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Seventh-day
Adventists have absolutely no idea how the
Biblical Covenants work. If they did study
them, they would do what most of us Formers
have done, leave the Church.
The
Ten Commandments are the Old Covenant:
Exodus 34:27-28.
The Ten Commandments
were the first/old covenant! The tables of the Ten
Commandments are part of the abolished first
covenant:
Hebrews 8:13, “When He
said, “A new covenant,” He has made the
first obsolete. But whatever is becoming
obsolete and growing old is ready to
disappear.”
Hebrews 9:1, 4, “Now even
the first covenant had ... the tables of the
covenant”
Exodus 34:27-28, “Then the Lord said to Moses,
“Write down
these words, for in accordance with these
words I have made a covenant with you and
with Israel.” So he was there with the Lord
forty days and forty nights; he did not eat
bread or drink water. And he wrote on the
tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten
Commandments.”
Deuteronomy 4:13, “So
He declared to you His covenant which He
commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten
Commandments; and He wrote them on two
tablets of stone.”
Deuteronomy 5:2-3,
“The Lord our God made a covenant with us at
Horeb. The Lord did not make this covenant
with our fathers, but with us, with all
those of us alive here today.”
* The Old Covenant was abolished: Hebrews 8:13
* The law is weak, useless and makes
nothing perfect. (Hebrews 7:18-19)
*
God has found fault with it and created a
better covenant, enacted on better promises.
(Hebrews 8:7-8)
* It is obsolete,
growing old and ready to vanish. (Hebrews 8:13)
* It is only a shadow of good
things to come and will never make someone
perfect. (Hebrews 10:1) |
Jesus Gave Us
A New Covenant To Live By: The New Covenant
Is Superior To The Old Covenant In Every
Way!
Hebrews 7:22, “This
makes Jesus the guarantor of a better
covenant.”
Hebrews 8:6-7, “But as it is, Christ has
obtained a ministry that is as much more
excellent than the old as the covenant he
mediates is better, since it is enacted on
better promises. For if that first covenant
had been faultless, there would have been no
occasion to look for a second.”
Hebrews 12:24, “and to Jesus, the mediator
of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled
blood that speaks a better word than the
blood of Abel.”
Hebrews 13:20, “Now
may the God of peace who brought again from
the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd
of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal
covenant,”
The Ten Commandments are
obsolete because of the New Covenant!
Christians are told to live under the New
Covenant ’law of Christ’. Not the Ten
Commandments.
It is a New Covenant!
Are you a New Covenant believer?
Christians live under the New Covenant, not
the Old Covenant Ten Commandments.
God has had different laws under each of the
different covenants. That is just how it is.
Each covenant makes its own laws.
Each covenant is a new legal contract. A
contract has to have all of its requirements
spelled out in the contract. We are never
told to keep the Law of Moses in the New
Covenant. Just the opposite!
The
Ten
commandments are the Old Covenant that has
been made obsolete! That is exactly what the
New Covenant says. Biblical Covenants
101.
The only laws Christians are
required to keep are the laws as expressed
in the New Covenant. Not some ad-mixture of
laws from the old and the new.
The
Old and New Covenant Are Not the Same.
1. The Ten Commandments are the Old
Covenant: Exodus 34:27-28
2. The Old
Covenant was abolished: Hebrews 8:13
3.
The Ten Commandments as a legal contract are
abolished!
4. The New Covenant has its
own legal structure.
5. You cannot live
under two competing covenants at one time.
The New Covenant Is the Last Will and
Testament of Jesus Christ!
Hebrews 9:15-17, “Therefore he is the
mediator of a new covenant, so that those
who are called may receive the promised
eternal inheritance, since a death has
occurred that redeems them from the
transgressions committed under the first
covenant. For where a will is involved, the
death of the one who made it must be
established. For a will takes effect only at
death, since it is not in force as long as
the one who made it is alive.”
In the New Testament only
the book of Hebrews makes covenant a central theological
theme. The emphasis is on Jesus, the perfect
High Priest, providing a new, better,
superior covenant (Hebrews 7:22; 8:6). Jesus
represented the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s
new covenant promise (Hebrews 8:8, 10; 10:16). Jesus was the perfect covenant
Mediator (Hebrews 9:15), providing an
eternal inheritance in a way the old
covenant could not (compare with Hebrews 12:24).
