Through the Bible with Les Feldick
LESSON 1 * PART 1 * BOOK 64
THE NEW COVENANT
The ministry still maintains a good supply of our Question and Answer book containing about eighty-eight questions. The answers to these questions come from our previous television programs. That little book answers many questions on many topics in the Scriptures and has helped many people already. We sell it for about what they cost us, so just be aware that we do have this available, and like I say, we’ve never had anybody feel that it was $11.00 wasted.
All right, now we’re going to get right back in where we left off in our last several programs. That is on the covenants that God has made starting with the Garden of Eden and on up through the ‘fall’ when He made another covenant with Adam. Then on up to the flood where He made the covenant that He would never again destroy the earth with water. Then we came up to the Abrahamic Covenant, and I just sort of skipped the surface on it, because I wanted to reserve most of that until we’d finished the others. So, hopefully, our last two programs today are going to be devoted entirely to the Abrahamic Covenant.
Now, we’ve got the covenants up here on the board, and again I’m going to review them quickly, if I may. We started back here in Genesis with the covenant that God made in the Garden of Eden and the circumstances and what Adam and Eve were to do, and that’s called “The Edenic Covenant.” Then, of course, when Adam sinned, we had another whole new relationship between God and the human race, and we call that the “Adamic Covenant.” That was followed of course by the flood and the “Noahic Covenant” that God made with Noah, and these now carry all the way up even to our own time. The Adamic Covenant still holds. The Noahic Covenant still holds. Then, as we said, beginning with Abraham and Moses and the promise of the land and King David and the “New Covenant,” which we’re going to talk about in our next half-hour, all are under the umbrella of the “Abrahamic Covenant.”
The rest of the world is still under the Adamic and the Noahic covenants. But what we want to emphasize is that all these following covenants were based on the covenant that God made with Abraham, and consequently they are applicable primarily to the Nation of Israel. Israel, of course, is still the core of all of God’s dealing with the human race.
You take Israel out of the picture and this whole Book falls apart. Even though there are a lot of people who oppose that line of teaching, by claiming that Israel disappeared after 70 AD, I will never give in to that line of reasoning, because then three-fourths of this Book just falls through the cracks and becomes worthless. So, we’re going to be finishing in the first half-hour today what I did not finish in the previous half-hour on the Davidic Covenant.
Abraham was given the covenant that out of him would come the Nation of Israel, and of course, if you’re going to deal with a nation of people, you have to have certain requirements. We have to have a geographical area of land for their homeland. You can’t just pull people out and call them a nation if they’re scattered all over the world. So, we have the “Palestinian Covenant.” And in order to control the religious system, we had the “Mosaic Covenant” of law, temple worship, and how to deal with your neighbor. We covered all that a few programs back. Then, of course, we come to the one that we are in now. The covenant that God made with David, the King of Israel, who brings Israel, you might say, out of the doldrums of antiquity and brings them to the glory of the Kingdom and followed by his son, Solomon.
The promises about the King and the Nation of Israel are under this “Davidic Covenant,” and the reason being that Christ comes from the lineage of David. He’s constantly referred to in Scripture as the ‘Son of David.’ Oh, He’s also the Son of Abraham because David follows Abraham, but we have primarily throughout Scripture the reference to Jesus Christ, the Son of David. It’s the fulfillment of those promises made to David that will bring about the earthly Kingdom that all Scripture is looking forward to.
All right, so let’s go back and review the last part of our previous program, and we were in Psalms 89, and let’s drop in at verse 20, where the writer says, this isn’t written by David by the way, but the writer says:
Psalms 89:20
“I have found David my servant; with my holy oil have I anointed him:” Now, who is really speaking through the writer? Well, God is. This is God speaking through the writer of this Psalm. He has found David, the King, his servant, and God is the one that anointed him as the King of Israel. All right, verse 21:
Psalms 89:21
“With whom my hand shall be established: mine arm also shall strengthen him.” In other words, God’s going to be in total control of this young man’s rule and reign over Israel.
Psalms 89:22-23
“The enemy shall not exact upon him; nor the son of wickedness afflict him. 23. And I will beat down his foes before his face, and plague them that hate him.” For sake of time, let’s jump up to verse 25.
Psalms 89:25
“I will set his hand also in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers.” Now remember, in my last program I said that we’ve got to be careful, could David do that? No. Now we’re leaping the centuries, the millennia in fact, to the Son of David, Jesus the Christ, the Messiah of Israel. So, you’ve got to watch the language. Could David put one foot in the Mediterranean and another one in the River Jordan or something like that? No. But symbolically Christ does, and so you go back and forth. Now verse 27, and this couldn’t be David, so it has to be the Son of David.
Psalms 89:27
“Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth.” Well, there’s only one that’s higher than even David and Solomon, so who would it be? The Son of David, the Son of God, the Christ. All right, I think we made note of all that in our previous program. Now verse 28, now it is back to King David himself.
Psalms 89:28-29
“My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant (this Davidic Covenant) shall stand fast with him. (Now, here comes the offspring of David) 29. His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne (the Throne of David in Jerusalem) as the days of heaven.” Then He comes down and He gives the possibilities.
