1508 - "The Primary Recipients of the New Covenant" 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 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1508. I want to welcome you today, and I want to say once again, welcome to two new cities. One is in Brazil and the other is in France. This is six new cities we've added in the last two days. And I am so grateful to God that almost now every week we are adding many cities, new cities that have never heard this podcast before. And for those of you who are listening that have just come on lately, welcome and we pray that you can listen every opportunity you possibly can. But welcome to the On the Way Family. Now we're in Jeremiah 31, and I hope you can turn in your Bibles and mark some passages as we go through these. Many of you are listening to this as you're riding in your car, you're at work, you cannot open your Bible and read along. But I hope when you can that you will understand that these are not just for entertainment. These are not just something to listen to. I pray that these will be as goads inside of you, in your heart, to get you into the Word of God. Because when we see it with our eyes, we hear it with our ears, we write it down and we're touching the paper, we're putting it down. There is something that becomes tangible inside of our brains. It is a new pathway that is laid out. And as we do that, we are just reinforcing what God's Word says, and it becomes a part of us and more easily grafted into us and welded into not just our brain, but our mind gets hold of that. And so I want to encourage you to read and not just digitize something and look at something digitally, but also read the printed page. And when you do, there is something that is special about that that imprints it in our hearts and minds. And so I want us to look at this new covenant. Now, why is this so important? Because Jesus came to cut the new covenant, to establish the new covenant. And we're going to take a couple of more days to look at this today, tomorrow, and then also on Friday, we're going to take at least three more podcasts to look at this new covenant because I personally believe after talking with hundreds of pastors down through the decades, intentionally talking about the New Covenant, I have come to believe that a misunderstanding of the New Covenant is one of the reasons for the replacement theology, supersessionism, fulfillment theology, any brand that you want of that, it is because we have a misunderstanding of what the Bible calls the New Covenant. If we understand the New Covenant in the context in which it was given, and if you don't understand it in the context in which it was given, then you will never be able to apply it as the Word of God does. And I want to remind all of you, whether you've been with me now for years listening to these podcasts, or whether this is your first or second podcast, I want you to understand I believe with all of my heart what the Bible teaches, that the Bible is a Jewish book. It is written to Jews, for Jews, by Jews, and I say it all the time that it is a book. The book of God that's written by Jews is written to Jews and primarily for Jews. And those of us who are Gentiles, non-Jews, we don't need to be ashamed. We're not second class citizens in the kingdom of God, but we also have to understand that if it were not for the Jewish people, we would not have the Bible, and God has not cast his people off. If he has, then every promise he made concerning the new covenant as well as others to Israel, God has gone back on his promises. Now remember what the New Covenant replaces and what the new covenant fulfills, and what the New Covenant stands in contradistinction to is the Mosaic covenant, not the Abrahamic covenant, not the Davidic covenant. There is no place in Scripture where God says, I'm going back on what I promised Abraham about the land, about his lineage, about him being a light to the Gentiles and to all the world, Jew and Gentile alike. There is nowhere in the Bible where God says I'm going back on the unconditional covenant I made to Abraham or David. As a matter of fact, most of the Davidic promises, most of the Davidic covenant has not been fulfilled yet, but will be fulfilled when Jesus returns to the earth to do what he said he would do, and that is restore Israel to its place of leadership in the world and rule for a thousand years from Jerusalem. He will rule the entire world. And you have to allegorize at least a fourth of the Bible to say that those are promises that are not made to Israel. And we get in on those because of the new covenant. We are grafted in to the promises and the redemption that is in the new covenant. That is what Paul is talking about. He's talking about being grafted in to the new covenant blessings that are a fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant in the sense of God saying, I'll make you a blessing to all people. That is through Jesus the Messiah that came through Jewish ancestry, came to the Jewish people to fulfill the promises made to the Jewish people, and then allowed the Gentiles to get in on it. So let's look at what Jeremiah is doing. Yesterday we looked at the context. And the context, the historical context is Jeremiah is writing to the Jews, not the Gentiles, the Jews. Jeremiah's a Jew, he's writing to Jews, and they are in exile in Babylon, and they will later be scattered all over what is Persia today, when the Persians take over. They will be transplanted all over the place. They were already scattered. The northern tribes were scattered all over the Middle East. What is Asia Minor in the New Testament? What would be Turkey today? All of the stands, they were all over the place. The Mizra'i, they are scattered out everywhere, and they are the most plentiful of the Jews, and make up the greatest majority of the ethnicities of the Jews that were scattered. And those are people that we would call Middle Eastern Jews. And so Jeremiah was writing to the Jewish people, period. But especially those, and in particularly those who were in the area of Babylon. Remember, Daniel was in the palace, Meshach, Shadrach, Nebedigo, Hananiah, Azariah, and Meshael, as their Jewish names are, they were out in the province around Babylon. They were leaders in Nebuchadnezzar's economy. And then you had Ezekiel out with the common people by a offshoot of the Euphrates River called the River Kibar. It was actually an irrigation canal, much of it man-made and made for irrigation. And then Jeremiah was back with the Davidic line and kings that had been left behind by Nebuchadnezzar to rule over the people that he left behind. And now he is back surrounding the capital city of Jerusalem. He's already overtaken the environs. But Jeremiah is inside the city. He is imprisoned. And you can read about that in the book of Jeremiah. We don't have time in this podcast to go over that. But in chapter 29, we have Jeremiah writing to the people and saying, This is going to be 70 years, so you need to make yourself comfortable and fit into where you are and pray for the peace of that country and your city where you're living, because in the city having peace, you're going to have peace. And so he comes to chapter 31, and for the first 30 verses, what he's doing is assuring Israel that he's not forgotten about them, that he has a plan for them. So let's just read down through