Tag Archives: The New Covenant

The Exegesis Of God–Part Two

Posted on November 29, 2014 by Allan Halton

Let’s recall from last time Solomon’s proclamation at the inauguration of the temple that God had instructed him to build for Him.

 The LORD hath said that He would dwell in the thick darkness.  But I have built an house of habitation for Thee, and a place for Thy dwelling forever (2 Chr. 6:1,2).

This is what Solomon’s temple was all about.  It was to be the place among men where the God who had formerly dwelt in thick darkness now shone forth.  Solomon’s temple was, however, only a shadow of the true temple not made with hands—the Son of God Himself.  And so last time we also quoted a verse from John.

 No man hath seen God at any time.  The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him (Jn. 1:18).

The word declared is the Greek exegesato, and is related to our word exegesis, which is the biblical science of discovering and explaining what the Scriptures really say and mean.  Patient exegesis of the Bible will yield to the yielded much fruit.  But in John 1:18 we discover that the Son of God when He walked the earth was the exegesis of God Himself.  He was the One who explained, made known, revealed, shone forth, the hard-to-understand, unseen, obscure, unknown God.

That’s very wonderful, but I wonder if I don’t hear someone thinking, “Well and good that Jesus the Son of God was the exegesis of God the Father back then, but He is not here now.”

I know the regret you’re expressing: if only we could have lived back in Jesus’ day… or if only He were still here today.  Too bad the Devil succeeded in tearing down that living Temple in whom God dwelt and was revealed.

Just a minute.  Remember what Jesus said about that.

 Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up…
But He spake of the Temple of His body (Jn. 2:19,21).

And so the Devil has his own regrets that he and his cohorts conspired to have the Lord of glory crucified, thinking to be done with Him.  For He rose from the dead.  And He ascended into Heaven, where, seated at the right hand of God, He began His more excellent ministry of the New Covenant, and an enlargement of that Temple which would continue to be the same exegesis of God.

How so?  When Christ ascended to the right hand of God, He “received the promise of the Father” (Acts 2:33), on the day of Pentecost sending the Spirit to His waiting disciples, just as He, in turn, had earlier promised them.

 I will not leave you comfortless.  I will come to you (Jn. 14.18).

I will come to you?  This is a mystery.  The coming of the Spirit was such that the same One who was the exegesis of God at the right hand of the Father, while continuing to abide at the right hand of the Father in the Heavens, came to His disciples again, and took up residence in them.  For, those in whom the Spirit dwells, it is Christ Himself who dwells in them, as we read in many places in our New Testament.  (For example, Romans 8: 9,10, and many other places that speak of the indwelling Christ.)  And thus they become part of the same Temple Solomon prophesied of, the same habitation the Son of God fulfilled—the same living Exegesis that reveals God and makes Him known among men.

That is the astonishing implication of the sending of the Spirit.  Those in whom Christ dwells now become part of that same exegesis of God that the Son of God was.

This is what the New Covenant assembly is all about, or ought to be.  The church—which was formed by the coming of the Spirit to individual disciples—is to be the fullness of that same Exegesis of God who walked the earth two thousand years ago, and is now seated at the right hand of God.

 The church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all (Eph. 1:23).

The fullness of Him?  The church is His very body—the fullness of Him?  I am sure this is what Jesus had in mind when He “spake of the temple of His body” which He said He would raise up.  “The church, which is His body…”  The Devil thought to be rid of Him by the cross.  What he did, to his great chagrin, enabled God to lay in Zion the foundation Stone for an enlargement of that temple.  It began with the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost.  He comes for nothing less than to continue the same exegesis of God that the Son of God was when He was here.

That is the nature of Christ’s more excellent ministry of the New Covenant.  It is a ministration of the very knowledge of God, and thus, “all shall know Me from the least to the greatest” (Heb. 8:11) .  This is something more than knowledge as we generally think of the word.  It is New Covenant knowledge: the kind of knowledge—the knowledge of God—whom to know means our being like Him.

How imperative, then, that we in the church, as ministers of the New Covenant (which all Christians are to be) give the Prime Minister of the New Covenant—the Holy Spirit—His lordship and pre-eminence in our individual lives, and in our gatherings.  He comes for nothing less than to reveal, to make known, the same God of love and righteousness that dwelt in the Son… so that the same exegesis of God now dwells in and shines forth from the churches—you and me and our brothers and sisters in the churches.

