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God’s Plan A
The Law of Moses was never God’s first choice, it was Plan B
This was His plan A.
Exodus 19:3-6
And Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”
Notice he said obey my voice and keep my covenant, not my commandments.
What covenant was God talking about? The covenant that he had made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was already in place and it was the very reason God had heard their cries in slavery and delivered them.
A covenant is a relational agreement between two parties where both sides bring benefits to the other. Both sides have obligations to fulfill in the agreement, it is conditional on both sides keeping their agreement. But with Abraham God initiated the covenant, it was not up to Abraham to do anything, it was entered into by a promise of what God would do. This is the same covenant he was asking to children of Israel to enter into and keep.
He also said, if they kept his covenant, they would be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, sound familiar?
1 Peter 2:9-10
But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.
This was the offer that was on the table for the nation of Israel when God called them to come to him at Mt. Sinai but they refused.
Exodus 20:18-21
Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. Then they said to Moses, “You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.”
And Moses said to the people, “Do not fear; for God has come to test you, and that His fear may be before you, so that you may not sin.” So the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.
The people rejected God’s offer, exit plan A!
This was plan B.
In rejecting the relational covenant and choosing instead to have a mediator (Moses and the priesthood) God then gave them the whole law. Since they would not listen to his voice and obey it they had to have a written law to follow.
Paul said in Galatians 3:19
What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed (Christ) should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.
What was the transgression? Refusing his first offer!
Then Paul says “Before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.” Galatians 3:23-25
So, Paul says that the law was added to guard us (enclose, shut in) and to tutor us until Christ would arrive but now, since Jesus has come, we are no longer under the tutor.
We are now back to plan A!
Now we hear his voice and obey. The only mediator is Jesus, not priests or pastors or anyone else, there is no one between us and our God. We enter into his covenant when we are in Christ, now the law is no longer necessary. We are a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
Going back to the law is to return to plan B, with one BIG exception, plan B is not available anymore. The written code is still there but the atonement provided for under the law is no longer available.
Hebrews 10:26
For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.
To sin willfully is to return to the Law, it is to reject the offering of Christ and to go back to a system that is obsolete and has been removed.
In the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD every single vestige of the sacrificial system of atonement was destroyed. Not just the temple but all the instruments that went along with it. AND the lineage of the Levitical priesthood that was required to prove the true priesthood. Regardless of what some people may think, there will never be a return to true Judaism. What is left is Rabbinical Judaism that has no atonement for sin.
That is why there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin, that age is over and has been for almost 2000 years.
Thank God we have a better covenant based on better promises.
Hebrews 10:12-14
But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
Blessings,
Jeff Martin
Moron Grace! Sorry, More On Grace!
1 Timothy 1:8-11
8 But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.
For those of you who insist on being under the law of Moses and (I cringe as I write this) that includes the Ten Commandments because they are part of the law, you must be willing to take your place among this list of offenders. If the law is not made for righteous people then you can’t achieve righteousness by keeping it, therefore you assign yourself to the place of the sinner when you measure yourself by the law and not according to God’s grace.
Paul said that the law is good……IF…….it is used lawfully. To use the law lawfully you apply it to the law breakers, along with the punishment prescribed by the law, and they include all those who rebel against God by refusing to be reconciled to Him through the blood of Jesus Christ. Therefore, those who have believed in faith and been reconciled to God have been excluded from the law. In fact, in Colossians 2:14 Paul says that the handwriting of requirements (which is the law) have been wiped out and removed from us because they were working against our relationship with God, so he took it out of our way and nailed it to the cross! If you have been exempt from a requirement you couldn’t keep, why would you insist on trying anyway? You would have to be a moron!
It blows me away to think of how easily we slip back into the thinking that we have to perform at a certain level to be okay with God, that if we just try really hard and do all the right things God will be happy with us. The worst thing is that most of our christian teaching will help send you back down that road. We are an achievement based society and without the law we think we don’t have a way to gauge our progress.