Psalms 89:31-32
“If they break my statues, and keep not my commandments; 32. Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, (He will chastise, and chastisement usually came with invading armies.) and their iniquity with stripes.” All right, verse 33 – but in spite of Israel’s failure, in spite of the nation’s unbelief, will God give up on Israel? Never! Never! Never will God pull away from His covenant people. All right, so He says:
Psalms 89:33-34a
“Nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. 34. (Now, this is God speaking again.) My covenant will I not break,…” Is that what a lot of these people are saying? No. They’re saying God broke it, that after 70 AD the Jews disappeared from the scene. The Jews that we call Jews today aren’t Jews at all, according to their line of thinking. They’re impostors. Well, then that throws this Book into nothing but a trash bin of lies, because God says He would not break it. And I prefer to believe the Word of God. Now verse 35:
Psalms 89:35-37
“Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. (God cannot lie. He cannot go back on His word.) 36. His seed (David’s seed, the Nation of Israel) shall endure (How long?) for ever, (That’s eternity.) and his throne as the sun before me. 37. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven.” Now, that’s just God reaffirming these promises made through what we call the Davidic Covenant.
All right, let’s move on, because I want to finish up on David in this half-hour, if at all possible, even though we can’t exhaust it. Come over with me for a moment to Isaiah chapter 9, where, again, we have David connected to the King who’ll be ruling during the millennium, that is God the Son, Jesus of Nazareth. Here we have it so explicitly expressed. Isaiah chapter 9, verses you’re all acquainted with; we use them quite often.
Isaiah 9:6a
“For unto us a child is born, unto us (And again, I always emphasize, who are the ‘us’? Israel. We’re not talking to Gentiles back here. This is God dealing with Israel.) unto us a son is given: and the government (That is of this coming glorious earthly kingdom.) shall be upon his shoulder: (This One that is coming. This Son that was born in Israel.) and his name shall be called (here they come) Wonderful Counselor, The Mighty God, (the Creator of everything) The Everlasting Father,…” Now here, even though they are separate personalities, they act as one God.
All right, so here we even have God the Son referred to as the Father, like He did in John 14 to Philip, Jesus saith unto him, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen (Who?) the Father;…” All right, here we’ve got them lumped together the same way. It’s God the Son and He’s the Counselor, but He’s also the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Now, here comes the part that connects us with King David.
Isaiah 9:7a
“Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end,…” Now, even though the thousand years ends, remember it ends time as we know it, yet it slips right up into the eternal, as we saw, I think, in our last program, because in Revelation 21 what have we got? New heavens and a new earth.
So, the whole program just simply slips up out of the thousand years in time into eternity. I think we’re going to have that same separation between Israel and the Church for all eternity. I can see nothing else in Scripture. But here we’re dealing with the Jewish end of it. That earthly kingdom is going to slip right up into the New Earth of eternity, and it’s going to be:
Isaiah 9:7b
“…upon the throne of David, (see, there in Mount Zion in Jerusalem) and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.” Not just for a thousand years but “forever.” Now remember that I’m always reminding you that the word judge or judgment in this light always means a benevolent government, a good government.
All right, now let’s jump all the way up, if I may, to Matthew chapter 1. We’re also going to be looking at it in another program this afternoon when we deal with Abraham, but we want to see that, again, David is still kept in contact with this coming Messiah and His rule and reign over this earthly Kingdom. Here you can see immediately why I’m going to come back to this when we deal with Abraham.
Matthew 1:1
“The book of the generation of Jesus the Christ, the son of (Whom?) David, the son of Abraham.” But He’s also the Son of God. We can never take that away. But, all right, here is His connection, earthly kingdom-wise, with Abraham, the Father of the Jewish Nation, but also with King David, according to these covenants that He made with David. So, we have to understand that all of Scripture ties these concepts together.
Now for the few moments that we have left, time goes fast, let’s come all the way up to, well, I suppose I should stop at Luke chapter 1. Let’s stop there for a moment. I think we’ve got time for that. Luke chapter 1 and we’ve looked at these verses time and time again, where Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, is in the priesthood laboring in the Temple in Jerusalem. He had been stricken dumb, or unable to speak, at the onset of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist. All right, but now little John is born, and the Jews are all shook up, because they can recognize the miraculousness of it all. So, when they asked Elizabeth what his name would be, and she said John, that just didn’t swallow very well. So, they went and found Zacharias at the Temple complex and asked him. And on a writing tablet he said, “his name shall be John.” That’s all up there in verse 63. All right, he gets his voice back, and now let’s come down to verse 67.
Luke 1:67
“And his father (That is John the Baptist’s father.) was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying,” Now, I’ve got to emphasize that verse, otherwise this just sounds like Jewish wishful thinking. That’s what people would put on it. But it isn’t. This is the Spirit of God speaking these truths through the lips of the priest Zacharias. All right, now look what he says, and watch it carefully.
