Have You Not Read S2E8 - New Covenant Jewishness

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you. I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham. David Kassin.

Chris Giesler. Today we're going to be dealing with a question sent in from a listener. The question reads, from a recent sermon you said that in Jeremiah 31, the new covenant was specifically written to Israel and Judah, but then Hebrews 8 specifically applies it to the church.

You then said that Jesus is all the Jewishness, in quotes, we will ever need. What does that mean? If everything that was written about Israel in the Old Testament is true of Jesus, does that include the promise of a homeland and physical descendants to Abraham forever?

How does that work? Well, that's a great question,.

And it's always encouraging to know that people are still awake in the middle of my prolonged attempts to explain Peter's preaching in Acts 3. So when we were thinking about the blessing of forgiveness, the context in Acts 3 is that Peter is preaching about the new covenant in the middle of all of the symbols and the people of the old covenant, saying to them that they need to convert.

They need to turn away from all that they would trust about themselves and any kind of system, and they need to turn to Christ and trust in him for salvation. And the number one blessing of salvation that he mentions is that of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a prominent, prominent theme in the blessings of salvation. And when we go back and we read in the Old Testament, the dozen or so passages that speak of the new covenant, forgiveness is again and again featured as this premier blessing.

So I began to talk about that, those new covenant promises. And so in Jeremiah 31, we read about a new covenant that God promises. He says he's going to make with Israel and Judah. This is after he speaks to the miracle of the virgin birth and all the trauma and things that have been going on with Judah.

But all is not lost. Even though there's judgment and exile and so on, God is going to do something new. And for example, in verse 29 of Jeremiah 31, he says, in those days, they shall say no more. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge, but everyone shall die for his own iniquity.

Every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. We're going to have a change in the way that we handle covenant blessings and curses and so on. Israel, as this corporate mediator of the old covenant, a shadow of the one to come, Christ, has stood accountable before God as a whole concerning her fidelity, her faithfulness to the covenant.

And if the fathers did not do well, the children would suffer. The punishment of the sins of Manasseh fell on later generations. And that's just the way that it happened in the old covenant. But in the new covenant, it's going to be different.

And so that's what the Lord begins to speak to through Jeremiah there in verses 29 and 30 of Jeremiah 31. And then in chapter 31, verse 31, the very next verse, it says, 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.

So we see that there's a very specific reference here about the new covenant. And we gotta keep that in mind. It's very important. And we move forward past that, we see it's a different covenant, right?

It's not gonna be like the old covenant. It's not gonna be like the first covenant. It's gonna be different. It's gonna be according to a whole new dynamic. Verse 32 says, 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 the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. And this is taken up later on by Ezekiel.

We see the promise of the Holy Spirit being talked about here, regenerate heart and so on. And I will be their God and they shall be my people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord.

In the old covenant, you entered into the old covenant simply by being born into the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If you were the children of Jacob, you were in the old covenant. The males were circumcised the eighth day and take the sign of the old covenant.

But you got in simply by being born into that ethnic lineage you were in. And therefore you had all manner of people who were not circumcised of heart, were not born again, were not spiritually alive, and yet still accountable for how they would keep covenant with God.

And so in the best of times, in the very best of times in the old covenant, it was the times where the Levites were doing their job well and the prophets were doing their job well and the king was doing his job well and everybody was encouraging one another and pressuring one another and influencing one another, know the Lord, know the Lord, know the Lord, fear God, fear God, fear God, and let's keep covenant.

And things went well. But that didn't mean that they were born again. That didn't mean that they were saved. They didn't mean that they were truly spiritually alive. This was all an external type of influence.

But no more in the new covenant. No, it's not gonna be that way. Why? Because from the least of them to the greatest of them, doesn't matter how small they are, how great they are, when you're in the new covenant, you know God directly, personally, truly, really.

For, God explains, I will forgive their iniquity. Isn't that what separates us from God? I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I'll remember no more. From the least of them to the greatest of them, everybody who's in the new covenant has forgiveness of sins.

