“The Case for Christ: - K/G: New/Old-Covenantal Blessings”

For the past few weeks, we have been concentrating on the ‘treasures, new and old’ of Mt 13:52.

And, as a way of review, in connection with His teachings about the kingdom of heaven, Jesus told His disciples to be like householders who bring forth out of the storehouse ‘treasures new and old’.

The ‘fresh’ and the ‘quickening’ combined with the ‘eternal’ and the ‘ancient’ would be vital to open the understanding of the Lord’s people in preparation for the establishment of the kingdom of God.

Then, you may remember, we saw how Jesus gave a concrete example of this confluence - the new with the old - in His own life.

He was equal with His Father from eternity past. The new was taking place even as He spoke, for He was thinking, acting, and doing out from His Father’s vantage point.

In His true humanity, He was submitting to Headship.  

And - this new Headship of His Father consumed Him with a heavenly-mindedness.

It was His heavenly-mindedness that was the foundation of the reciprocal interchange of communion and fellowship between Himself and His Father.

And, then, last week we noted Paul’s call as a ‘householder’, bringing forth from the storehouse, ‘treasures, new and old’.

He brought together this historic Jesus with the glorified, risen Christ.

He used the eternal truth of Christ’s equality with God together with the humility of the Servant, Jesus, that ushered Him to the Cross and to His resurrection.

And, Paul ultimately emphasized the Lordship of Jesus Christ as the living, active Person Who establishes His kingdom in and among God’s people.

Tonight, let us continue onward.

First, we will go back in the Old Testament to where this idea of ‘treasures, new and old’ was spoken by Jehovah in His reminders of the covenantal blessings to His people.

Then we will see how John carried God’s thought of the ‘old covenant blessing’ and brought it forth once again through the new.

We start with Lev 26:2-12, the passage given to encourage the Lord’s people.

In it, Jehovah rehearsed the conditions of His covenantal relationship with them.

In this passage of Lev 26, He gave a series of blessings, one of which is found in v 10. This is the one that is similar to the phraseology Jesus used in Matthew’s account.

It reads: ‘And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new.’

God promised them goods in such abundance that the supply would be inexhaustible, boundless.

The old supply must be ‘brought forth’, set aside, or given away, to make room for the new.

But in its material sense, this particular blessing of a goodly, overflowing harvest typified the storehouse of the Lord from which He would bring in the new blessing of Christ that would outstrip all else.

From Him, would come all spiritual blessings, including the promise of the tabernacle He would set among them. 

The crowning part of His promise was His own Person walking among them as their God and they as His people. 

v 11: ‘I will set my dwelling among you...I will establish My abode in your midst.’  

v 12: ‘I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be My people.’

He promised that His continual presence, the continual manifestation of Himself as their God and they His people, and the reciprocal communion between them would always 
be valid. 

He would walk among them with delight and satisfaction, just as a person walks in his garden, enjoying the beauties of it.

He would commune with them as friend does with friend: ‘I will have respect unto you’, He said in v 9.

And, in v 11, ‘I will not abhor you.’ 

Is it not a wonder of wonders that our God is a God Who enters into such covenants with His people - covenants in which He is always faithful in offering this close communion and fellowship!

‘I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall by My people.’

It is a blessing beyond our ability to be appropriately grateful - is it not? 

Of course, if we quickly go over to the book of Hebrews, we can see how His promises were realized.

Because all spiritual blessings are always binding and inherent in God, God brought them forward in His covenant of grace in Jesus.

His ‘perfect Tabernacle’, His dwelling place among men, came through Jesus Christ. (Heb 9:11)

His walk among them and His claim of being their God and 
they His people came through Jesus Christ. (Heb 8:10)

His attitude and His dealings with His people came in Jesus Christ, as He declared in Heb 8:12: ‘For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.’

These spiritual blessings of ‘old’, promised in Lev 26, then, typified the spiritual blessings of the ‘new’ that were to come in Christ.

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Now - let us go over to see how John presented the truth of God in Christ for the final implementation and realization of the covenant promises.

In 1 John, John was countering the false teachers among God’s people who were denying Christ’s true human existence in the historic Jesus.

Simply stated, ‘He could not possibly have been a man, for the Son of God could not be subject to suffering and death’ was their theory, generally.

John saw this as a definite denial of the redemptive activity of God.

So he concentrated on the fact of the historical Jesus as being the Christ, the Son of God. 

Yes - it was the Son of God Who came into the world, but He was the One Who was baptized in His manhood and received the Spirit in His manhood.

And He was the One Who, in His manhood, suffered and died and shed His blood to redeem mankind.

‘And it is the Spirit Who testifies...’ to that fact, because ‘...the Spirit is truth’, he told them.

Therefore, ‘The person who is a liar is the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ’, he told them in 1 Jn 2:22.