Here’s how it would go for most of us: Am I keeping the first commandment, no other gods before Him, check! Well, unless you count the fact that I put most of my time and energy into acquiring and maintaining a bunch of stuff instead of into my relationship with God. Okay, maybe half a check. Second commandment, no engraved images, no idols, check! I don’t worship idols, uh, unless you count money because I have to have it to buy all that stuff I don’t really need and I’ll do almost anything to get it, oh and there are images engraved into all our coins. Okay, uncheck. Third commandment, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, check! I would never do that as long as you don’t count all the OMG’s and other times I invoke the name of God with no honor or the respect that is due to Him. Okay, I think I’ll quit while I’m behind, before the hole gets any deeper.
That’s a hole you’ll never dig your way out of!
There is a way to determine if you are making progress, Paul calls it the “fruit of the Spirit”. Galatians 5:16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law…….22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self- control. Against such there is no law.
This is something that is produced out of a relationship with God, not by our own attempts to gain His favor. The fruit is produced by His character being infused into us through constant dependence on His goodness and grace and if you can see evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in your life then you are making progress. If not, don’t pull out the ten commandments and try harder, change your focus to Jesus and what he has done to remove that burden from you. Spend time just soaking in the freedom that is in Christ and enjoying the fact that you have already been accepted through grace. (Eph 1:6)
Does that mean that we can just do anything we want because we are under grace? Shut up! I’m sick and tired of that argument, it clearly says that we should walk in the Spirit and be led by the Spirit. If we are allowing the Holy Spirit of God to lead and guide our steps do you think He will lead us into sin? The very title of “holy” should give you a clue, uh no, he will lead us into righteousness. In fact, Jesus said he will lead us into all truth and bring to our remembrance every thing he taught and I don’t think he taught anyone to sin. Plus, the Holy Spirit has the ability to change our heart, something the law could never do. The law produces hard, rigid and unfeeling people, the Holy Spirit produces loving, kind, gentle and self-controlled people.
The law is a strict taskmaster because you have to keep every single requirement or you are guilty of being a lawbreaker, even if it is the least of the rules. The law requires perfection! And since we aren’t perfect we have to suffer the guilt and condemnation that accompany failure when under the law. So which is better for us, the law or the Holy Spirit? Which one would you rather be under? I know what my choice is because I’m not a moron!
My point is, if you have confessed Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and have been made righteous through the work of the cross, the law is not for you! Rejoice in the fact that you are under grace and you can let someone else worry about all the Thou shalt nots!
If you have never trusted Christ you will be judged by the law and each one will be found guilty under the law. The penalty? Death and an eternity in hell. Sorry, there is no way around it so the best thing to do is get your exemption while you still have the chance! It’s easy, just agree with God that you are a sinner and confess that you believe Jesus died for your sins and that God raised him from the dead and voilà, you are forgiven of your sins and exempt from the law.
Blessings,
Jeff
Sin Conscious?
The way we relate to God is determined by our perception of His acceptance of us. Our perception of acceptance is determined by our understanding of how God views us. Our understanding of how God views us is determined by the completeness of our knowledge and revelation of how God has dealt with our sin. When knowledge is combined with a revelation from the Holy Spirit of the comprehensiveness, the all encompassing totality of the work of the cross on our behalf, we will come to understand that our sin has been eliminated from the mind of God and we can now “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of our faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.” (Heb. 10:22)
Too often we are hindered in our relationship to God by our own conscience. We think that because of our past sins we are unworthy of God’s complete acceptance, that it isn’t possible to experience Him on this level of “full assurance” because we carry with us the guilt of past sin.
We have a conscience and we experience guilt in order to identify what is right and wrong, once the wrong has been righted we should no longer have guilt except that we have an enemy that is an “accuser” and he will accuse us to God and to ourselves. He uses guilt to interfere with our relationship to God. The law is Satan’s weapon of choice because if he can get us focused on rules and regulations and the guilt that goes with them we are no longer a threat. We become more sin conscious than God conscious!