So in explaining Peter's preaching of forgiveness in Acts 3, I pointed here to Jeremiah 31 about this new covenant promise of forgiveness of sins. And when we go to Hebrews chapter eight, we have most likely Paul preaching here and he takes up this quote, I believe, if I might be correct, a little bit of a trivia thing here.

I think this is the longest quote of any Old Testament passage in the entirety of the New Testament. And it's quoted here in Hebrews eight, this chunk of Jeremiah 31 about the new covenant. And it is quoted here because Paul, I'm just saying it's Paul here in Hebrews, has said that Christ, in verse six of Hebrews eight, has obtained a more excellent ministry in as much he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was also established on better promises.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second, because finding fault with them, notice the fault was with the covenant keepers or the covenant breakers, not with the covenant itself, no fault with God and what he established, it was with those who were involved.

He found a fault with the mediator, he found a fault with Israel. He says, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I'll make a new covenant. So he says he makes a new covenant, there in Hebrews eight, verses eight through 12, which is quoting what we just read out of Jeremiah 31.

And then verse 13, in that he says a new covenant he has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. This fits very, very well with what Peter's been preaching at Pentecost and here in Acts chapter three, in that he is saying, quoting from Joel and so on, the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the signs of the new covenant have indicated that we are now in the last days of the old.

The old is ready to pass away, the new has come. It is time for you to repent and leave the confines of the old covenant, the strictures of the old covenant, and you need to turn to Christ, who's the mediator of a better covenant.

And when you enter the new covenant, guess what? You receive forgiveness of your sins. And this is the premier blessing along with the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Holy Spirit that is part of the new covenant promise.

But when we read, when we read both in Jeremiah 31 and in Hebrews eight, it specifically says, God makes a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Now, this should be read carefully and embraced fully.

Nobody should read this and say, and just kind of toss it aside and try to find some way to not deal with it. And the reason why is because if we take this in its fullest meaning and its fullest extent, this brings glory to Jesus.

This brings glory to Christ. Because when you read Jeremiah 31, don't stop. Read Jeremiah 32, and then go read Jeremiah 33. Just keep reading, because the good news just gets even better, okay? So when you get to Jeremiah 33, you begin to see more elaboration on the promises of God and the blessings of God that he has already, he's been whetting the appetite of the people that Jeremiah has been preaching to.

And so there's all sorts of wonderful images and metaphors in Jeremiah 33 about the restoration of Jerusalem and the bringing back of good things. But when we get to verse 14, this is very critical. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that I will perform that good thing, which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.

Well, this is a direct echo from Jeremiah 31, 31. I will make a new covenant with the house of David and the house of Israel, the house of Judah. Right, so there's a direct echo of that. So we know what he's talking about.

This is about the new covenant. Verse 15, in those days and at that time, I will cause to grow up to David a, capital B, branch of righteousness, a Nazarene, okay? Which is the word branch, and he shall be called a Nazarene, right?

He was born in Nazareth. He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In those days, Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called the Lord, our righteousness.

Do you see how the good thing that God promised to the house of Israel and the house of Judah is wrapped up in what he does through the descendant of David, right? For thus says the Lord, David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel.

Nor shall the priest, the Levites, lack a man to offer burnt offerings before me, to kindle grain offerings and sacrifice continually. So he's building through, he's talking about a new covenant, not like the covenant he made at Sinai.

No, no, no, this covenant is going to be focused on the Davidic heir, the Davidic son. Important for us to remember is that the king stands in for the whole people. David was king of Israel and Judah.

He was king of the United Two Kingdoms. So was his son Solomon, okay? And he stood in for the whole nation. When David sinned and numbered the people, the whole nation came under the judgment of God. But then David stood as a representative of the whole nation and offered sacrifices on the threshing floor of Auranah and turned away the hand of the wrath of God.