John knew that it was only through the Holy Spirit bearing witness in the heart that the ultimate truth can be seen aright.

How did he know that?

Jesus, in His manhood, had instructed them by saying, ‘...the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost, Whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you.’ (Jn 14:26)

‘...He shall testify of Me.’ (Jn 15:26)

‘When He is come, He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.’ (Jn 16:8)

And, in v 13, of that same chapter: ‘He will guide you into all truth: for He will not speak of Himself...He shall glorify Me.’

It was the Holy Spirit Who was the only One capable of bearing such a witness in the inner man. (1 Jn 3:24; 4:13; Acts 5:32)

In fact, every time the word of God is imparted, the Holy Spirit is present to confirm His Word, to bear witness of its truth.

Thus, it was clear to John that man could not receive the witness of that Spirit of and by himself.

There is nothing humanly available to any man through which he can understand the things of Christ.

As His incarnation can only be announced, and as His death and resurrection can only be announced, so, also, the redemptive act of God through Christ to preserve God’s covenantal blessings can only be announced.

Thus, John made clear that the Spirit, Who gives witness both inwardly and outwardly, is an influence in the historical life of Jesus and a continuing influence in the experience of God’s people and His Church.

But to further confirm his presentation, John also reminded his readers of God the Father’s witness in vs 9-10.

‘If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which He hath testified of His Son.’

‘He who believes on the Son of God has the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar: because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son.’

Notice - John did not limit the truth of Jesus Christ to just the witness of the Spirit.

He included the witness of God the Father as a true witness, as well.

It is God the Father’s witness that is greater than any confirmed witness of man.

Jesus spoke of that witness in Jn 5:36-37. Because of God’s very nature and His trustworthiness, His witness is the greater, ‘for He knows all things’. 
(1 John 3:20)
 
And the one who believes this testimony of Jesus receives the Father’s own witness in his heart: ‘Whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.’ (1 Jn 2:23)

That person has inherited two supreme blessings in one bestowal of faith: he has been given the deep assurance by God the Father and the Holy Spirit that he was right to trust in Christ.

This faith he was given is God’s own spiritual blessing to the believer in laying hold of the Father because of Christ.

They now walk hand in hand: He their God, and they, His people.

‘Thus, ‘believing’ in His Son becomes ‘receiving’ the record God gave of His Son that was contained in His covenantal blessings. 

Now - in v 10b, of 1 John 5, let us be very careful in our hearing for, here, we are facing a weighty and serious matter.

Notice: ‘Any one who does not believe [the witness borne by] God [about the Son] has made Him a liar.’

To receive the Son is to receive the Father: that is altogether too wonderful!

Yet, let us see the other side: to deny the Son is to disbelieve God the Father and His witness of His Son: it is to say that He is a liar.

The two best and the two most reliable Witnesses were given: neither one can be ignored nor set aside since Their’s is the final word!

To profess belief in God, yet reject God’s own witness of His Son is to call God a ‘liar’! 

Can we see how grave and pressing a matter this is: to reject the evidence of these divine Witnesses?

For, not only is it wanton disbelief, but it maligns the very being and character of God.

It boils down to this: if Jesus is not God’s own Son in the flesh, then God is no longer the truth: He can no longer be trusted.

And all of the covenantal promises given that point to His character and the character of His own Son were misleading.

And that hope of the ‘old’ carried forward to the ‘new’ that is given in Rev 21:3 would be of no account, either, then, when it says: ‘And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, ‘Behold the tabernacle of God is with men and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people and God Himself shall be with them and be their God.’

So bringing from God’s storehouse ‘treasures new and old’ would have no validity nor any effectiveness!

Thus, John could not let the false teachers say they believe in God, and reject God’s own testimony to His own Son at the same time.  

So - we thank God! The witness has been given, and the witness is true! It stands firm!

This is what Jehovah sought to impress upon His people in His covenantal reminders.

The one, pure, abiding joy for His people is to fellowship and commune with Him and He with them and to live in and under His abundance through Christ.    

He who is without the Son is without this life.

But he who has the Son has this life and walks with God the Father. 

In Him, God’s people have a goodly and abundant heritage.

It is a heritage that makes them capable of a larger and larger possession of a God Who keeps supplying more and more, Whose superabundance draws them into a closer and closer fellowship with Him.

Thus, the Old Testament blessings of communion and fellowship with God that He promised has developed onward to completing the present communion and fellowship of God in Christ.

The secret to this life, of course, is to set the affections on things above, a heavenly-mindedness that lets go of everything that is not Christ in us - to let those things just fly forth from our hearts like a kite, when its string breaks, soars and is lost forever to the elements! 

With this, I will close for tonight. But - let me encourage you, once again, to keep on taking hold of God through Christ.

Cleave to Him alone for He alone puts us into the possession that God wants for His people: ‘He that hath the Son hath the Father.’ 

Amen. Let us pray!