GONE FOR A WHILE

GONE FOR A WHILE

                After morning and evening services on Sunday we pack up and head for Pidgeon Forge to provide the music and worship for the woman’s conference. We will be gone for 4 days so I will not be at my computer.

                I am currently having major problems with my computer and will have to take it in when I get back. If for some reason my articles do not show up after a week and you want to continue to receive my morning articles, email me at 215ricklange@gmail.com.

                Also we are in the process of making 3 CDs full of the Majestic Hymns that will come out on      CD Baby and Amazon as well as on CD, so watch for those announcements on Facebook           .

                The book of Hebrews was written to Jewish Christians who were beginning to question their faith in the New Covenant and some were defecting and returning to Judaism. So the writer of Hebrews is pointing out the superiority of Jesus and the Melchizedek priesthood.

                In chapters 9 and 10 of Hebrews, the writer establishes the fact that by faith in Jesus Christ we have access to the Most Holy Place. He lets us know that Jesus went directly back to heaven to the Most Holy Place there to sprinkle His blood on the mercy seat and to take up His ministry as our High Priest.

He says:

                “Having therefore brethren boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He has consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh; and having an high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.” Hebrews 10:20, 21.

               

                We sometimes fail to see the intimacy with which the New Covenant ministers directly to us. His blood on the Mercy Seat in heaven is not some far off High Priestly duty, but simultaneously cleans our conscience from dead works. We live in an intimate connection with Christ through His Holy Spirit so that what goes on in heaven goes on in us at the same time if we by faith enter into it and walk in it.

                This is what the writer calls “The new and living way” for what was acted out in types and shadows and laws on stone, with God dwelling in a temple made with hands, has now become a living reality. Jesus has become our new High Priest and we have become His temples.

                It is highly important to understand the relationship between the Old and the New Covenants. The New Covenant does not do away with the Old Covenant; rather it is the living fulfillment of all that the Old Covenant promised. The New covenant is the living reality of all that was promised in types and shadows in the Old Covenant.

                If Jesus could have simply removed the Law, then He would not have had to die to pay its penalty. Instead He could have just repealed the Law. But in truth the Law cannot be removed since to do so would remove all basis for the judgment of sin. Jesus paid the penalty for us, thus removing our death sentence, but those who reject Jesus are not in on that deal. So the Law is still very much in effect, but as 1 Tim. 1:9 the Law is not for the righteous man, but for the sinner.”

                Paul tells us in Romans 3:31, saying: “Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.”

                A certain percentage of Christians are once again defecting back to Judaism and I think that part of the reason is that we have misinterpreted the relationship between Old and New Covenants. The New Covenant does not do away with the Old Covenant, but in every way fulfills in living reality everything that the Old Covenant pointed forward to in the form of types and shadows.

                Like I said, we become the temples of the Holy Spirit. The presence that was once dwelling between the cherubim is now dwelling in us if we are born again. Jesus has taken up residence in us. Christ in us is our hope of glory. He is our rest. He is our righteousness. He has sealed us unto the day of redemption and He empowers to live the life that the Law demanded but could not fulfill.

                So this New Covenant is in every way superior to the Old Covenant which could only point forward to what we have now… but in fulfilling all of these types and shadows and laws and templates, the New Covenant establishes the validity of the Old Covenant and in turn the Old Covenant establishes the validity of the New Covenant.

                We have lost our deep understanding of the New Covenant because we have disengaged it from its foundations in the Old Covenant. Let me give you a small example:

                In Matthew 18:21, 22 Peter asked Jesus how many times we should forgive others. Should we forgive them seven times? But Jesus said, No… forgive them 70 times 7. The questions is this: Was Jesus just drawing a random number out of the hat or was He drawing upon Old Covenant truth?

                Seventy times seven is 490 and this should ring a bell with us. In Daniel 9:24-27 God gave Israel 490 years (70 weeks) to fulfill 6 mandates…1. To finish transgression, 2. To make an end of sin, 3. To make atonement for iniquity,  4. To bring in everlasting righteousness  5. To seal up vision and prophecy and 6. To anoint the Most Holy Place.

                So this time period lasted from 458 B.C. to 33 A.D and during those 490 years god obligated Himself to forgive Israel 490 times. That is to say that on every Day of Atonement, He forgave the sins of Israel in type and shadow using the blood of animals and then at the precise end of the 490 years, Jesus, the true Lamb of God came and paid the debt of sin, by dying for Israel’s sins and for those of the whole world.

                So Jesus was not just throwing out a random number, for indeed He had forgiven Israel 490 times and now He was here to pay the debt in His own person.

                This principle is also true of all end time Bible prophecy. Peter warns us in 2Peter 1:20, 21 that Bible Prophecy is not a matter of one’s own interpretation. In other words, we cannot just look at Bible prophecy and say, “I think this means this and that means that.” The book of Revelation, for instance, is drawn from the imagery of the Old Testament so that all of its symbols and types are interpreted for us in Old Testament Scripture.

                We truly cannot interpret the book of Revelation without a thorough knowledge of the types and shadows, the feast days and Sabbaths… the temple services   and all of the rest of the Old Covenant.  If we interpret it apart from the original types and shadows we will get it wrong and we will be teaching prophetic doctrine that has no basis in fact.

                I think that it is in misinterpreting the relationship between the Old and New Covenants then that, some have lost the connection that absolutely verifies who Jesus was and is and so people turn back to the “ More tangible” practices of the Old Covenant. This is what some of the early Christians were doing and it is what some Christians are doing today.

                But this is very dangerous indeed, for as Hebrews tells us: “… if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a certain terrifying expectation of Judgment….. Heb. 10:26, 27

                So, on one hand we don’t do away with the Law, but on the other hand we don’t go back to it either. WE have become temples of the living God. We have received Him into our hearts. We are now living by His power and not our own. But if we reject that new and living way and return back to the Law, then we have in effect renounced Christ. And once we reject Him there no longer remains for us a sacrifice for our sins.

                So we need to use the Old and New Covenants the way God intended them to be used… rightly dividing the word of truth until we all come to the knowledge of the Son of God.