You see, the king stands in for the whole and we have to keep that in mind. Moving forward, verse 19, Jeremiah 33. And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, thus says the Lord, if you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, going all the way back to creation, so that there will not be day and night in their season, then my covenant may also be broken with David my servant so that he will not have a son to reign on his throne and with the Levites, the priests, my ministers.

Now, get ready for another, not just creation, but what about Abraham? Verse 22, as the host of heaven cannot be numbered nor the sand of the sea measured, so I'll multiply the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister to me.

So we have to read God's promises in light of how he continually shows, shines more light and more light, the light of his son, Jesus Christ upon them. And we see them as bigger and bigger and fuller and deeper as we move through so that when their promise is a new covenant to the house of Judah and the house of Israel, he says specifically, this is a covenant, I'm dealing with the son of David who will have as many heirs as there are stars in the sky.

What does he say? The promises God made in creation, the promises that God made with Abraham, the promises God made to Israel, the promises God made are all gonna be wrapped up in the son of David. And when the son of David comes, he breaks the bread and gives it to his disciples and he pours the wine into the cup and shares the cup with his disciples and says, this is my body, this is my blood of the new covenant.

And Jesus specifically states that in his sacrificial work, he is establishing the new covenant, a new covenant in which there's forgiveness of sins, a new covenant in which the Holy Spirit is given to each and every single member because all of them shall know God and all of them are forgiven and all of them are alive.

And then he tells his disciples, this is the good news of the kingdom and you're gonna go tell everybody in Jerusalem and you're gonna tell everybody in Judea and you're gonna tell everybody in Samaria and you're gonna tell the uttermost parts of the earth.

And the end result is exactly what Isaiah said would happen. All these nations, all these Gentiles, and the same thing as Zachariah is saying, they're all gonna grab the hem or the short sleeve of a Jew and he's gonna lead them straight up the side of Mount Zion, which is why later on Hebrews, like if you've come to Christ, you've come to Mount Zion, welcome.

So when I say in shorthand, Jesus is all the Jewishness you need, it's because all of the promises of God are granted to Christ for all of the people of God who are gathered in Christ. So those promises are based on the worthiness of Christ, not any kind of merit or quality in us.

I mean, the Jeremiah 31 and the new covenant says to Israel and Judah. Yes, yes, definitely. It's very clear, we wanna take the Bible, I wanna say we wanna take the Bible literally. Yes. And at the time Jeremiah is writing, it's just before Judah is smashed.

So there is no Northern kingdom during this time. And yet God says that he is going to make a covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah and all throughout their history. And you said this a couple of times and you've alluded to it that this group guilt or group blessing that the nation of Israel had was wrapped up in the king.

If the king was bad, the whole nation goes bad. And when the king was good, the whole nation goes good. As the king goes, the nation goes.

Right, and that wasn't just a political reality, that was a covenantal reality.

All those promises that we talked about, it was wrapped up into this single person, into the king. And that's what, not just, don't stop at Jeremiah 31, go to 32, go to 33, and you start to see how this single person, this king figure, all these promises are wrapped up in him.

Whether they be the Davidic covenant, it says that we will have like a man upon the throne, he talked about raising up the branch. And then the descendants of the numbers of the stars saying to the seashore, descendants of David, descendants of Abraham, that old covenant wrapped up into this descendant.

That makes, in Hebrews 8, makes so much more sense because it says that the promises are better. And then goes into, and quotes Jeremiah 31, the promises are actually better. And it's because of in whom they are wrapped up.

Yes. Yeah, that brings some questions up for me. So joining in on the discussion about covenantalism and what is the covenant, who's the covenant with, there seems to be this mindset that the church is the New Testament Israel.

And so we look at what the Israel did and how the covenant was with their children and bringing their children along and they would baptize their children as the sign of the covenant. If the church is the New Testament Israel, then to be consistent, we would baptize our children if we're New Testament Israel.

