1491 - "The New Covenant-To the Jew First" Jeremiah 31

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1491. Today we're taking another look at the New Covenant. Yesterday we looked at Jeremiah chapter 31, and that is the primary chapter in all of the Word of God on the New Covenant. I want to remind you of two or three things before we get into the podcast today. Number one, the New Covenant has to do with the Jewish people primarily. And we should not be surprised by this because the Bible is a Jewish book. It is written by Jews, to Jews, primarily for Jews. You say I've heard you say that a hundred times. Well now you can say it a hundred times so that the people of the earth will know that God's people, the Jews, God is not finished with them. And we're going to see that in the passage today, and you'll hear the words of God Himself. You see, there is a teaching that's like a plague today. It's called replacement theology, supersessionism, fulfillment theology. It comes under several names, but what it says is God is finished with his people. He has cast Israel off. All people have to do is read the Bible and they'll see that's not so. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul wrote three chapters to show beyond any doubt whatsoever, God has not cast his people off. God's not finished with Israel. God has a covenant he is fulfilling with Israel, and promises that are to be kept. And whatever you think about God, please understand God is faithful to his promises. And if he's not faithful to his promises, and he casts people off that he makes a covenant with simply because they do not please him and do not do what they should do, then you and I have no assurance of salvation because the same unconditional covenant that God made with Abraham, with David, and with the Jewish people with the new covenant, those are the unconditional covenants that God made. And if he is not faithful to the Jews, how can we know that he's going to be faithful with us? That's just the reality of it. So in Jeremiah chapter thirty one, yesterday we went over the fact that the new covenant had to do with the Jewish people. And I showed that over and over again. And so when we come to chapter thirty one and verse thirty one, that's an easy reference to remember. thirty one thirty one of the prophet Jeremiah. Here is what God said. 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. Now that is the totality of the nation of Israel, because as you'll recall, when Solomon died in nine hundred and thirty one BC, the kingdom split in two. And one tribe, Judah, stayed south, and then ten tribes bolted north. They did that under Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who was a reprobate that God had raised up, and God actually promised Jeroboam that if he would be faithful to him, he would make his name as King David. But what did he do? He was selfish and self centered, and he went his own way and set up a false worship system that mimicked what God had set up with King David and Solomon. Only Judah was faithful to that, and Jerusalem was the capital. Samaria the capital of the north, and two golden calves, one close to Jerusalem at Bethel and one to the north. Now the Bible tells us that Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin, set up the one in the south so that the people would have a place close to Jerusalem to worship this golden calf, and their hearts would not go back to Jerusalem. And so here God is addressing both the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. 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. Now listen to this, verse thirty two. 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, but this is a covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. And he goes on to talk about the new covenant. Now I want you to read that passage again, and you need to read it out loud to yourself, because verse thirty one is as clear as the nose on your face. God is making the new covenant, and the prophecy is made to the house of Israel, to the Jewish people. This is not symbolic. This is not analogy. This is not allegory. This is to the Jewish people. God said, I made a covenant with your fathers, with your fathers, the Jewish people, the Hebrews, when you came out of Egyptian bondage, at Mount Sinai, I made a covenant, and I wrote down the words on the tablets of stone. And you have those with you even to this day. That's what Jeremiah was talking about. That's what God is talking about. He said, I'm not going to make a covenant that's based upon conditions. I'm going to make a covenant with you like I did with Abraham and with David, where I will see to it once you enter into this covenant that I will keep it. And so here's what he said in that same verse, verse 33, I will put my law in their minds, I will write it on their hearts. In other words, it's spiritual. It's inward, it's not something on stones. He said, I'll write it on your heart, I'll write it in your mind. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Now that doesn't sound like God's casting his people off with a new covenant. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. Listen to this, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. God said all their shortcomings, I'm very well aware of, all of their twisting and distorting and wrangling of my words, I'm very familiar with that. Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, who disturbs the sea and its waves roar, the Lord of hosts is his name. If those ordinances, what ordinances, Lord? Those that regulate the day and the night, if the sun and the moon and the stars and the cycle of day and night and all the rhythms of creation, if those ordinances depart from before me, says the Lord, in other words, if those stop happening, then the seed of Israel shall also cease. What God is saying as long as those things are in existence, Israel is safe. From being a nation from before me. Now this is what he says forever. From being a nation before me, forever. Now how long is forever? When God says I'll give you everlasting life, does that mean forever? I think so. Now why am I digging at this? It's because we have missed the mark. Thus says the Lord, if heaven above can be measured, can you do that? Can any man do that? Not with the smartest and brightest AI will they ever be able. Not with human intelligence, artificial intelligence, and with demonic intelligence. Never will they be able to measure the heavens and the earth. If the heaven can be measured and the foundation of the earth be searched out beneath, if that is the case and everything stops that I ever made, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all they have done, says the Lord. People say, Well, you know, God's not going to bless Israel because of what they've done. God says I'll never cast them off for what they've done. I just read that in verse 37. I think you heard me reading that. You read it in your own Bible, in any version you want, that is truly a word equivalency translation. Not some paraphrase that somebody came up with in their own words. I'm talking about the Hebrew text translated. And here's what he said. If all of these things happen, then I will cast off all the seed of Israel of the nation for all they've done. God doesn't cast us off for what we've done, what you've done, what I've done. Aren't you glad? He's not going to do that. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that the city shall be built for the Lord from the tower of Hananel to the corner gate. The surveyor's line shall again extend straight forward over the hill of Garab. Then it shall turn toward Goath, and the whole valley of the dead bodies and the ashes and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron, that's the Kidron Valley as far as it runs, to the corner of the horse gate toward the east, shall be holy to the Lord, and it shall not be plucked up or thrown down any more. And then chapter thirty two is the story of Jeremiah being told by God to go buy a field, because God will surely accomplish his word, and he wanted Jeremiah to go buy a field so that Jeremiah would have to put his trust and his money in the same place. He said, Jeremiah, you really believe I'm going to do this? I want you to go buy a field, and I want you to put your money where your mouth is. And that's what Jeremiah did, showing that he believed God would keep his promise, he would bring the people back from captivity, and one day he would cut a new covenant with them. And he said he would do it with the house of Israel. Now when did that happen? It happened when Jesus died as a substitute for their sins and ours on the cross at Skull Hill called Calvaria in Latin it is called Gogatha, the place of the skull outside the city walls of Jerusalem. That's where Jesus hung on a cross as though he were not fit for heaven or earth. He was in midair, dying for your sins and mine. But the Bible says he died for the Jew first and then for the Gentile. In other words, God has not forsaken Israel. The new covenant was to be cut with Israel. This is why, with his closest disciples around him, all Jews, all Jews, Jesus said at the Passover meal, at that last Seder he ate with them before he died, this bread that you're now eating, this wine that you're now drinking, these represent the new covenant that I'm going to ordain with my blood, that I'm going to cut with my own blood. My body will be cut and the blood will come, and that will begin the new covenant. And every time you drink this cup and every time you eat this bread, you'll remember that a covenant was cut with you. He was talking to Jewish people. After he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, fifty days from the day that he rose from the dead that first morning after his crucifixion, after Shabbat. It was fifty days from then that the Holy Spirit came at Shavuot, the feast of weeks. Right on time, God fulfilled his promise, the promise of the Father, the Holy Spirit came and took up residence in the life of every believer. Every believer on the day of Pentecost was Jewish. God had cut a new covenant with them. And now he was fulfilling the promise that he made to the Jewish people that God would come and live in the life of every person that repented of their sin and gave their life to Jesus. And for the next decade, every person that was saved was Jewish. It was not until the tenth chapter of the book of Acts that a warrior, a Roman warrior, a centurion, a man of great depth and responsibility, a Gentile, a non Jew, for the first time tasted the sweet forgiveness of Jesus. And only then did God begin to graft in this wild olive tree. Many branches of Jewish people were broken off so that we as Gentiles could be grafted in. If we think it's about us, the same thing that happened to those Jews who were unbelievers will happen to us. Because you see, we will miss it that God made the covenant with the Jewish people, his people that had always been his people, that ever will be his people. And he allowed those of us who are non-Jews to get in on it. And that's why Romans chapter 11 says God grafted the wild olive branches in. It wasn't about the Jews, it wasn't about the Gentiles, it was about Jesus. It always has been, it always will be. It's all about Jesus. The new covenant was to the Jew first, just like the gospel. And then it was to the Gentile. I pray that God will help you to understand that as you walk on the way. This is Tony Crisp.

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