some of the key verses of chapter 31. Now this is Jeremiah, a Jewish prophet, writing to the Jewish people. And here's what he says, chapter 31. At the same time says the Lord, that's L-O-R-D, all capitals, that's the personal name of God. It's the tetragrammaton, four letters, Y H V H, or as some would say, Y H W H, because that is a pronunciation of the Vav. Many would say the wa, but I say Vav, that's the modern Hebrew pronunciation. It's the V sound as in Victor, so I say Yahweh, if I was going to say Yahweh. And so it says at the same time, says the Lord, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. Now he's talking about still future. Thus says the Lord, the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness, Israel, when I went to give him rest. The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Now that doesn't mean that it goes awild and then gives out. This is everlasting love, which is the word for forever. Therefore, with loving kindness, chesed, and that's C H E S E D, and the E's have little tents over them in our English language. Therefore with chesed, with loving kindness I have drawn you. Again I will build you, again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt, O Virgin of Israel. You shall again be adorned with your tambourines. You shall go forth with dances of those who rejoice. Yet in the future you shall yet plant vines on the mountains of Samaria. I've been all over the mountains of Samaria today, today, and as I have, I have seen the vineyards that for over two thousand years were absent or absent from the hills of Samaria. But they're there again. Now this was written twenty six hundred years ago. God said there's going to be a time when this place is going to become desolate. That's what Mark Twain called it in the eighteen hundreds. He said it's it's like a desolate place. It's barren, it's like a wasteland. Well, it's not today. Why? Because it's blossoming as a rose. And it says the planters shall plant and eat them as ordinary food. What? These vines, the grapes, the vineyards. For there shall be a day when the watchman will cry on Mount Ephraim, Arise and let us go to Jerusalem, to Zion, to the Lord our God. Again, all caps. These are the personal covenant names of God that are being mentioned here. And he talks about how they are to sing, for you are the remnant of Israel. And then down in verse nine he says, They shall come with weeping and with supplications, and I will lead them, and I will cause them to walk by the rivers of water, in a straight way in which they shall not stumble. Look at this, for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn. Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, O Goim, that's Ethnoi in the Greek Septuagint, and declare it in the Isles afar off. We're one of those isles that are afar off, and say, He who scattered Israel will gather him. You see, God knows where every Israelite is. There is no such thing as the lost ten tribes of Israel. That's a bunch of garbage. That's not biblical. God knows where every one of his people are, and in the book of Revelation, he will call twelve thousand from each one of twelve tribes, and they will be his flaming evangelists during the days of Jacob's trouble, during the days of the great tribulation, during the days of what the Bible calls the Megalithis, the great crushing. That's what Jesus called them in the Gospel of Matthew. And he said, I will keep him who, Israel, as a shepherd does his flock. For the Lord has redeemed Jacob. That's why he's called Israel, and ransom him from the hand of one that is stronger than he. Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, streaming to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat and new wine and oil, for the young of the flock and the herd, their souls shall be like a well watered garden. Look, their soul shall be the blessing of this agricultural boom that's coming that we see today in Israel for the first time in two thousand years. And then it talks about that their joy will be full, and their mourning that they're doing now will be turned to joy, and he will comfort them. And then you have the verse that's quoted in the gospel of Matthew when the babies were killed by Herod during the days of the Magi from Persia. And he says a voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. And then in verse 17 he says, There is hope in your future, says the Lord, that your children shall come back to their own border. You see, God's not finished with them. Now for centuries nobody believed that God was going to keep his word. As a matter of fact, if you read the commentaries of the Reformation and during uh the Middle Ages and the fathers, they've spiritualized all the promises that are made to Israel, and they put those on the church. Well, we don't have the authority to do that unless God says do that, but God doesn't say that. That's our own interpretation. God says, I will restore you and I'll return you. And then he says in verse uh twenty one, set up signposts, make landmarks, set your heart toward the highway, the way in which you went, turn back, O Virgin Israel, turn back to these your cities. And he goes on and on and on. He even talks about in verse 23 that the speech that they would lose for the most part in Babylon, they're going to return to their own speech one day, back to Hebrew. That's the official language of the state since 1948. During the days of Jesus, they spoke in the common homes and the common places and in their commerce. Oh, they knew Greek. That was the world trade language. But Jesus spoke Aramaic and it comes out from time to time. I don't have time to go into it. We see this in the word bar. Simon Bar Jonah. Jesus was speaking Aramaic to him. The word bar is the word son in Aramaic, not Hebrew. In Hebrew it's the word ben, like bin Yameen, the son of my right hand. It's not bar Yamin. That's Aramaic. What he is saying here is that they're going to return to their own language. Hebrew, during the days of Jesus, was pretty much confined to the synagogues and to the temple and to the language of prayers and so forth. Otherwise, they were praying in Aramaic. When Jesus gave that model prayer, he was teaching to people who were fluent in Aramaic, didn't know Hebrew as well, more than likely. And so this is what we're finding here in the text. And so he comes to verse 31, and I I just want to uh introduce this to you, and we're going to pick it up uh tomorrow. But here's why he says, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord. Now this is verse 31 of Jeremiah 31, when I will make a new covenant, a Breeth, with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah. That's the totality of the people of God of the day of Jeremiah, and it is synonymous with saying the entire house of Israel, all of the tribes. And so that's as far as I'm going to go. But tomorrow we're going to look at the new covenant and why it's called the new covenant and what is the comparison and what was fulfilled. What was it that Jesus fulfilled? He fulfilled and brought to fruition and maturity by his life and by his death. The Mosaic Covenant. He died a sacrificial death as a substitute for our sins. That's atonement. He forgave our sins. He washes our sins away. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? You finish that old hymn. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.