But what you're saying seems to be that no, Jesus was the one the covenant was made with. And if this new covenant is not like the old one, and it's interesting, you mentioned Hebrews eight and verse nine, it says, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.

There's a meme going around online that has Moses leading the children through the water as a sign of baptism and making fun of Baptists. They say, no, leave your children behind. They're not part of the covenant.

Well, if you're trying to say the New Testament church is New Testament Israel, maybe, but that doesn't seem to be what you're saying here.

Right, so again, if you use covenant as your hermeneutical lens, the way that you read everything in the Bible, I could see how you could end up with that conclusion. It is common for those who would be producing that meme to talk about covenant in the scriptures as being something that had an older administration and a newer administration, but it's all the same covenant, and the problem with that is that Hebrews talks about the first covenant and the second covenant, and whereas conceptually and grammatically, it's easy to say older and newer, it's really hard to say firster and seconder, especially when the text itself more than once says this is not like the covenant of old.

This is something that is new. This is something that is different. This is something that has qualitative difference to what was previous, and this is the real Achilles heel of covenant theology that would be baptizing infants is that it doesn't give glory to Christ in the true difference between the old and the new, and again, this is not about claiming some sort of foreign discontinuity in the scriptures, but trying to affirm what discontinuity is spoken of.

We don't want, and again, all of us are brothers in Christ. We don't want our doctrines to be strange to the text. We really want it to be derived from the word of God, but if you interpret the scriptures and read everything through the lens of covenant, then I think you're going to cross-thread your passages.

I think Christ is the light of the world, and he's the light of the word. All things are reconciled in him, including the old and new testaments, including the old and new covenants, and I think that Christ has to be the light of the word.

I think all Christians agree on that, and I'm not trying to be glib or trite in that, but when we have Christ as the hermeneutic of scripture, the light of the word of God, the light by which we read Moses with unveiled face, our faces are not unveiled in 2 Corinthians, reading Moses and reading the Old Testament by the light of covenant.

Our faces are unveiled, and we read Moses and the Old Testament in the light of Christ, and I think that's important that we acknowledge that, because when we get to passages like Galatians 3, in verse 16, it says, now to Abraham and to his seed where the promise is made.

He does not say into seeds as of many, but as of one, and to your seed who is Christ. So Abraham's seed is not the church. Abraham's seed is Christ, and although the church, the people of God in the New Testament, living stones being built into a temple, the flock of Christ, the bride of Christ, and so on, although the church is described in ways that are like Israel, and compared to Israel of the Old Testament.

The kingdom of priests. The kingdom of priests, and so on. It is only ever done so in the light of who Christ is, because our entire status is in him. What is said much more often directly is that Christ is the new covenant Israel, right?

Which again, the old covenant would affirm the son of David is Israel. When we go back and we read through the development of the covenants in the Old Testament, there becomes not only a broadening of promise, but a more specific focus at the same time, so that the grandeur of all the covenant promises of God become all the more localized into one person, and that one person is the son of David, the son of man, the servant, and so from the former prophets to the latter prophets, we see the development of all of the hopes, all of the covenant promises, all of the hopes that God gave to his people are being consolidated into the shape of one man.

The shadow becomes all the more defined and clear until we get to the New Testament, and the shadow runs up right to the soma, the substance, the body who is Christ, Paul would say. So in that, I think that the Old Testament robustly anticipates the fulfillment of Israel in a singular individual, and the New Testament robustly echoes that, so that we have some really amazing shorthand interpretations in the scriptures, such as in Matthew chapter two, this was to fulfill out of Israel I have called my son.

When you go back and you read Hosea, and you read that passage, you don't get any inklings that this is a Christmas passage, but then in Matthew chapter two, all of a sudden this statement is made, and it is not in error, it is not reaching, this is built on a lot of information in the prophetic development of covenant understanding in the Old Testament, bolstered by the preaching of Christ in the New.

