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Many fallacies in doctrine stem from a false understanding of who God is, but a lot of them also come from a false understanding of who we are.
If we look at creation we can see how each part of creation, apart from humans, operates on instinct. God could have made humans who did the same thing… but he didn’t.
A clarity and understanding of the differences between the old and new covenant is important for us. The Bible tells us that God is the same yesterday today and forever… Yet Jesus brought change to the old covenant.
What is the distinction between the old and new covenant?
2 Corinthians 3:1-18 – What was written on the tables of stone? The ten commandments of course. God could have chosen any other thing to write those commandments on, but it is significant that he would chose to write them on stone.
Jeremiah 31:33 – The promise here is that God will bring a new covenant. One that won’t be written on tables of stone, but rather on the fleshly tables of the heart.
So what changed with the new covenant? The surface upon which it was written. The new covenant is a spirit that is written upon our hearts instead of carved out on tablets of stone.
The old covenant is one that has no emotion, the new covenant has emotion. Instead of “thou shall not kill,” Jesus tells us that we are to, “love our neighbor as ourselves.”
If your heart isn’t hard, you will be drawn by the love of Christ. How could a person show more love than hanging on a cross for the very people he is trying to show his love to.
Jesus wants to touch your heart, he wants to give us a new heart that feels and longs for the things of God.
Numbers 18:20-24, Mathew 23:23-24 – Tithing has changed in the new covenant. It isn’t something that is written in a table of stone, each person will express it in a different manner.
Exodus 20:8 – Sabbath keeping is basically tithing with our time, in the old covenant it was a law, set in stone. The consequences for breaking the law of God was death.
Mathew 12:1-14 – It’s never ok to do something wrong because someone else is doing wrong, but Jesus is saying here that David understood the law, he wasn’t living by the letter of the law but rather by the spirit.
The old covenant… written in stone because the peoples hearts were hard.
The new covenant… written in the soft flesh of our hearts. The finger of God touches and changes our hearts.
God doesn’t change. He simply wrote the new covenant on a different surface – our hearts.
Will we allow God to break our hard hearts and replace it with a heart of flesh? Will we then allow God to day by day write on our hearts and express his character in and through us to those around us?