It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 1 Experiencing the New Covenant Program No. 1273 SPEAKER: JOHN BRADSHAW GUEST SPEAKER: SKIP MACCARTY This is It Is Written and I m John Bradshaw. Thanks for joining me today. Today on It Is Written, I m joined by a very special guest. We previously talked about the covenants the Old Covenant and the New Covenant but there s much to talk about on these subjects, such as how the Old and New Covenants impact our lives today and what they really stand for. My guest is Dr. Skip McCarty, who for over four decades has been a pastor, teacher and author. Skip, thanks very much for joining me today. Skip MacCarty: Thank you John. It s an honor to be here. John Bradshaw: I appreciate this opportunity to speak with you about the covenants. You have written extensively on this subject. You have engaged with theologians and scholars from across the Christian spectrum on the subject of the covenants. It s a relevant subject a very pertinent subject today because there is a lot of discussion among people who say, Well, I m a New Covenant Christian. I don t want to be an Old Covenant Christian. And I m sure that s right because the covenant God gave us today is the New Covenant. What was the first covenant God gave us? And before you answer that, what s a covenant, biblically? SM: The covenants in the Bible were different kinds. There were covenants between nations. There were covenants between individuals such as David and Jonathan. They had a covenant with each other. But the dominant covenants in the Bible are the covenants God made with human beings. And those covenants are all Godinitiated. They are promises God made to his people. JB: What is or what was the original covenant God made with the human family? SM: I am going to back up even before the human family. You can go back in time far enough where there was no creation and there was only God. And Christianity understands God in terms of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That s how we understand God. Therefore, we can say God is love for eternity past, because you have Father, Son and Holy Spirit relating to one another.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 2 Those love bonds, those commitments of loyalty to one another, each treating the other as they would want to be treated if they were in the other s place that s a covenant. It s that whole-soul commitment. John Murray, a Presbyterian scholar, called it a whole-souled commitment to the other. Once God began to bring creation into existence, the angels were just folded into that covenant. This was the same commitment that was made to them when he brought Adam and Eve into existence. That same commitment was made to them. That kind of a covenant expects the same kind of commitment to be returned. JB: The covenant represents God s total commitment to the person He is making a covenant with. SM: Absolutely. God does expect a whole-souled commitment back to Him. There is no question about that. No, it s not a whole list of you do this and this and this and this and this, and then I ll be your God. JB: Yet many people see it that way. SM: Yeah, well, that s a mistake. It was not that way with the angels. It was not that way with the Father, Son or Holy Spirit. And when Adam and Eve were brought into existence, God made that same commitment to them. Now, He did give them a way through which they could express their trust in Him, and that was the Tree in the garden. And they showed their distrust of Him, which is essentially what that was. It was distrusting Him, but every covenant from that point on has been God-reaffirming. Once Adam and Eve sinned, the everlasting covenant from eternity past was adapted into a Covenant of Grace. The Covenant of Grace is the bridge between Eden lost and Eden restored. Everything Adam lost, the Covenant of Grace, the Everlasting Gospel the book of Revelation calls it the Everlasting Gospel is that Covenant of Grace. It s God s initiative to restore to us everything we ve lost. So those are the four promises we talked about last time I came here, the New Covenant. God will write His law in our hearts. He ll be our God, and we ll be His people. Eventually, everyone is going to know Him. And He ll forgive us of our sins. That comes into that. JB: Important to discuss that, because many people have the idea that the Old Covenant was the Ten Commandments obey this and live, and the New Covenant is believe in Jesus and be saved by grace.