Thursday, December 31 –
You have come to the end of our
readings thru the New Testament in a Year.
First of all, I want to congratulate you for persevering in reading both
the scriptures and these meager attempts of mine to give some devotional
commentary. I have one reading that I’d
like you to do first, and then come back here to get a big picture view of “what
have we just read this year?” Please
read Luke 1:5 – 37.
Open to the front of your bible to the table of contents. You’ll notice immediately that the Bible is a
story in two “testaments” – we call them the Old Testament and the New Testament. Testament relates the word “covenant”, which
is an agreement made between two parties.
It can sometimes be “conditional” in that one party agrees to do
something “IF” the other party agrees to do something (think of a bank loan). Covenants can also be “unconditional”, where
the one party says “I will do” for the other party (think of a last will and
testament). God made several covenants in
the Old Testament with the nation of Israel, descendants of Abraham. The story of those covenants is the story of
the Old Testament. There are thirty-nine
books in the Old Testament in various genre – narrative, history, poetry (Psalms),
and prophecy. The latter part of the Old
Testament is largely made up of prophetic books. As we have just learned, prophecy has a “now”
and “not yet” dimension to its nature.
The last of the prophets was the final book in the Old Testament,
Malachi. Malachi promised that one day God
would send a prophet to “prepare the way for the Lord” (Malachi
3:1). Nothing happened for four hundred
years.
Four hundred years later God
sent his angel Gabriel to a Priest – Zechariah – and Gabriel told Zechariah that
in spite of their old age, his wife, Elizabeth was going to conceive a son and
they were to name him John. Then a few
months later God sent Gabriel back to tell a virgin girl, Mary, who was
betrothed to be married that she was going to conceive a child who they were to
name Jesus, which means “The LORD (Yahweh) is salvation”.
“And behold, you will conceive
in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will
be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will
give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house
of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And Mary said
to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel
answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most
High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called
holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:31-35).
Gabriel tells Mary much more than
she is going to conceive and deliver a baby named Jesus. He tells her that God is going to fulfill His
covenant promise and through Jesus establish His Kingdom upon the earth. Therefore, the New Testament is the story of the
Old Testament Covenant continued. The
Bible is a unified book telling a story of how God sought to redeem a fallen
world. It is in two parts. The first part – the Old Testament (Covenant)
– was written over a thousand years of time.
The second part – the New Testament (Covenant) – was written in less
than one hundred years. The Old Testament
anticipated the coming of a Messiah who would establish God’s Kingdom upon the
earth. The New Testament tells the story
of Jesus, the Messiah, who came and established God’s Kingdom upon the earth.
That is the reason why the first messages from both John the Baptist and Jesus were
“repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:12, 4:17; Mark 1:15). The promise of God to Israel was also a
promise to the nations – Immanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). As we read in the book of Revelation, God’s
plan was not hatched on the spur of the moment but was put into place “from
the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).
The Gospels, which are the first
four books, give us an account of Jesus’ life and ministry while on the earth –
it didn’t go well. He was, as Isaiah
prophesied, “despised and rejected by men” (Isaiah 53:3). Jesus came to the earth as “Immanuel” – “God with
us” – and as John reminded us, “He came to his own, and his own people did
not receive him” (John 1:11). The
Gospels tell the story of Jesus’ time on the earth. He pronounced the Kingdom of God has now come. He appointed twelve men to be “apostles” –
ones he would train and send out after his resurrection and ascension and Pentecost. He proved he was God-incarnate through his healings,
miracles, confrontations with the devil, and wisdom. In spite of all the proofs, he was rejected
by His people, especially the religious rulers.
We ask “why could they not see?”
The answer is that God predestined his Son’s work to be finalized on the
cross, in the grave, and through the resurrection. Again, the prophet Isaiah had predicted it
would happen –
“Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and
afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for
our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with
his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of
us all”
(Isaiah 53:4-6).
