Many claim they are saved, when they first believed, when they were baptised, joined or belonged to a congregation, etc yet Yeshua said..
Matthew 24:13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
- Becoming aliens in a life of serving interests of self for gains that perish
- Crying out to God for citizenship in a life of serving His interests for treasure that lasts
- God is not afraid to be called your God and has prepared a country for you to enter and reveals to you how to enter it, gives you bread from heaven, teaches you the Way, how picking up across results in resurrection through God's great work, after He pulls you out of the water.
- Remembering God's great works, the Way.
- Hearing His voice.
- Moving forward to pick up your cross.
- Resurrecting into Christ.
- Coming near to God.
- Becoming blessings to the world.
These are the steps required to be saved in the New Covenant. To understand why The Gospel is Good News, we must compare New Covenant salvation with Old Covenant salvation:
- Becoming aliens in a life of serving interests of self for gains that perish
- Crying out to God for citizenship in a life of serving His interests for treasure that lasts
- God is not afraid to be called your God and has prepared a country for you to enter and reveals to you how to enter it, gives you bread from heaven, teaches you the Way, how picking up a cross results in resurrection through God's great work, after He pulls you out of the water.
- Remembering God's great works, the Way.
- Hearing His voice.
- Moving forward to pick up your cross.
- Resurrecting into temporal safety from God’s wrath
- Going to Paradise
- Going to heaven with Christ when He visited Paradise after the crucifixion.
The perfection, completion, mentioned in Matthew 19 is not available in the Old Covenant.
Matthew 19:
21Jesus said to him, “
If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”
This is also seen in the text where it says in Hebrews 4 that there is still a rest for some to enter. This means that even though Joshua led Israel into the Promised Land, it wasn’t the Rest God had promised.
Hebrews 4:
4For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: “AND GOD RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY FROM ALL HIS WORKS”;
5and again in this passage, “THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST.”
6Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience,
7He again fixes a certain day, “Today,” saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before,
“TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE,
DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS.”
8For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that.
9So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
10For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.
11Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.
We must understand that the problem the Gospel solves is a contaminated humanity. When Adam fell, humanity was able to know good from evil. Not knowing good from evil provides immunity to children, the insane and other people who are not compos mentis, mentally competent. The Bible calls it an absence of law, leading to sin not being counted as sin, where there is no law, there is no transgression. As soon as Adam could tell good from evil, his wrong actions were counted as sin. Those born into the humanity in Adam all could sin. And did.
When Christ died on the Cross, His blood cleansed humanity, creating a cleansed humanity, a New Man in Christ. Now those who are born again, have not forgotten God’s great works in saving, have eaten and drank from Christ, can enter the real Rest, the New Man:
Zechariah 3:
8‘Now listen, Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who are sitting in front of you—indeed they are men who are a symbol, for behold, I am going to bring in My servant the Branch.
9‘For behold, the stone that I have set before Joshua; on one stone are seven eyes. Behold, I will engrave an inscription on it,’ declares the LORD of hosts, ‘and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.
The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses
by Vern Sheridan Poythress
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We may return to the same conclusion that we reached before: the sacrifice of animals is inadequate to achieve final cleansing, nor can it cleanse anything more than the copies of heavenly things. Then who will bring the definitive sacrifice? A man must do it. A similar point is made indirectly in Num. 35:33-34: “Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it. Do not defile the land where you live and where I dwell, for I, the LORD, dwell among the Israelites.” When a man had shed blood, the man must die. But there is one exception, when the blood of the death of the high priest releases a manslaughterer to return home (Num. 35:25-28). The blood of the high priest has special value. In agreement with this principle, Zech. 3 uses all the symbolism of a defiled human high priest Joshua and then speaks mysteriously of the Branch in connection with which “I will remove the sin of this land in a single day” (Zech. 3:9).
The final atonement must be simultaneously like a sheep who dies and like the high priest who presents the sacrifice. This final high priest is described in Isa. 53 as the servant of the Lord. He presents his own body as a guilt offering (Isa. 53:10) and dies (Isa. 53:9). Like a sin offering where the body of the animal is carried outside the camp, he dies outside the camp (Heb. 13:11-14). Then he will “see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand” (Isa. 53:10). He will live again. As the high priest now living he goes through the rest of the steps in the sacrificial system. That is, he presents the blood of the sacrifice, his own blood (Heb. 9:12). The blood has already been poured out on the earth as he died, cleansing the ground itself.
Let’s summarize before studying how we can fail to benefit from the Covenant.
When the Israelites remember the great works done by God in saving, revealed through baptism, and have eaten from every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord, are strengthened to overcome the obstacles between them and the Promised Land, and form a different spirit of trusting not themselves but God, they do overcome and enter Rest, safety from wrath. Elizabeth and Zecharias were found righteous, were the remnant, had not bowed their knee to mammon and because of them Israel did not become extinct like Sodom and Gomorrah.
In the New Covenant, when the believers remember the great works done by God in saving, revealed through baptism, and have eaten from every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord, eaten the flesh and blood of Christ, are strengthened to overcome the obstacles between them and the Promised Land, they form a different spirit of trusting not themselves but God, are born again, they do overcome and enter Rest, safety from wrath as well as empowerment to become blessings to the world, because they are in the New Man IN Christ, which Joshua could not lead Israel into, because the blood of bulls and goats cannot cleanse humanity. Peter was found clean, because he had left everything to follow Christ. He had “bathed” had no fear of being saved from poverty, but some spots needed to be touched up, had to be saved from fear of losing his life. Which he was, when the Holy Spirit opened his eyes to the words Jesus had spoken about needing to pick up his cross and following his Master.
How we can fail to benefit from the Covenant
Israel failed to benefit from the Old Covenant when she was made a vessel of dishonor.
There are many nuances to this idea, and subtle differences in how God’s withdrawal of mercy to Israel here affected her. Let’s concentrate on the most obvious fall out of israel’s hardening.
A covenant existed between God and Abraham, in which the latter would receive a promise that the world would be blessed through his seed.
What Israel should have done was to wait for the promise to be fulfilled, just like Abraham should have waited for Isaac to be given. Instead Israel asked for the Law, the Sinaitic Covenant, which was added to the Abrahamic Covenant because of transgression. Israel then tried to make the Law the way through which the promise made to Abraham could be fulfilled. Paul calls this sin the sin of “seeking a righteousness of their own”. Because of this, the wrath of God came upon Israel and she was exiled. When Israel faced another Diaspora, the panicked citizens of Jerusalem, came searching for John to save them and he set them right, by making them seek “the righteousness of God”, perform the act of waiting for Christ, while using the Law properly, as a protector, guardian, baby sitter, until Christ was sent.
....to be continued.
