What if the Old Covenant was God’s final word to man?
What if the Ten Commandments were the only means available to you to gain entry into heaven, or to earn God’s love and acceptance?
Where would this leave you?
What would your eternal fate be?
How would this affect your life here and now?
The Old Covenant was God’s word to Israel. Not His first word to Israel, nor was it His last. But it did define Israel’s way of life as a nation from Moses until Jesus. And, as Moses explained to the people before they entered the Promised Land, it did have a specific purpose for Israel.
“The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness” (Deuteronomy 6:24-25).
We know they story. Israel did not obey. She did not obtain righteousness through obedience to the law. Instead of being the blessing of life and prosperity, the law issued a curse on Israel’s disobedience. The law judged and condemned the nation.
Try obedience to the law as your means of righteousness. You’ll prove Paul’s words to the Romans: “Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in his sight through obedience to the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin” (Romans 3:20).
So where does the law leave you? – judged, condemned, fearful and dead in sin.
That’s the Old Covenant, a ministry of condemnation and death.
When read correctly, the Law is God’s word about man, the plain, stark truth. It answers these questions: What is the destiny of a people caught in the throes of a lie? What will be their end? According to the Law, the final stop is death, but only if the Old Covenant is God’s final word.
The denouement of this story has a twist. It is revealed on a hill called Calvary, outside the walls of Jerusalem. A man hung there on a cross, suspended between heaven and earth. He was no ordinary man, and the death he died was no ordinary death.
The man whose hands and feet were pierced was the Lord Himself, the unblemished Lamb of God. His death was in place of ours. Live out the full story of the Law and it ends at the foot of this cross. Look up and see God’s final word to man – Jesus.
Death is not God’s end for man, it is Jesus. In Him we have forgiveness of sins, righteousness and a new way of life defined by the New Covenant.
What if you truly believed that Jesus was and is God’s final word to man?
Where would this leave you?
How would it affect you here and now?
The New Covenant answers – in Jesus fully alive!
I see the Old Covenant as God’s way of communicating to mankind that no religion will ever make a man righteous. At the time that God led Israel out of Egypt, there were thousands of man made religions, all with the purpose of making man right with God.
By giving the Old Covenant, god demonstrated that if any religion COULD make a man right before God, it would be a religion FROM God. After hundreds of years of Israel failing to keep God’s commands, clarifying that man could be made righteous through religion, even one from God:
Rom 3:20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
the time was finally right to send Jesus who would fulfill the O.C. and usher in the New Covenant which really addresses man’s problem, that he is dead spiritually and the only solution to death is life. Spiritual life comes from God alone
Jhn 6:63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.
and can only indwell eternally those that have had their sins dealt with forever. Jesus’s sacrifice did away with our sins once and for all so that we could be saved, forever.
Praise God
I see the Old Covenant as God’s way of communicating to mankind that no religion will ever make a man righteous. At the time that God led Israel out of Egypt, there were thousands of man made religions, all with the purpose of making man right with God.
By giving the Old Covenant, god demonstrated that if any religion COULD make a man right before God, it would be a religion FROM God. After hundreds of years of Israel failing to keep God’s commands, clarifying that man could not be made righteous through religion, even one from God:
Rom 3:20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
the time was finally right to send Jesus who would fulfill the O.C. and usher in the New Covenant which really addresses man’s problem, that he is dead spiritually and the only solution to death is life. Spiritual life comes from God alone
Jhn 6:63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.
and can only indwell eternally those that have had their sins dealt with forever. Jesus’s sacrifice did away with our sins once and for all so that we could be saved, forever.
Praise God
Nicely said William.