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 3 You mentioned something that isn t often spoken of in discussions of the covenants. So we want to accurately understand what the covenants are, and you ve expressed them as being God s expression of His commitment to His people, and as we participate in that covenant, it s our expression of our commitment back to Him. But you talked about an Everlasting Covenant. And now, where did that come from and what is that? SM: The Everlasting Covenant came from God, who is everlasting the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That s where it originated: in the commitments they made to one another, and then they folded the angelic host and the human race into that commitment. I am going to turn to one passage, and that s Isaiah 24:5. Would you please read it for us? JB: The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants, because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. SM: Isn t that interesting? This is the earth. This is not just a little group of people here or there. It s not just a nation. It s not just Israel. The everlasting covenant involves everyone on the earth. And the covenants God made with his people for instance, the covenant He made at Sinai He was just grooming them to share with the world the knowledge of the everlasting covenant of God s commitment to everyone. That way they d know that they needed to put their trust in Him, too, and have this same experience with God to have restored to them everything that Adam lost on their behalf. In Hebrews 13, this is the first time that the everlasting covenant is associated directly with Jesus in Hebrews 13:20, 21. Why don t you read that for us? JB: Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will SM: Exactly. Isaiah said there is an everlasting covenant the whole earth has broken. In Hebrews, it says that when Jesus died, it was His blood of the Everlasting Covenant. He atoned for the sins of the whole world and gave His life for them so they could be restored to wholeness again. JB: Where do we find talk of the Old Covenant in the Bible? SM: The term Old Covenant first shows up in the New Testament. It doesn t occur anywhere in the Old Testament. The term New Covenant does in Jeremiah after the exile, when they are in Babylon for 70 years. And in Jeremiah 31, God said, I m going to make a New Covenant with you.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 4 JB: It s worthwhile reading. Can I look at that? It starts in verse 31 and continues through 34. SM: Yes (Jeremiah 31: 31-34): JB: Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. SM: This is the new expression of New Covenant. JB: And it s in the Old Testament. SM: It s in the Old Testament and it s talking about how God is renewing his covenant with His people with Israel that was made at Sinai. These same promises occur in the Sinai Covenant, and they occur all throughout the Old Testament. The New Covenant is all the way throughout the Old Testament. JB: Which means, then, that the Old Covenant isn t the Old Testament, and the New Covenant isn t the New Testament, which is commonly talked about. SM: Yes. There s an element of truth to that. Once Jesus came, there was something so significant about that, and the book of Hebrews does talk about the whole period before Jesus came as being Old Covenant all the sacrifices and all the temple rituals and so forth. That was Old Covenant. When Jesus came, the ritual changed. We still have ceremonies. We still have ceremonial law. Our ceremonies are baptism and the Lord s Supper. There are still ceremonial laws, but that changed because all of those other ceremonies were looking forward to Jesus coming. The ceremonies we now have look back on His coming. The moral law didn t change. It is still the same moral standard; it is still the same standard for sin. But the ceremonies changed. In that sense, you do have a historical Old and New Covenant. But that s not what the New Testament is focusing on. When the New Testament talks about the two covenants, it s talking about something vastly different. JB: We are going to have to talk about that in just a moment. We ll be back with more on the covenants.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 5 EVERY WORD DEVOTIONAL In 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, Paul tells his readers that the day of the return of Jesus is going to come for many people like a thief in the night. They re not going to be ready, even though they ve have the same opportunities as everybody else to be ready. And with the thought of Jesus return in the center of the picture, Paul adds in verse 6 (1 Thessalonians 5:6): Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. There s nothing more important than being ready to meet Jesus when He comes back, and people ought to watch for that day: by being alert to the signs of the times and living in a way that suggests you are serious about meeting Jesus. If ever there was a time to be living with eternity in mind, this is definitely it. Why? Because Jesus is coming back soon. RETURN TO PROGRAM JB: This is It Is Written and I m John Bradshaw. My guest today is Dr. Skip McCarty, and we are talking about the covenants the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. And Skip, just a moment ago, you mentioned something that is going to take our conversation a little bit deeper. There is a historical element to the covenants, and an experiential element to the covenants. SM: Correct. JB: There was an Old Covenant and there is a New Covenant. Jesus stood between the two covenants historically, but what do you mean when you say there is an experiential component? SM: In the writings of Paul, when he is talking about the covenants, he is talking about something that God himself hinted at when he gave the New Covenant in the book of Hebrews. When he gave the New Covenant in Hebrews 8, He said it wasn t going to be like the covenant He made with those He brought out of Egypt, because they weren t faithful to His covenant. That was the difference. It was a matter of faithfulness. So God Himself said, What s going to be different about the New Covenant is that I m expecting a different response than I got at Sinai. At Sinai, people said, We ll do it all; we ll do everything you said, but they didn t. They immediately made a golden calf. JB: Sure.