This is what the New Covenant, and the New Covenant assembly, is all about—or is supposed to be—the exegesis of God to a world in darkness.  Anything short of this… we are sorely missing His mark.

And it has to be said that much of what is called church in our day has in fact done that.  Has fallen short.  Has missed the mark.  Let the broken and repentant heart be encouraged.  Christ is still on the Throne at the right hand of the Father, and the Holy Spirit sent from the Throne is still in the earth.  The temple He inaugurated at Pentecost is still here, though in the midst of much that man has built cannot always readily be seen.  In fact her enemies are gloating these days that they have succeeded in destroying her and treading her down in the dust.  The Lord on the throne has a surprise in store for His enemies.  The power and principle of His resurrection life is still at work.  He continues to raise up this Temple—the One that was torn down on Calvary’s cross—just as He prophesied He would do.  He will beautify her, set living stones in her just like Himself.  He will yet be fully revealed, will yet shine forth in this temple in all His glory in the Heavens and in the earth…

…And all the confusion and debate and doubt and misunderstanding as to who He is—all the thick darkness—will vanish like the morning mist in the light of the sun.

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The Shemitah Holds My Future?

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Allan Halton

Apparently the hearts of many Christians are all astir again these days over Jonathan Cahn’s exciting new book, The Mystery of the Shemitah. The blurb on the book’s  cover calls it, “The 3,000-Year-Old Mystery That Holds the Secret of America’s Future, the World’s Future, and Your Future!”

Wow.  I better get a copy.  But fast; its sellers warn that it’s “flying off the shelves.”

Cahn’s previous book The Harbinger was a “runaway bestseller” on the New York Times Christian books list.  Looks like this one is on the way to joining it.

What is the shemitah? It’s the sabbath year as laid out in Leviticus.

When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD.
Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather the fruit thereof;
But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field or prune thy vineyard (Lev. 25:2-4).

Failure to keep this and other things set forth in the Law would bring judgment (Lev. 26:34, 1 Chr. 36:21).

And so Cahn propounds that it is failure to observe the shemitah (pronounced shmeeta) that has caused cyclical devastation every seven years in the earth.  I have not read the book but saw it advertised on Charisma News along with an interview Sid Roth (It’s Supernatural) had with Jonathan Cahn.  So I watched the interview.  Cahn proclaimed to a very excited Roth that it is failure to keep the shemitahs that has brought down judgments upon the world in seven-year cycles going a long way back.  He listed several.  It included the world wars.  The Great Depression.  9/11 in 2001.  The last one was the financial crisis of 2008.  Apparently the next shemitah is from September 25, 2014 to September 13, 2015, which could bring down on us… who knows what.

There is only one little problem with this teaching.  It is entirely false.  It is derived from a covenant—the old covenant— that is no longer in effect.  Don’t take my word for it; get it straight from the writers of the New Testament:

 For on the one hand there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness (Heb. 7:18 NKJV).

In that He says, “A New Covenant,” He has made the first obsolete (Heb. 8:13 NKJV).

If we dare to believe our New Testament, then, the only covenant now extant with God is the New Covenant.  The covenant God made with the fathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) is not a covenant independent of Christ; it is fulfilled in Christ and His New covenant (Acts 13:32-34, Gal. 4:16).  And (according to the verses quoted above) the covenant God made with Israel under the shadow of Mount Sinai is obsolete.  It is null and void.  It is no longer in effect.  According to an online site on legal definitions I checked out, “a void contract imposes no legal rights or obligations upon the parties and is not enforceable by a court. It is, in effect, no contract at all.”  And so the Sinai covenant, the old covenant, because it is void, because it has been annulled, cannot be enforced.  That would be tantamount to trying to enforce a business partnership that has been legally disbanded, or a marriage contract that has been nullified, or trying on the basis of an old title deed to lay claim to land that has been sold to someone else.

God has brought in a BETTER covenant now (Heb. 7:22, 8:6)—better not only for Gentiles, but for Jews (with whom, actually, it was first made).  As a result, the old contract is no longer in effect.

