-2009 North American Bible Conference, January 3rd, 2010God’s Plan as Determined within the Blood of the Everlasting CovenantNow 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, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.  Hebrews 13:20-21 We have now been having fellowship together for a very long time, and through studying the Bible in the course of that fellowship, we have been able to distinguish clearly between the many people who believe. Also, we have continued in fellowship together as we strive not to deviate from the truth of “the blood of the everlasting covenant” of which the Bible speaks, and in the midst of that fellowship, we have had many struggles. Yet do you really know precisely what this salvation is?this salvation that each of us has received in his or her heart, this salvation of the spirit that we strive to keep and protect through the fellowship that we have? You have probably listened to many sermons, but I am curious to know whether you are able to discern clearly the true meaning of the words of the Bible. Hebrews chapter 13 tells us that God raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead through the blood of the everlasting covenant. As we read the Bible, we talk about the everlasting sacrifice and the blood of the everlasting covenant. But do you really know what that is? If the blood of the everlasting covenant which flowed through the body of Jesus has come to your heart and become yours, if God’s absolute word which has been given to us within the law of life has truly been planted in your heart, this truth cannot be changed or reversed, and neither can it become anything else later. Nevertheless, there are many people who try to confuse our thoughts about the Jesus that we know through the Bible and even try to completely repudiate the fact that we were born again through God’s word. There are many people who deny the power and glory of what has been planted in our hearts. Let’s turn to Luke chapter 22 and read from verse 15. Then He said to them, ‘With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.’ Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, ‘Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’ And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you. But behold, the hand of My betrayer is with Me on the table.’  Luke 22:15-21 We do not need to force an interpretation of this passage, but we do need to consider carefully what it means. When we take a careful look at what Jesus said to His disciples as He gave them the cup, we find that His words seem to contain several meanings. Jesus said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood.” In Matthew’s Gospel, He said, “This is My blood of the new covenant” (26:28). As we find in the Old Testament and the law, the Levite priests took the blood of the sacrificial animals into the Most Holy Place where they offered it up before God. This signifies that Jesus came to the world to give His blood, the blood of the Messiah, for whom the law had been waiting and of whom it testified, for the sake of mankind, languishing in sin. This is the gospel that we know, and through the words of this gospel our hearts were changed. The Bible, however, talks about “the new covenant,”  Nevertheless, this new covenant is not something altogether different. The Old Testament also bore witness of this new covenant. The truth which was accomplished through the body of Jesus cannot be scattered or divided in two. Everything has been perfected in His blood. The new covenant is not something that God established when Jesus was born without having made any previous plans. It was definitely not that God had had no thought or plan and just decided, when the time seemed right, that nothing else was working so He would have to establish a new covenant. We need to know precisely what the Bible is saying. The author of the book of Hebrews testified of the new covenant, referring to it as “the blood of the everlasting covenant.” We say that we have been born again by the blood of Jesus, or that we have been born again through the worlds of the Bible. Yet, when faith in the great power of the blood of the everlasting covenant is lacking, we tend to seek other things. As a result, various ridiculous teachings are created, telling people, “You need to have a second experience,” or, “You need to realize something more,” or, “You have to go through tribulations.” This is because they do not believe in the tremendous power of salvation that comes from God. This may even be the case with people who are saved. Let’s turn to Jeremiah chapter 31. 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. Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances of the moon and stars for a light by night, who disturbs the sea, and its waves roar (The Lord of hosts is His name): if those ordinances depart from before Me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever. Thus says the Lord: If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the Lord.  Jeremiah 31:31-37 Here in verse 31 it says, “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel.” I do not know how the Israelites received these words in Old Testament times, but the Old Testament clearly predicts that something new was to come. Also, the author of the letter to the Hebrews used these words. For if He were on earth, He would not be a priest, since there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law; who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things …  Hebrews 8:4-5 It says here, “Who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” These “heavenly things” are a reference to the way in which the Jews served God, based on the law, and all of these things were copies and shadows of the things that are in God’s world, a world that is beyond time and space. This is not the world to which Ecclesiastes refers as being “under the sun,” (1-3) that is, not the world in which man exists, within