Luke 1:68
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; (We’re not talking about the whole human race here. We’re talking about the covenant people, Israel.) for he hath visited and redeemed his people,” Israel! We’re not talking about the rest of the world, yet.
Luke 1:69
“And hath raised up a horn of salvation for us (not for the whole world) in the house of his servant David;” Well, why is this all limited to David and Abraham? Because it’s the Covenant Promises! I’ve been stressing that in all the years I’ve been teaching. Why did Jesus not have anything to do with the Gentiles in His earthly ministry? They weren’t in the Covenants. Only the Covenant People were in a relationship with Jesus in His earthly ministry, with the two exceptions. So, this is what we have to understand – that He came in response to the Covenant Promises.
Maybe this is as good a place as any. I was wondering where in the afternoon I could bring it in and I may again, but that’s as far as I need to go in these for now. I may come back to it later, but come all the way up with me to Romans chapter 15. This is a verse that I use over and over, because here it’s from the pen of the Apostle Paul. Romans chapter 15, and this just blows everything away that says that Jesus ministered to the whole world. No, He did not become an object of faith to the whole world until He finished the work of the cross. Up until that time, it’s fulfillment of the Covenants to the nation of Israel.
Here in Roman 15 verse 8, the Apostle Paul is writing merely to give us some understanding that most of Christendom doesn’t have yet! It’s unbelievable! And they refuse. They don’t want to see it. But look what it says in verse 8.
Romans 15:8
“Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the Circumcision (Israel) for the truth of God, (It had to happen. It was in God’s eternal blueprint. And Jesus Christ, what was the purpose?) to confirm (or fulfill, bring to fruition) the promises made unto the fathers:” Well, where were the promises? In the Covenants!
All these Covenants, after we get past the Abrahamic Covenant, they’re all God dealing with Israel on promises and prophecy. There’s no way anybody can take them away or mix them up with the Gentile world. It flies in the face of this Book. So, Christ came to fulfill all these Covenant promises. But, now we know that Israel rejected them when they rejected Him. But God didn’t break the covenants, He didn’t cast the covenants aside, but He merely postponed them.
I’m again going to refer to that in a later program this afternoon. All right, now we’ve only got five minutes left, already. Come back with me quickly to Acts chapter 2, where we have almost the last, not totally, because Paul refers to him once or twice, but the best reference we have to David, now, is in Acts chapter 2, when Peter is preaching on the day of Pentecost. Of course, Peter is going to refer to Christ as the Son of David, but he’s going to use the Psalms to prove that this wasn’t David himself who had been reincarnated or anything like that, but that the Psalms was speaking of Jesus of Nazareth. See that? All right, Acts chapter 2, come down to verse 25, and this is Peter, remember, preaching on the day of Pentecost to that huge crowd of Jews. And he says:
Acts 2:25-27
“For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved: 26. Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: (Why? Because Christ would not end in the tomb, He’s going to be raised from that.) 27. Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, (Now, this is again Christ speaking through the prophet. He would not be left in hell, or Hades, or Sheol, which was, of course, the Paradise side, not the torment.) neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” He never decayed and began to go back to the dust of the earth like a normal human would have, because He was Divine. All right, then I’m going to come down to verse 29.
Acts 2:29
“Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day.” In fact, just a few weeks ago, some of you were with us, we were up to what is called the Tomb of David. I’m sure it’s not in the exact place that the ancient tomb was, but nevertheless it makes a good tourist attraction, and we all go there.
Acts 2:30
“Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, (Now, what are we talking about? The genealogy coming down through history that originated with Abraham first and then later with King David. That genealogy goes all the way up to the time of Christ Himself.) according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his (David’s) throne;”
Acts 2:31
“He (David) seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, (as a prophet) that his soul (That is Christ’s now, at His death, the three days and three nights he went down into Paradise, which was called Sheol or Hell or Hades, remember.) his soul was not left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption.” Why? Because He was of a Divine origin, even though born of the human mother.
Acts 2:32-34
“This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses. 33. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. 34. For David…” (The King David of a thousand years ago.) …is not ascended into the heavens: (But who is?) But he saith himself, The LORD said unto my Lord, (The Lord Himself. Jesus the Christ. God the Father said, back in Psalms 110 verse 1) Come sit at my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool.”
Now, to make sure that you understand. Who is all this directed to? Look at verse 36, and why in the world can’t people read it?
Acts 2:36a
“Therefore let (The whole race of Adam – is that what your Bible says? No, it doesn’t say that? What does it say?) all the house of Israel….” And not just two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, like some would try to tell you. But how many? All of them. All the tribes are under God’s dealing for end-time scenario. So Peter says, even on the day of Pentecost:
Acts 2:36
“Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, (Who came through the lineage of Abraham and David.) whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
All right, now let’s just recap in the seconds that are left. Through these Covenant Promises beginning with Abraham, God has been dealing with the Nation of Israel, bringing them all the way up to the appearance of their Messiah. They rejected Him. But God is still going to come back and fulfill all these covenant promises, as we’re going to see in our next program, when He brings about the next covenant on the board, the “New” covenant.