But even if the Old Covenant were still in effect there is not the slightest suggestion anywhere in the Bible that the shemitah was in force for any nation other than Israel.  In fact the Old Covenant was a covenant God made with Israel alone.  How then could the shemitah be something that “holds the secret of America’s future, the world’s future, and your future?”

I find it very distressing, even frightening, that so many Christians are being duped by this kind of teaching.

Distressing… because it is evidence of how grievously lacking they are in their understanding of the basic difference between the Old Covenant and the New; there is such a blindness, it seems, as to the astonishing terms of the New Covenant.  And many believe God still holds out the Old Covenant for Jews that don’t believe in Jesus, and they can still come to Yahweh on the basis of that covenant. It is a teaching that does despite to the blood of Christ.

Frightening… because (and I know I am generalizing) this present generation of charismatic/evangelical Christians has strayed far, far from the truth– God’s controversy is with their teachers– and as a result they are abysmally ill prepared for the hour that is at hand. I tell you, there is trouble at the door.  Great trouble.   And it is going to result in the great and frightening collapse of a realm of Christianity that ought to have prepared its people for that hour, but did not.

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Jesus My Surety

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Allan Halton

The book of Proverbs has several verses about surety, and they all have one thing in common.  They warn against suretyship.  Never, they say, never become surety for anyone else. Never.

What is surety?  It’s one of those old King James Version words which means making yourself responsible for someone else’s debt or venture.

Here is one passage from Proverbs:

 My son, if thou be surety for thy friend, if thou hast stricken thy hand with a stranger,
Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, thou art taken with the words of thy mouth.
Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself, when thou art come into the hand of thy friend; go, humble thyself, and make sure (or, prevail with) thy friend.
Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids.
Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler (Pr. 6:1-5).

Another is:

 A man void of understanding striketh hands, and becometh surety in the presence of his friend (Pr. 17:18).

Another:

 Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts.
If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee? (Pr. 22:26,27).

Striking hands with the other person would be in modern finance the same as co-signing his loan.  Other translations of the passage in Ch. 6 have, “if you have made a pledge for your neighbour, and have become a guarantor for a stranger…” (NET); “if you have put up security for a neighbour,  given your pledge for a stranger…” (ESV).  Once you do this you are on the hook for what that person owes someone else.  You have committed yourself to your neighbour’s project, and if suddenly your neighbour is unable to follow through, or pay what he owes, it is you who are bound to complete the venture, or are in debt to some stranger.  In Bible days, even if you had to sell everything you own, or even yourself into slavery to keep the commitment, you were bound to do so.

And that is why the wise man said we should never get into any such commitment.  It could mean great loss to yourself, and there is no way out.  Once you have committed yourself to be surety for another, you are legally and morally bound to do so whatever the cost to yourself.

The thing is, after all of Solomon’s counsel advising us to never become surety for another… lo and behold, God Himself did this.

And that, I believe, is the very reason why we find all those passages in Proverbs warning us against suretyship.  It is so that we, who all too often are very unsure of God, will “get it.”  Suretyship is an unbreakable commitment?  Once you have made the commitment there is no way to back down, no way out of it?  God wants us to know that He was prepared to make this very commitment.  And did.

He entered into suretyship with us—that is, with those who look to Him for the fulfillment of the New Covenant in their lives.  God has made Jesus “the surety of a better covenant” (Heb. 7:22).  He did this by the oath wherewith He swore that Jesus was a priest after the order of Melchizedek.

 The LORD sware, and will not repent: thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek: By so much [that is, God’s oath] was Jesus made the surety of a better covenant (Heb. 7:22, see Ps. 110:4).

Jesus enthroned as a king at the right hand of God, and made a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, is God’s guarantee, God’s pledge, His oath—His surety—that He will make good the terms of His better covenant with you and me.  The only way He might fail in this is if something happens to our Surety, and Jesus is somehow deposed, or dies, and is no longer high priest.  Which cannot happen.  Christ our high priest is before God on our behalf “in the power of an indissoluble life” (Heb. 7:16).  So He cannot fail to fully mediate the New Covenant in the lives of those who believe Him for this.

And what are the terms of this covenant?  Simply put, when they are fully wrought in our lives, we in this world are just like our Surety who is before the throne in Heaven.  Yes, just like Him.  Having the same heart and mind.  The same righteousness. The same love.  The same relationship with the Father that He has.  A very tall order, no doubt.  But this is what we are sure of because He who was slain to redeem us is God’s surety before the very Throne of Heaven on our behalf.