the bounds of time and space; this is the place where God dwells, the tremendous world to which Jesus ascended and where He now is. This is not a place that only exists in our imaginations and neither is it just a spiritual place; it is a place that actually exists. It is just that we cannot go there right now. Also, the Bible tells us that everything in that place is the original of the things to be found on this earth.Originally, God possessed the law of life, and in the heart of God the Father there was a plan to bring about a partner in love for Himself in this world. Then, God the Son put this plan into practice. In the meantime, however, man sinned, and so God established the nation by the name of Israel and determined that His Son would be born into the world in the midst of this nation. And God brought the law into play in order to reveal to the Israelites His tremendous law of life and its secret. Then, after the law was given, Jesus Christ was born into this world through the history of Israel and shed His blood on the cross, and that blood became the driving force in spreading throughout the world the great mystery of life which existed in eternity and by which God raised Jesus from the dead. This is also the significance of the blood of the everlasting covenant. If the tremendous blood of the covenant that flowed through Jesus’ body begins to seem trivial to you and you become weak at heart and you feel that you have to realize something or do something more, it is as it says in the Bible, “As a dog returns to his own vomit” (Proverbs 26:11). Then you will find you are always looking for something more. But this is not as it should be. If this were the case, how could the verse that says, “Through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10) be realized within us? We have all received the same faith through the blood of the covenant that Jesus established on the cross. The words, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:5-6) are realized first in the hearts of each one of us individually, and we find assurance of faith as this mystery is revealed through the Church. If this were not the case, the doctrine and teachings that we believe would be shaken. What do we believe? The moment the seed of God’s word enters the heart of an individual through the words of the Bible, everything is resolved all at once, and, before God, that individual is hidden within the life of Jesus Christ. As you are reading the Bible, you may become confused. You may think, “The Bible says, ‘who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things,’ but in that case what was there before the law?” but it is not necessary to attempt to interpret the Bible in this way. There is a verse in the Bible that says, “The last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen” (Matthew 20:16). From this we can see that there is a certain vein that flows through the entire Bible. If we first look at the account of Cain and Abel in the book of Genesis, we find that Abel slaughtered a lamb and offered it as a sacrifice to God while Cain offered to God some of the produce of his farming. At that time, God was pleased with Abel’s offering, but He was not pleased with Cain’s offering. This testifies of Jesus who offered to God the sacrifice that was in accordance with the will of God the Father. Also, Cain’s killing of his younger brother Abel is an Old Testament reference to the way in which Jesus came to this world in order to accomplish the tremendous plan of God, but His brethren, that is, the Israelites, did not recognize Him and they had Him crucified. After Abel died, God gave Adam a son who looked exactly like him in place of Abel. That son’s name was Seth. The Bible says, “Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth” (Genesis 5:3). We can see the image of Abel as that of Jesus who was born into this world, while the image of Seth can be seen as Jesus when God raised Him from the dead through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Thus these men present images of the visible God. When Jesus was alive in the flesh and His disciples said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us,” Jesus replied, “Have I been with you so long, and yet how can you say show us the Father?” (see John 14:8-9). As it is recorded in the Bible and as the words of the Bible hear witness, the image of the One who came to this world, was persecuted, crucified and then raised from the dead in an eternal body is hidden within the image of Seth who was born in the image of his father, Adam. Such is the tremendous power of the Old Testament. Let’s take a look at what happened before this. When Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden of Eden, God made tunics of skin and clothed them in them. The moment Adam disobeyed God and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, man became a sinner, so blood was needed in order to save man from this situation. So God Himself slaughtered and animal and made tunics from the skins with which He clothed them. This was the first sacrificial offering in the history of mankind. The blood is not actually referred to and only the tunics of skin are mentioned, but the blood is still there, hidden within this incident. This is the great secret that was in God’s heart and has gradually been revealed within the course of history. Time passed and then Noah offered a sacrifice to God (see Genesis chapter 8). Then God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans and led him to the land of Canaan, where He tested him, telling him to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice (see Genesis chapter 22). Even before Israel emerged as a nation in the world, God showed us the secret behind the blood through His actions and through events, beginning with Adam, the first sinner. Through the Bible, little by little, God has been showing His decision and intention to plant into our hearts eternal