At the end of the 6th day of creation God made the statement that Moses recorded, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31 NIV) The goodness of our God’s creation is under attack and it is necessary that we understand our Father’s creation from the point of view of the new covenant era and the law of Christ. (more…)
0 Comment » The relationships that the Lord gives us are important and sometimes, how we handle them can make or break us. The way that we handle our relationships can be be a true barometer of our hearts, especially in times of conflict. Conflict or misunderstanding in our relationships will occur but how we deal with the conflict or misunderstanding when it arises is the true litmus test of our love for the Lord. Look at the Lord’s words in the sermon on the mount:
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.” Matthew 5:23-26
I want you to see the urgency in the Lord’s words in that passage. When there is a problem with a relationship - I remember that my brother has something against me - I am to seek reconciliation with a sense of urgency.
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Some questions came up by way of comments on my last post on TMSJ that I think are important to address, so before going any further in TMSJ, I want to use this post to carefully walk through them and see what Scripture says about each one. All of them center around the salvation of an Old Testament or Old Covenant believer.
Question #1: Was the forgiveness of sin for an Old Covenant believer postponed until the cross?
The first one has to do with the forgiveness of sins and the question is centered on my previous statement, “I simply mean that His atoning death was imputed to an Old Testament Jew before it actually occurred. For an Old Covenant Jew, saving faith was imputed before the moment of actual reconciliation occurred on the cross.” I was asked to give supporting Scripture reference for that statement, so here goes.
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Before we bid a final farewell to William Barrick’s Essay in The Master’s Seminary Journal (TMSJ), we need to address some misconceptions that he raises about NCT. The first one we need to discuss appears on page 165 of TMSJ. Barrick makes this observation,
NCT holds that the Israelites redeemed from Egypt were physically redeemed, but not spiritually redeemed because the Mosaic Covenant was based on works. This leads to the strange position that OT saints were not saved until after the death and resurrection of Christ. (Emphasis mine)
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All believers in Jesus Christ are ambassadors. We are representatives for Jesus and have the awesome responsibility and privilege of declaring the gospel message to a fallen world. The apostle Paul is a great example to us of a bold and loving ambassador who brings the message of reconciliation to all those he comes in contact with (2 Cor. 5:16-21; 1 Cor. 9:19-23). However, most of us are not the apostle Paul when it comes to doing faithful evangelism! For many believers the task of evangelism is one filled with fear, guilt and apathy. It does not seem to be the joyful privilege that it should be. My observation is that most believers struggle with doing faithful biblical evangelism to one degree or another. (more…)
Bill Knaub will be joining the ids bloggers as a contributer soon. Bill is a long time friend of both Geoff and I and attends New Covenant Bible Fellowship with us. Prior to coming to NCBF, Bill was an Elder at Reformation Fellowship, the original “mother ship” of NCBF. Bill has written a couple of papers for ids over the years including one on Elders and an open letter to Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ. You may have encountered those on ids already. Bill will be blogging soon and will hopefully become a regular contributer with us.
Hey all,
Sorry for being away so long. I’ve actually been close by - just busy. I hope to get back on track with TMSJ soon. We still have a tiny bit of cleanup on the Davidic Covenant to do. In the meantime, I wanted to let you know that I’ll be opening an online bookstore soon that will be linked off of this site and my personal site at lovebrokethru.com. It’s a personal project that I’ve wanted to do for some time to offer a “one stop shop” for good books from the Reformed and NCT persuasion without having to look all over the web for them. I call it A Glimpse into my Library. (more…)
I left Phoenix on Thursday morning, March 6 and arrived in Minsk, Belarus on Friday at about 1:00 pm. This portion of the trip I was not accompanied by anyone. I haven’t traveled alone overseas for quite some time. The weekend of my arrival was greeted with unusually warm weather, but then it turned to its customary cold ways. On Saturday afternoon I met with Slava Viazovsky and we had lunch together and talked about his ideas for a Doctoral Dissertation at a school in Scotland where he hopes to work on his degree. In the evening I went to the New Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Gatava (about 30 minutes south of Minsk) to teach the youth of the church. It was a full house and we discussed the new heart. Oleg leads the group and he is in his early 20’s and definitely has a new heart.
Those with appetite for “solid food” are brought to understanding via in-depth study beginning with the last half of Hebrews 6 that “hope [is] like a sure and firm anchor of the soul” [v. 19 (HCSB)] if it rests in the “high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek” (v. 20) — Jesus — and that hope is illusory if it rests in other than Him, the Priest-King. As Dr. John MacArthur advocated via Hard To Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus, the wide gate and broad road that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13) is prevalently marked “Jesus”; alas, it’s not Jesus the Priest-King which interests the unregenerate. Astonishingly, even among the regenerate elect, Truth regarding the Priest-King is quenched; evisceration of the church via concomitant woeful beliefs and practices has been and continues to be the result.
At Hebrews 5:6, remember, the Writer quoted Psalm 110:4: “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek”. At 5:12, the Writer lamented: “You need milk, not solid food”. At 6:4 - 8, the Writer solemnly warns those satisfied with “milk” of their inevitable curse and burning; faith without appetite is dead (assuming mental capacity).
[Then], the author [] related his readers’ condition to the purpose of God, as evidenced especially in his dealings with Abraham. In [6:20], the author completes his careful preparaton for the ‘teaching difficult to explain’ (5:11). He does this by a skilful combination of motifs: (1) traditional teaching about the resurrection or exaltation of Christ is re-expressed in terms of the entry of a high priest into the inner sanctuary; and (2) the contrast between Jesus’ ministry and that of the OT priesthood is expressed by use of the Melchizedek motif. This comparison and contrast, both based on exegesis of OT texts, will prove to be the heart of the epistle.
Paul Ellingworth, The New International Greek Testament Commentary ~ The Epistle to the Hebrews, pp. 347 - 348 (link previously provided). The “heart of the epistle” is, indeed, the expostion of its central theme: The New Covenant. The Writer
argues powerfully that a new priesthood signals a new covenant. You cannot graft Christ’s high-priesthood onto that of the Mosaic order. Nor can the Mosaic priesthood survive under the ‘better covenant’ established in Christ’s atoning blood. There is a new covenant and a new priesthood, and former things have passed away.
Edgar Andrews, A Glorious High Throne, p. 189 (emphasis sic) (link previously provided). John MacArthur astutely observed:
Satisfied?
That’s the new name of the old Holy Spirit booklet published by Campus Crusade for Christ. It may have a new name and a new cover, but the material inside remains basically the same. I’ve recently been asked my opinion of it and I had the opportunity to once again walk through it page by page. It lies at the heart of Campus Crusade’s interpretation of how the Christian life works, but sadly, it is a fundamental misrepresentation of the Holy Spirit’s work in the life of the believer. Let me explain. (more…)
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