specifically to the house of Israel and Judah which was later extended to the Gentiles that is you and I. It is under this covenant that God will also call out a people for himself from all nations of the earth to be the form the bride of Christ according to Revelation 21:1-9 (I encourage you to read it on your own). However, this prophetic promise of Jeremiah 31 shows that there once existed another covenant which is now old and ineffective which God handed to Moses and under this covenant, blessings was conditioned upon obedience, it was a covenant of works; an agreement whereby if man did his part God would do his part. This old covenant could not produce righteousness because it depended on man as the bible puts it in Exodus 15:26 God said, “If you listen carefully to the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.” (NIV). And Exodus 23:22 says “If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.” Also, the old covenant not only depended on the obedience of man but also on the mediator-ship of man and ordinances of divine service, this is what the bible refers to in Hebrews 9:1 “Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary.” A worldly sanctuary and a tabernacle which God ordered for in Exodus 25:8-9 “And let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them. According to all that I show you, that is, the pattern of the tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings, just so you shall make it.”

In the old covenant the tabernacle was an active sense of God’s dwelling place, a constructed tent so to say whereas, in the new covenant which I shall be talking about in my other teaching, God dwells in you and I in the person of the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" The tabernacle that God dwells in in the old covenant was divided into two parts namely the Holy place and the Most Holy place where a man’s mediator-ship between man and God was carried out Dearly beloved, it might interest you to know that no man was able to fulfill his part of that old covenant and if that old covenant is still the basis of your faith be rest assured that you will not be able to fulfill your part of God’s covenant. Your joy in the morning will not be full if all you know is based on the old covenant. Dearly beloved, know that God loves you and he want to be your helper however he will not be able to carry out his spoken promises concerning you if your faith is still based on the old covenant. I will stop here today and continue the part 2 next week and until then:

MAY HIS JOY FILL YOUR HEART...

#Havefaith #Focus #Wait #Patience