 For thou was slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood… and hast made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth (Rev. 5:10).

Meaning that,  just as our great high priest reigns in the Heavens, we are a kingdom of priests who reign in the earth.  We manifest His kingdom in the earth—a kingdom that is over all.  We are priests here in the earth ministering this heavenly kingdom to those around us in the grip of the kingdom of sin and death.  For, since our Surety is dead to sin, and alive to God, we too are dead to sin and alive to God– with the same eternal life our Surety reigns in the power of.  It is life that reigns in all situations (Rom. 5:17).  You say you’ve been trying to do that but find the battle overwhelming?  I know all about it.  Let us not be discouraged; let us continue to fight the good fight of faith; victory is as certain as the Surety of the Covenant before the Throne.   He ever lives above to make intercession for us, and we who are in the earth, we too make intercession for the saints who are in this hard-fought battle.  It is the authoritative intercession of priests who are kings; it is effectual intercession because of the power of His indissoluble life.

Beloved, with all the uncertainty of our day, with evil unleashed (or so it seems) and even talk of being on the brink of World War III, one thing is certain.  God has given us a Surety.  That Surety is before His Throne.  His purposes in your life and mine, and in this troubled world of ours, are as certain as that Surety.  Just as certain.

And that is the only answer for this troubled world of ours.

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We Are There Unto This Day

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Allan Halton

Christian teachers for centuries have seen in the old testament story of Israel crossing Jordan a shadow of the true baptism—baptism into Christ, which Paul sets forth in Romans Chapter Six.  It is a teaching that is fundamental to the Christian walk, yet all too often it is unfamiliar territory to believers.  It is left to the theologians to ponder while we do our best to get on with a practical life.

But we will get nowhere in life without what Christ accomplished in the Cross of Calvary becoming not just doctrine, but the reality we walk in.  And this is what Romans Six is all about.

Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life (Rom. 6.4).

Baptism into Christ makes real in us what is real in Him.  What is real in Him?  First, that He died unto sin.

For in that He died, He died unto sin once (once for all) but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God (Rom. 6.10).

Christ died unto sin.  But Paul continues:

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God through (Gk. en, meaning in) Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 6.11).

Astonishing words!  You and I, dead unto sin just as Christ is dead unto sin?  Paul says we are to reckon it so.  To reckon means to account.  I think it was Watchman Nee who gave the illustration of a man who has a certain amount of money in his bank account.  He makes a transaction on the basis of this; he buys something, reckoning (accounting) on what he has in the bank.  He could not reckon this if he did not know it to be true.  This is why Paul talks about “knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him…” (Rom. 6.6).  We can only reckon on the basis of what we know is true.  It is true, it is a fact, that Christ died unto sin, and that our old man died with Him.  Knowing this we who are baptized into Christ can reckon ourselves to be just as dead unto sin as Christ is dead unto sin.  It is as true in us as it is in Him.  If it is true in Him, it is true also of those who are in Him.

And so going back to the story in Joshua, when Israel crossed through Jordan on dry ground, the Lord commanded that twelve stones from the midst of Jordan were to be set up as a memorial on the Canaan side of the river.  The twelve stones represented the twelve tribes of Israel, that is, the whole congregation, each and every one of them.  And twelve stones were set up in the midst of Jordan as well.

And they are there unto this day (Josh. 4.9).

“Dad,” says a young Israelite, as they walk along the bank of the Jordan, “what are these stones here for?”

“These stones,” Dad says, “are to remind us that the Lord brought us all through the Jordan on dry ground.  Right over there is where it happened,” says Dad, pointing.  “And do you know what else, son?  There are also twelve stones under the water over there, which the Lord commanded were to be set up in the midst of Jordan.  They are there to this day.”

So it is with us, beloved, when we were baptized into Christ.  We were baptized into His death—which is death indeed unto sin.  And we are there unto this day.

Let this truth—this fact—enlighten us with new-covenant light.  In Christ we are not dead unto sin one day and alive unto sin the next.  In Christ we are not still alive unto sin.  On the very day that we were baptized into Christ we were baptized into His death.  We were buried with Him in the Jordan waters of baptism.  And we are there unto this day.  We are dead unto sin.  We are no longer alive unto sin.  We are no longer sinners.  Sin has dominion over us no longer.  We are as dead unto sin as Christ.