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 6 SM: God says, I want a different response from this generation, and so what He s talking about here is how people respond to the Gospel message. Jesus said in John 3:6: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. You must be born again, so if we stay in the flesh, that can be a rebellious response to God or a religious response to God. Religious response is where we just do what we think is right and we think that s going to put God in our debt that we ll merit eternal life. That s all Old Covenant. And the other side, being born of the Spirit being born according to the Spirit is New Covenant. JB: So what you re saying is, there s a historical component to the covenants. Jesus stood between the two covenants historically, but there is an experiential component where somebody living in this very modern age can have a very Old Covenant experience. SM: That s what He s warning against. JB: Tell me how a person in practical terms today can have an Old Covenant experience. SM: Okay. JB: You might be living under the Old Covenant even if you attend a church that says New Covenant Church right on the sign. SM: That s true. I ve knocked on many doors in my life just talking to people about the Gospel, and somebody will say something like, Well, I don t really need what you re offering because I think I live a good life. I live a good enough life. If there s an afterlife, I think I ll be okay. It s the law of karma. If I don t get it all in this life, I m gonna get it in the next life either good or bad. The Gospel isn t karma. The Gospel is total faith in Jesus Christ. His blood of the Everlasting Covenant is what washes away my sins. His promise to write His law on my heart and mind is what empowers me to live a godly life, and that s a process. If I think going to church is going to help get me salvation just going to church that s not going to do it. I have to have total dependence on the grace of Jesus, Christ s sacrifice for me and His promise to change my life. That s New Covenant. JB: So secular people, without realizing it, can have an Old Covenant attitude. SM: Exactly.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 7 JB: And modern New Testament churchgoing Christians can be under the Old Covenant. SM: Yes. John, we are born Old Covenant. Every human being is born in the Old Covenant. We have to be converted to become New Covenant people. That s what Paul has in mind here. Those who are born of the flesh are Old Covenant. That s what he calls Old Covenant. Those who are born of the Spirit are New Covenant. So He is saying that if you are Old Covenant, you will not inherit eternal life. So John, if the Old Covenant is the covenant God made with the people at Sinai, that would be saying that anyone who is faithful to that covenant, as God asked them to be, could not have everlasting life. That s why we absolutely, positively know that it s not talking about any covenant He had made previously. It s talking about their response an illegitimate response, a legalistic or a rebellious response to the Gospel. That s totally what the Old Covenant is, in Paul s thinking. JB: That s serious, isn t it? Because there are Christians today who based on their attitude toward the Gospel might be Old Covenant Christians because of the experience they are having rather than New Covenant Christians because they are missing something vital with Jesus Christ. SM: That s true. And it has nothing to do with, Oh, I believe in the Ten Commandments, therefore you must be Old Covenant. It has nothing to do with that. It s how we are responding to God in faith. Or if I m responding to God and I say, I put faith in God but I don t want anything to do with the transformation of my life. The New Covenant is, I m going to write my law in your hearts. I am going to forgive you but I am going to write my law in your hearts as well. It s a total submission to God to do everything He wants to do for us in this life. JB: And entering into the transformation He wants to bring into our lives. SM: Exactly. JB: Let s pick up more on that in just a minute. RETURN TO PROGRAM I m glad you ve joined me today on It Is Written. My guest is Skip McCarty, and our discussion is centering on the covenants: the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. And Skip, what we find in the Bible is that God wants everybody to have a New Covenant experience. SM: Amen. Old Testament, New Testament, it doesn t matter when people lived He wants them to have a New Covenant experience. It s the only way for salvation.