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Introduction to Personal Bible Study - Videos (2007)

4 short introductory video studies First recorded in 2007, posted to GodTube in 2010  These short videos were made nearly 14 years ago. ...

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

To Israel Pertain the Covenants (Not to the Body)

We need to be careful with the word "covenant." We must correctly apply it. Israel are the people of the covenants (plural). Grace is not a covenant and there is no covenant connected to the current age (Heb 8: 6-13).

Israel has a future connected to the earth, the land, the kingdom, the priesthood, and the covenants. To Israel pertain the covenants (Rom 9:3-5). They have a earthly hope after the cross ("the hope of Israel," [Acts 22:20] "To this hope our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God night and day, hope to attain," [Acts 26:7] etc.) connected to the land. The hope of the present age is the "far above the heavens... in heavenly places" (Eph 1:3; Eph 2:6; etc.). We do not have an earthly hope which is why we should shun earthly ordinances connected to the earth, the land, the covenants, the kingdom, the priesthood, etc.

The Lord's earthly ministry as King (Son of David) was to Israel alone (Matt 15:24) and he forbade his disciples to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom (not what we preach today) to anyone but to Jews. They were not to preach the Kingdom among the Gentiles or Samaritans (Matt 10: 5-7).

In the good news to the world in the Gospel of John, the Lord speaks to a Samaritan woman, but you will notice the disciples are not with him (John 4:27). As with the Canaanite Gentile woman in Matthew 15, he is still her Lord and God. But as the Gentile woman must take her place as a "little dog" who eats the scraps that fall from the children's/Master's table (Matt 15:26-28), so must the Samaritan woman recognize that "Salvation is of the Jews." The Jews were related, but distinct from the Samaritans in terms of the "promises made to the fathers" (Rom 15:8).


You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.


Note the pronouns. YOU (Samaritans), WE (Jews).

We see something similar in Luke 17 which sort of ties these ideas together. The Lord hears the cries of the lepers. Unlike the Canaanite Gentile woman who incorrectly referred to him as "Son of David" and was ignored (Matt 15:21-24) until she recognized him only as Lord (Matt 15:25), the lepers call on him as "Master." Note that Lord refers to the leper in Luke 17 as a "foreigner"

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. So Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner (stranger)?” (Greek: allogenḗs)

Same Greek word used in the Septuagint in Numbers:

A memorial to the children of Israel that no stranger might draw nigh, who is not of the seed of Aaron, to offer incense before the Lord; so he shall not be as Core and as they that conspired with him, as the Lord spoke to him by the hand of Moses. (Num 17:5)

We must distinguish the things for Israel connected to her promises in the land and the kingdom (promised since the foundation of the world) from the blessings and hope of the current present age (promised from before the foundation of the world). We distinguish between those hopes connected to the earth with the hope in the far above the heavens.