What is our conscience? The Holy Spirit is not our conscience, although they can work together, the Holy Spirit always knows what is right. Our conscience is like a built in judge that considers what we understand to be right or wrong and makes a decision accordingly. Our conscience doesn’t make the rules, it only interprets them and urges us to do what is right. Sadly, our conscience is not the final decision maker, our God given self will does that. Our will can choose to override the conscience and decide to do something totally contrary to what we know to be right. That’s where the problem lies because when we go against our own conscience, not only are we probably acting against our overall best self interest but our conscience then kicks in the quilt feelings to cause us to rectify the situation. Guilt, if not dealt with, is a very powerful emotion that can to cause problems with our feelings of self worth and our value as a human being. This in turn leads to problems with relationships, especially our relationship to God.
Thank God that he has provided a solution to this problem of a guilty or “evil” conscience! Under the Old covenant the Jews were required to offer animal sacrifices to atone for their sins. God gave Moses exact guidelines as to what animals were to be used and how the sacrifice was to be carried out. There were different sacrifices for different offenses but once each year, on what the Jews call the Day of Atonement, the high priest entered the Holy of Holies to offer a sacrifice for himself and all of Israel for the sins committed the past year. In chapter nine the writer of Hebrews illustrates how this special sacrifice was symbolic of the sacrifice that Jesus made of His own body, not only for Israel, but for the whole human race. Just as any symbol doesn’t carry the same effectiveness of the thing it symbolizes, the sacrifices under the old covenant didn’t have the same effectiveness as the one sacrifice they symbolized.
Hebrews 9:13-14
13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
Wow! Does that mean that not only does the sin get taken care of but even the guilty feelings should go away? Absolutely! The sacrifice that Jesus made is so complete that it even takes away the guilt from our conscience, but only if we have a full knowledge of what he has done. That’s how good God is, not only does he want to have a relationship with you but he has removed every barrier to that relationship.
If there is any doubt about Jesus getting rid of our guilty feelings the writer of Hebrews says it again just a few verses later.
Hebrews 10:1-2
1 For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. 2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins.
No more consciousness of sin? Do we really fully grasp what that means? To be conscious means to be awake and aware, this is saying that not only does the guilt go away but we should not even be aware that the sin was there. The law, legalism, continually reminds us of how depraved we are and as long as we use rules and regulations to guide our behavior we will continuously be reminded of our lack of ability to keep the law. We will live under the guilt of the law all the time and even things we haven’t done yet will hinder us because we are so sin conscious that we are afraid of what we might do next!
Am I saying that we should just do what we want and not worry about it? Absolutely not! Sin is devastating to our lives and to those around us, it brings us to ruin and nullifies the purposes of God in our lives. So, if we shouldn’t be guided by the law but we shouldn’t sin, what are we supposed to do? Good question, I’m glad I asked! God has given us his Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us into what is right, he will never lead us astray and while the law has no power to change us, the Holy Spirit fills us with power.
Romans 8:13-14
13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
We have to address the issue of sin in our lives through the Holy Spirit and not by keeping rules. Paul says that only by the Spirit are we able to deal with the problems caused by our flesh! When our conscience is freed up from having to constantly make determinations of right and wrong based on the law we can focus on the goodness of God and our relationship to him without having to wonder if we are in good standing with him today. At this point, even how we deal with sin becomes a part of our worship because we are interacting with the Holy Spirit of God!
When we allow guilt from our past or future to interfere with our present lives were are in effect saying that what Jesus did wasn’t enough to do the job. His sacrifice wasn’t enough and I have to still feel guilty for what I’ve done and if I’m still guilty then God and others won’t accept me. That’s why His sacrifice under the new covenant went way past the external observances under the old and wiped out our sin totally, even cleansing our consciences from sin!
Blessings,
Jeff Martin
stronggrace.com 