Whatever the Old Testament says about Israel, the New Testament says about Christ, and in fact the Old Testament, more and more as you move through the prophets, whatever God has said about Israel.

Begins to say of the Messiah to come. Are you trying to say that Jesus is the main character and not the covenant?

Yes. Okay, I just wanna clarify that. Very, very much so, and again, this is a subtle thing, but I find that subtle things matter. I'll give an example in a moment, but Jesus is not in orbit around the covenant as a better administrator than Moses.

Like, you know, here's the covenant, it has all the weight, all the gravity, there's Moses in orbit, but Jesus is in a better orbit because he's just that much better, poor Moses. Jesus is all glorious.

He's the one, he's the bright light, he's the great weight, he's the one around everything else. In all things, he may have the preeminence. Everything's in orbit around him, even the idea of covenant, all the covenants that God made, any theological construct that we would try to develop to try to best understand the scriptures in terms of covenant.

It has to be in orbit around Christ, otherwise we're gonna get this crossways. A quick example of error would be one Charles Finney, who was a trained lawyer, very concerned about dead orthodoxy, concerned that there was just, you know, no real spiritual life going on, and, you know, people were not very concerned about eternal souls and so on, and he was very, very passionate about wanting to see people saved.

And one of the things that he did in his systematic theology, which I've read through big chunks of it, was that he saw the law of God as central. And being a lawyer, you know, maybe that had something to do with it, but he said God was righteous because he kept the law.

You see what he did? He put God in orbit around the law, and then every other error that Finney had all the way down to all of his improper practices in the church came from this error of putting God in orbit around the law.

So Finney was, you know, he turned into this Pelagian, you know, rejected the sovereignty of God and all these other things. That all came from him putting God in orbit around the law rather than having things in an appropriate relationship.

Where the law derives its righteousness and significance from God, not the other way around. The law isn't something in and of itself, and then God is righteous because he keeps the law. The law is righteous because it comes from God.

Yes.

And this is something I've noticed time and again when it comes to various subtle theological errors, that something is being placed as the center and then everybody else is in orbit around it. Like one of the most recent ones about the redefinition of sin is that sin is that which is against human flourishing.

And because God is for human flourishing, that's why he's against sin. And then you're off to the races with all the social justice redefinitions of the gospel. So in these subtle moments, I'm always looking for what is at the center?

What are you putting God in orbit around? Because we know immediately we've got an idol on our hands. You know, I'm not very upset with my Pato Baptist brothers. I'm not really, really upset with them or anything.

But I would say that you need to be extremely, extremely careful that you're not putting Christ in orbit around the covenant, because that's not how it works in the scriptures.

So the shorthand that some people use is the covenantalists, especially Pato covenantalists, make the error that the church is the new Israel when Christ is actually the fulfillment of Israel. So the church is in the new Israel.

Christ is the fulfillment of everything that Israel was. The opposite error, that the church and Israel are completely diametrically opposed because they had two different people, two different promises.

It says no. It's not a choice between A and B. It's not side A, side B. The answer is no, that everything that Israel was true about Israel is true about Christ. And then Galatians and Ephesians makes a lot more sense when you have these two people being not united into one man.

You have these two people being united into Christ, one man. And that is the fulfillment of everything that Israel was supposed to do. That's when you say, oh, that's what it means to be a kingdom of priests.

That's, oh, because we're united to Christ. That's why those Old Testament passages can make sense because they're about Jesus and we're one with Jesus. We're in Christ. That's why those passages make sense and are even applicable.

Yes, and I think it's really, really, really important. It's about us being identified in Him. We have promises in the Old Testament about land, promises in the Old Testament about, or instructions about feast days and Levitical practices and this must never stop, and then circumcision and so on and so forth.

When all of that happens in the Old Testament and you wanna embrace that fully, eternal precepts, eternal commandments, never stop doing these feasts. This land is forever reserved for and all that. Embrace that fully.