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 8 JB: So somebody living in the Old Testament it was God s will that that person have a New Covenant experience. SM: All those people in Hebrews 11 they didn t have the Old Covenant experience that Paul is talking about in Galatians 4. They had a New Covenant experience. JB: Tell me how somebody living in the Old Covenant times could have an Old Covenant experience as opposed to a New Covenant experience. SM: Oh easy. In Isaiah 1, God is saying, You perform the sacrifices, you go to the festivals, but you are oppressing people. He says, I hate your sacrifices. You need to live a godly life. In other words, they weren t fully embracing the promise God had given them to transform their hearts. It s very clear God wanted love first. Love me and keep my commandments. And love for God and love for others was always at the top of the list of His Commandments. It always was. And so God says, You re not loving people, so the ritual means nothing to me. So people who say, I ll cheat people in business, I ll get as rich as I can and oppress the poor, yet I ll do the sacrifices and I ll perform the rituals. To them, God says, No, that s not what it s about. That is Old Covenant. JB: New Covenant, it seems very clear, involves a transformation in one s life. SM: Absolutely. JB: God said, If you love me, I ll write my law in your hearts. SM: Exactly. JB: Now, would you say that the law he is talking about is the Ten Commandments? Can we be certain about that? SM: It s at least the Ten Commandments. That s the law that God is writing on our hearts. JB: And saying that a person is going to keep the Ten Commandments is not legalism. SM: It can be legalism if that is all they think about the Ten Commandments and obeying those in order to get into Heaven. That can be legalism. But a person who sincerely seeks God, who trusts God to do the work in them they can t do for themselves to make them godly people, loving people, and obedient to His Commandments, of course. But the Commandments become promises. Once a person becomes a believer and converted, they are Ten Promises.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 9 JB: And that s the New Covenant experience. SM: Yes, it is. JB: You know, there s another passage that I have been asked about frequently that deals with this. It s found in 2 Corinthians 3. Would you mind looking at that with me? SM: Sure. JB: What do we say about this passage? In fact, you know, it has a little heading right here in this Bible: Glory of the New Covenant. SM: In 2 Corinthians 3, it s very much like his letter to the Galatians in his discussion of the two covenants. So we bring that mindset here and we find exactly the same thing going on here, because what he does here is he contrasts the New Covenant and another covenant he has in mind. He says we re ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter. He calls the other the letter that many people refer to the Sinai Covenant. You have parallel columns again, where he has the Old Covenant and he says the Old Covenant is the letter and the New Covenant is the Spirit. The Old Covenant is written on stone and the New Covenant is written on the heart. The Old Covenant is condemnation and death. The New Covenant is righteousness and life. And when you go down those columns, you find out if you just have the items he puts in the Old Covenant, you have an unsaved person. It s talking about an unconverted person. So what you have is the Old Covenant again, and an unbelieving response to the Gospel a rejection of it or a legalistic response to it. The New Covenant is a faith-embrace of the Gospel, allowing God to do everything in us He wants to do, and He is going to change us from one degree of glory to the other by the Spirit who does this work in us. That s New Covenant. No matter when a person lived, they had to have that experience and that is the New Covenant. JB: So the covenants that God made with his people back in Old Testament times were Gospel-revealing covenants. SM: Exactly. Each one encapsulated the Gospel to be shared with the people of the world around them. It was the same Gospel throughout. Paul said in Galatians 1, There s one Gospel. There is no other Gospel. If anybody preaches a different gospel, Paul said, Let him be accursed. JB: God wants people today to have New Covenant experience with Him. SM: Exactly.