In Christ we are dead unto sin.  We are buried with Him in baptism…

…And—if this is not wonder enough—also risen with Him (Eph. 2.6, Col. 3.1).

And therefore we are also seated together with Him in the heavenlies—the Canaan side of the Jordan.  We are in our inheritance now as He is in His inheritance!  We need no longer look behind us fearing some specter of sin might come up out of Jordan to haunt us.  This very day we are to “seek those things which are above,” that is, the things of our heavenly inheritance in the Spirit. This is God’s new-covenant commandment unto which we have been liberated.  With Joshua—Jesus—as our guide, this very day we can explore our eternal inheritance in the heavenlies a bit more.  We are to fix our minds on this, we are to have a one-track mind, and not be perpetually focusing on our sins that are buried (with ourselves as well) back there in the Jordan waters.  We are to “walk in newness of life” through the land of our inheritance a bit further—the length and the breadth of it, the depth and the height of it, overcoming every enemy that would stand against us along the way.

This is His order—His new creation order—for us today… if we will hear His Voice!

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We Have A Faithful Mediator

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Allan Halton

It is a great encouragement to me in these unstable times to remember that the Lord Jesus Christ will be faithful to mediate the New Covenant.

With all the troubling things taking place in our world, with all the forebodings of dark things ahead, we need this assurance—that no matter what happens, He who sits on the highest throne in the universe has been given a mandate to fulfill a covenant in God’s chosen, and He will not rest till He has done so.

Who are the chosen?  They are those, whether Jew or Gentile, who have been brought into covenant relationship with God through their faith in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

And what is the covenant?

This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts… (Heb. 8.10).

God made this covenant originally with the house of Israel, and then brought the Gentiles into it.  I am glad.

And what does the completed covenant look like?

It looks like a people who look just like Jesus Christ the Son of God Himself.

In fact Isaiah tells us twice that He Himself is the covenant.  Isaiah prophesies of a certain Servant, whom we know from the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and Acts 8.35 to be the Lord Jesus Christ.

Behold My Servant, whom I uphold, Mine elect, in whom My soul delighteth… I the LORD have called Thee in righteousness, and will hold Thine hand, and will keep Thee, and give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles… (Isa. 42.1,6).

Thus saith the LORD, In an acceptable time have I heard Thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped Thee: and I will preserve Thee, and give Thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth, to cause to inherit the desolate heritages…” (Isa. 49.8).

The old covenant (no longer in effect) was the laws and statutes God gave Israel on Sinai.  The new covenant (now in effect) is the laws of God written within our very hearts and minds—that is to say, Christ Himself.  “I will give Thee for a covenant…”

This is why Jesus in His great high priestly prayer concludes by saying:

I have made known unto them Thy Name, and will make it known, that the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them (Jn. 17.26).

Notice how He says that.  The love of God in them is one and the same thing as “I in them.”  That is the fulfillment of the new covenant in our lives—the same love that was in Jesus now in you and me, to the extent that it is actually Christ Himself come to full maturity in you and me.

And this is why John says that when love with us is made perfect (that is how the original Greek reads: “Herein is love with us made perfect…” 1 Jn. 4.17)  …when love-with-us is made perfect, or has come to full maturity, we shall have boldness in the day of judgment, “because as He is, so are we in this world” (1 Jn. 4.17).

Yes, in this world, and this in a time of judgment and great upheaval.

And this is why Paul says that God’s purpose is that we be conformed to the image of His Son (Rom. 8.29).  And that nothing can hinder this purpose of God.  In fact, we know that God is working all things together for good in the lives of those who are called according to this purpose (Rom. 8.28).

What good, Paul?  What is this good that you have in mind?

For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8.29).

This is the good Paul is speaking of, the purpose God is working toward in this world, and He will cause all things to work together and help Him out in this great eternal purpose of His.

So whatever happens in these last days, whether cataclysmic world events, or troubles closer to home in our own lives and families, let us continue to embrace and rest in the promise, and keep our eyes and our faith fixed on Jesus the mediator of the new covenant.

He will not fail nor be discouraged till He has accomplished the work God gave Him to do, and surveys it all, and says, “Perfect.  Amen.”

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