Jesus’ death on the cross
satisfied the requirement that all covenants
be established by blood (Hebrews 9:18, 20)
just as was the first covenant (Exodus 24:8). Christ’s blood established an
everlasting covenant (Hebrews 13:20). If
Israel suffered for breaking the Sinai
covenant (Hebrews. 8:9-10), how much more
should people expect to suffer if they have
counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith
he was sanctified, an unholy thing (Hebrews 10:29).
You Cannot Have Two Wills In
Effect At One Time.
Jesus was fully
aware that the Old Covenant was binding
while he lived. Jesus lived and died under
the Law of Moses. Thus, he said, Do not
think that I came to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to
fulfill. (Matthew 5:17) This accounts for
Jesus keeping the Sabbath day and other
parts of the Law of Moses, such as observing
the Passover (Matthew 26:17-26).
Paul
Used Marriage As A Type To Illustrate The
Keeping Of The Covenants.
Paul used
the marriage of a man and women in Romans 7 to
illustrate the binding nature of one
testament at a time.
Romans 7:1-3,
“Or do you not know, brothers—for I am
speaking to those who know the law—that the
law is binding on a person only as long as
he lives? For a married woman is bound by
law to her husband while he lives, but if
her husband dies she is released from the
law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be
called an adulteress if she lives with
another man while her husband is alive. But
if her husband dies, she is free from that
law, and if she marries another man she is
not an adulteress.”
The next verse
makes the application plain for us.
Romans 7:4-6, “So, my brothers, you also
died to the law through the body of Christ,
that you might belong to another, to him who
was raised from the dead, in order that we
might bear fruit to God. For when we were
controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful
passions aroused by the law were at work in
our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.
But now, by dying to what once bound us, we
have been released from the law so that we
serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not
in the old way of the written code.”
Verse 6 says plainly
that we don’t now live by the written code.
Which law are Christ-followers to
die too?
Which law is the written
code?
Romans 7:7 says, “What
then shall we say? That the law is sin? By
no means! Yet if it had not been for the
law, I would not have known sin. For I would
not have known what it is to covet if the
law had not said, You shall not covet.”
Where does the Bible say, You shall not
covet?
Paul knew that we cannot be
under two conflicting covenants, or laws at
the same time. A woman cannot be married to
two men at the same time without being
guilty of physical adultery. To be married
to two men at the same time is adultery and
to try to be under two covenants (or
testaments) at the same time is to be guilty
of spiritual adultery. One is just as bad as
the other!
Christians are told to
live by the New Covenant now – not the Old/First Covenant!
There is only one Old
Covenant, it is all the 613 laws under the
Mosaic law which includes the Ten
Commandments.
There is only one Old
/ First Covenant and it has been replaced by
the New Better covenant.
By Christ’s
death and resurrection, he cancelled, the
record of debt that stood against us with
its legal demands. This he set aside,
nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:14)
This is how Paul could say that Jesus
abolished the Law of commandments and
regulations.
Ephesians 2:15,
“by
abolishing in his flesh the law with its
commandments and regulations. His purpose
was to create in himself one new man out of
the two, thus making peace,” (NIV)
By
His death and resurrection, he established
the New Covenant that all Christians live
under today! Jews and Gentiles, all living
together under one - New and Better
Covenant!
Hebrews 10:9-10, “then he
added, Behold, I have come to do your will.
He does away with the first in order to
establish the second. And by that will we
have been sanctified through the offering of
the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
New Does Not Mean The Same As The Old!
The Holy Days Of Judaism And The Entire
Ceremonial System Have Never Applied To
Christians!
We are under the New
Covenant that Christ gave us with its own
legal code. The Law of Christ. Who said we
were without any law?
The New
Covenant has its own legal code! The Law of
the Old Covenant is NOT the Law of Christ: 1 Corinthians 9:21-23.
1 Corinthians 9:19-23, “For though I am free
from all, I have made myself a servant to
all, that I might win more of them. To the
Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win
Jews. To those under the law I became as one
under the law (though not being myself under
the law) that I might win those under the
law. To those outside the law I became as
one outside the law (not being outside the
law of God but under the law of Christ) that
I might win those outside the law. To the
weak I became weak, that I might win the
weak. I have become all things to all
people, that by all means I might save some.
I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that
I may share with them in its blessings.”
1. Paul is not
under the Law of the Jews
2. But Paul is
not without law
3. Paul is under a
different law from the Jews
4. Paul is
under the Law of Christ
The moral
aspects of the Ten Commandments are forever
true and are repeated in the New Covenant
and they should be observed but the Sabbath
command was and is ceremonial by its nature.
It was given as a sign between God and
Israel alone.
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