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 10 JB: Explain to somebody right now how they can have a New Covenant experience with God what that is going to look like and what it will do for them. SM: Okay. Every human being, John, no matter who they are, is going to have times in their life when they are under conviction by God. You can t get away from that, no matter where you are whether you have even heard of Jesus or not. You are going to come under conviction by the Spirit of God that there is something wrong, and you need something more. People can try to make a transformation in their life, but it s futile to make that ultimate change on their own change that God is asking us to make. And so they come to the place where they say, God, help me! And God comes into the picture. There s conversion. The Spirit of God brings a new life into them and the Bible calls that the new birth. That s the New Covenant experience, and then it s a matter of continuing to trust God trust His promises, trust those promises. God says, I m going to write my law in your mind. I m going to forgive you. Don t keep bringing up the past. Don t keep worrying about the past. I am going to forgive you for that. Let s go on from here. I m going to do a new thing in your life and I am going to be your God, and you are going to be my child even when things get rough for you when you fall. I m still your God; you re still my child. We are going to get through this together. The New Covenant is God promising people He is going to do for them what they can t do, and He is going to save them. It s His promise. I am guaranteeing you, I will save you. Just don t run away from me. Hang on to me. I am going to save you. I am going to make your life more meaningful here than you have ever dreamed on this earth. JB: Allowing God to be in our life that which He wants to be. SM: Yes. JB: To make us what He wants us to be. SM: Yes. JB: The discussion we often get into is: With the New Covenant, you don t keep the Commandments, and in the Old Covenant, you do keep the commandments. It s really a smokescreen, isn t it? SM: It s not in the New Testament. It doesn t exist there. That kind of thinking does not exist there. When Paul is talking about the Old Covenant, he is not talking about the covenant God made with His people at Sinai particularly the moral laws God gave his people at Sinai.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 11 Paul himself said that if it wasn t for the 10th Commandment, Thou shall not covet, he would not even know he was a sinner. He thought he was living a perfect life. He says that in Philippians 3. Before the law, I was faultless. There is no argument in the New Testament against the commandments of God, against the Ten Commandments. Absolutely not. It s only against this rebellious attitude toward them. Once you understand that that s what the Old Covenant is about it s about a faulty response to God, an unbelieving response or a legalistic response to God. The New Covenant is a faith response to God, totally trusting His grace. It s our response to the law that s a perversion of the law that He has in mind. If he is talking negatively about it, then that s what he is talking about. He s not talking about a faith response to God s law. See it as now the promise of God. JB: We ve covered some ground today. I m thankful to you for taking the time, and I want to encourage you, friend, to know that God wants you to have a New Covenant experience when you will come to God by faith and say, Here I am. Take me and do whatever it is you want to do in my life. You are entering into a New Covenant experience with God. You see, when God enters your life and writes His law in your heart, and when Jesus begins to live His life in you, what once might have seemed impossible to you becomes possible. You love the things you used to hate and maybe hate some things you used to love, and you find your life trending in the very direction that God wants it to go. Friend, there is only one thing, and that is to enter into a New Covenant experience with Jesus. Let Him write His law in your heart. Respond to Him by saying as Jesus said to his Father, Not my will, but your will be done. When you say to Jesus, Let me have a New Covenant experience with you, your life is going to bloom, your joy will be full, and you ll be walking with Jesus the way He wants you to walk, and you can look forward with great certainty to the wonderful day when Jesus comes to take you home. Have you had a New Covenant experience? It s the experience that God wants you to have. Dr. McCarty, thanks for making this clear for us today. I m just so thankful you ve taken the time. Friend, I want to pray for you, that you can have that experience with Jesus that He wants you to have an experience that is vital and vibrant, that even when there are times of challenges, God can get you through an experience where the Lord s will is done and you are made a new creature in Christ. Let s pray for that now.
It Is Written Script 1273 Experiencing the New Covenant Page 12 PRAYER Father in Heaven, thank you for giving us a New Covenant experience, where we can open up our hearts to you and allow you to be the God in our life, and allow Jesus to work in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure. May we not choose to be Old Covenant Christians trusting our own works, doing our own thing in order to secure salvation. But may we trust fully in you. Give us the grace today to lean on Jesus and expect His will to be done. This we pray, thanking you in Jesus name, Amen. It Is Written Box O Thousand Oaks, CA 91359 USA Tel: (805) 433-0210 Fax: (805) 433-0218 www.itiswritten.com