Yes, absolutely. Grab two hands onto those always promises and those always precepts because every single one of those gives glory to Christ because it's all to Him. He inherits it all. It's all realized in Him.

And so being in Him, we are co-heirs. We're co-heirs with Him so that in any way, fashion that we are identified with Israel is only in the sense that we're in Christ. And so all of those promises are granted to Christ for all of those people gathered into Christ.

And that's the way that the New Testament reads. That's interesting.

You mentioned co-heirs. Now I think of how talks about husbands and wives and they're co-heirs. And oftentimes the church is called the bride. So the church is not Israel the husband, the church is the bride.

What do they inherit? Right, well, Christ is the heir of all things. So co-heirs with Him, we inherit all things. And again, very often the discussion gets limited about the Israel church discussion.

But the Bible is bigger than that. I mean, I know there's a lot about Israel in the Bible and that's great because again, Israel glorifies Christ. Everything about Israel is, Israel exists to glorify Christ as much as John the Baptist was Christ's forerunner.

That's what Israel is, is Christ's forerunner. But it's more than that because the New Testament has more to say. Not only all these things that God promised Israel fulfilled in Christ and they come to the nations in Christ, but God said bigger things than that.

Things about a new creation. He said things about the image of God. He said things that were larger in scope than even Israel. And he said those things to Israel themselves as well, which is why in the scriptures, hey, we're being renewed into the image of God, the image who is Christ.

He's the image of the invisible God. This is a recreation. Old things are passed away, whole new things have come. It's bigger than the Israel church question. And it's bigger because it's about Christ at the center.

Okay, well, I think that about wraps it up for that question. We'll move on to what are we thankful for.

Michael, we'll start with you. I am thankful for more opportunity as of late to read. I've not been caught up with the normal schedule. I've been kind of in a recovery from sickness schedule. And given that opportunity, I've had more time to read and it's been a real blessing.

I've been learning a lot and been encouraged a great deal.

David. I am thankful for old friends. I have the opportunity to visit a friend of mine. When I was in the Air Force, we were in Afghanistan together and spent many days talking. I was the inspector general and he was the judge advocate and everybody hated us, both of us.

So, you know, we became fast friends and not only is he a great husband and father and family man, he's also brilliant. Also a really good shot. Best shooting lawyer in the Air Force, without a doubt.

He was Army infantry. And I got to know him pretty well and we had a number of discussions, especially faith in the Bible and him having kind of a legal mind. I was able to go through some of those things and to his credit, even though, I mean, he didn't agree with me, he listened and considered.

Occasionally he was stumped and it was a lot of fun. He attended my retirement and this week I get to attend his promotion to colonel and there's not a lot of those six, there's not a lot of colonels, lawyers in the Air Force.

So he's gonna be in a position of great influence and he has invited me. And then he said, my family is going out for restaurant for reception afterwards and you are expected to be there, Super Dave. Okay, I will be there.

So he's treating me like family and I am very grateful for his friendship and I hope that we will have another opportunity to talk about things that are most important and the things that are eternal because I deeply care about him.

Amen. Chris? I am thankful for my wife, just to have that helpmate, someone I can share theological discussions with and just have, not necessarily a differing point of view, but presented differently.

I'm not known for my mercy, but she is abundant in it. So just to run things by her and she softens those edges. And then just to see her with the kids, raising them and I get to come out and do stuff like this and she's good with them and I know that they're taken care of and they're being discipled.

So I'm very grateful for that. Amen. I am thankful for a transition in weather and the season, holidays coming up and my work is very seasonal in many ways. So I'm changing to a new job recently and it's physical, it's out in the weather, it's out in the wind and it wears me out, puts me in good sleep at the end of the day.

But it's very satisfying to come home after a long day and have work the next day to look forward to. I've experienced spaces of time where I didn't, even though I sought for it. But the Lord has blessed me and has blessed my wife and our household and we are very thankful for continued work and people who are willing to give it to us and stick with us whenever we make big efforts for it.

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Having Not Read.