The story of Jesus began in the
Gospels, but doesn’t end there. Luke
writing the account of the early church reminds us that just because Jesus
ascended to heaven, he was not done with His work on earth – “I will build
my church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). Luke tells the story of the early church’s
world-wide growth and begins with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles
(“sent ones”) on the day of Pentecost (Acts 1 & 2), and spreads from
Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the world. Acts begins with the church in Jerusalem
where Peter is the obvious leader. It
introduces us to Saul (who becomes Paul), who at first is an enemy of the Christians,
until he meets Jesus on a journey to hunt down Christians, and is converted to
Christ. Peter leads the first Gentiles
to Christ (Acts 10), but it is Paul who carries the Gospel to the Gentiles. The inclusion of Gentiles brings no small opposition
among both Jews and some Jewish Christians who want to impose the Law of Moses
on the Gentile believers. Yet it was God’s
plan all along to bring the Gentile nations into his Kingdom. It is in this inclusion of Gentiles that the
great theme of God’s grace through faith is affirmed. At the Jerusalem council (Acts 15), the
church makes it clear that Jews and Gentiles both come to faith in Christ Jesus
the same way – by grace through faith in Christ alone –
“we believe that we will be
saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will” (Acts 15:11).
It is no small matter, and as
the churches grow in the Gentile lands it leads the Apostle Paul to write thirteen
letters to the churches (Epistles). He
writes to encourage, but also to remind them of sound doctrine. The errors that began to creep into the church
came from two main sources – Jewish opponents who wanted the Law of Moses to
rule the church, and Greek paganism that some sought to marry Greek philosophy with
the Christian message. The Epistles of
Paul (and the others) are inspired by God the Holy Spirit and give us all of
the necessary doctrines that the Church needed (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Paul’s letters to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians,
Corinthians, Colossians, Philippians are rich treasures of sound Christian doctrine. The letter to the Hebrews (author unknown) is
a masterpiece of wedding the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. Besides Paul, there are letters by James and
Jude (earthly brothers of Jesus) and Peter and John (the two leaders among the
disciples and Apostles). Altogether
there are twenty-seven books with the final book of Revelation as an Apocalyptic
vision Jesus showed to the Apostle John of how God intends to finish His redemption
plan.
This is the Bible’s big
picture. From the beginning, God was
working out His plan for redemption. God
told Abraham that he intended to “bless Abraham’s seed (descendants) so that
they will be a blessing to all of the earth” (Genesis 12:2-3; 17:1-8). Jesus came from Abraham’s descendants. It was much later – 1500 years later – that the
Apostle Paul would proclaim what God did to fulfill this promise in Jesus –
Know then that it is
those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing
that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to
Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then,
those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith”… for
in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of
you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew
nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for
you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are
Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:7-9, 26-29).
God unconditionally makes a
covenant in which God redeems those who come to Jesus. We are not redeemed because we are good – “as
it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one
seeks for God” (Romans 3:10-11). We
are redeemed (justified, saved) by the work of Jesus on the cross – his death
paid for our Sin.
“for all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift,
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation
by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:23-25).
I urge you to remember this,
for it is not religion or our works, or joining a church, or being good that
saves anyone – it is Christ alone (review Ephesians 2:1-10; Colossians 1:12-22;
2 Corinthians 5:17-19; Hebrews 9:11-15).
Read them again, and in fact, memorize them. They remind us that God’s plan for salvation
goes through His Son, and him alone. God
has given us His Holy Spirit that the character of Christ Jesus might begin to
change our inner being and outward behavior. Sanctification is the work of Christ-likeness that is
making us into a priesthood of all believers (review Romans 8:14-17; Galatians
5:17 – 25; Ephesians 4:25 – 32; 1 Thessalonians 5:23).
The New Testament ends with the
book of Revelation. We are reminded that
God has spoken and we are not to change anything he wrote. What we read was God fulfilling his vision
for a re-creation. How? It begins with a vision of Heaven – God is on
the throne, and Jesus is standing by Him “like a lamb that was slain”
(Revelation 5:5 – 6). We read the
story of Christ’s final conquering evil, the Devil, and his angels. Eternity is in full view as we closed the New
Testament. It doesn’t mean that we live
in that glory at present. We live with
evil, disease, tragedy, corruption, and a world that still does not know that “God
so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, and whoever believes in
him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
The New Testament is a love
story, but it cost the life of God’s son to remind us of His love.
Peace
P.S. Once again, thank you for coming along. Now that you’ve read it, I pray you’ll feel
more confident in reading it over and over again. - Elliott
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