life, which is not of this world but exists in God and belongs to God. Then, when the time was right, God established a nation by the name of Israel and gave them the law through which He demonstrated the offering of blood and the work of this blood. All the blood that features in incidents from the very smallest to major historical events bear witness to the blood that would appear at one point in history. The law of life, which is much greater than all of the vast extent of incidents in the Old Testament all together, was in God’s heart. That law of life was decided upon in His heart for the sake of all of mankind, who have been born since the creation and will be born in the future. The blood that flowed in Jesus veins, when he was in this world, contained all of the tremendous love of God that was intent on saving mankind. This is not a strange thing to say. If it were how could the verse have been recorded that says, “And by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross” (Colossians 1:20) The blood within Jesus’ body had the tremendous power to be able to reconcile all things to Himself whether things on earth or things in heaven. Do you think that these words contain a spiritual meaning? That is definitely not the case. At the time of the the Passover God said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you” (Exodus 12:13) and the people put the blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses and God passed over them. For whatever reason God just passed over them. Similarly we were able to be born again because God entrusted His life, which is actual eternal life, to the son of God, and this blood that was in Jesus was the blood of God. This is why were are introduced to the blood of God in the Acts of the Apostles where it says, “The church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” (20:28) When Jesus broke bread with His disciples, He blessed the bread and gave thanks for the wine because God granted life. Then, Jesus delivered up his body to the cross and there he died in accordance with the promise in the Old Testament. When Jesus’ body was torn and his blood flowed, and God saw this blood He accepted it in his heart and everything was resolved in God’s heart. Because, this was the blood that God had been waiting for and it was the blood of the eternal promise that He had originally had in His heart. Therefore, because of the blood that Jesus shed and because of His obedience He was raised from the dead. Even so, there are people who claim that we are not saved through the blood of eternal life alone but that we also have to accomplish something or know something more in the course of our lives. When the Bible says “He who endures to the end shall be saved” (Matthew 24:13) these words apply to the time of tribulation. It says something similar to this in Matthew chapters 10 and 24, and Luke, and Mark’s Gospels. This reference to salvation is connected to the terrible difficulties that the Jews must go through during tribulation. Revelation contains a record of these events. Nevertheless, people become confused by such passages and so they make the mistake of thinking that after salvation a person must endure to the end or come to realize something more. If the blood of the everlasting covenant is not absolute, then how can we believe in the Bible? If the blood that Jesus shed on the cross for us was not absolute and did not completely achieve everything then how can we believe in the Bible?People’s faith falters because of this while not knowing the exact meaning and so the author of the book of Hebrews wrote with certainty about the “blood of the everlasting covenant.” The Bible says, “Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood” (Hebrews 9:12). Jesus shed His blood on the cross. Furthermore, even now, Jesus is beside the throne of God in the third heaven and the blood that He shed while on the earth is evidence of eternal atonement. You need to know this with complete certainty.God the Father saved, God the Son who came to the earth in the flesh, into the perfect image that God wanted through His eternal blood, not the image of human that is imperfect in His eyes but in the same image as Him. We find something similar when God gave Seth to Adam in the place of Abel. People can live their entire lives without knowing or understanding the great principles and laws that appear in the Bible or even without knowing what the Bible is about. Those people do not understand how perfect the blood is that Jesus shed for every individual including myself. Through the eyes of the people who saw Jesus being crucified, the blood probably looked like normal human blood; however, when God looked at the blood, He saw something eternally powerful and holy which had within it the power that created the entire world. How perfect is our salvation that we gained through this blood? Do we need to gain anything more than this? The Imperfect First Covenant and the One, Eternal, Perfect New CovenantLet’s turn back to Hebrews chapter 8 and read from verse 5. Who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, “See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.” But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.  Hebrews 8:5-6 It says here that it is better. Why is this? It is because it is eternal. For if that first covenant had been faultless.  Hebrews 8:7The first covenant is the law, but the law had faults. Do not misinterpret these words and think, “In that case is the law wrong?” These words mean that the law cannot perfect our conscience. The answer appears when we examine up to Hebrews chapter 9. Then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them, He says: “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 when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.”  Hebrews 8:7-9 This is not the same as the law that was established through the Israelites; it means that a new law will be re-established. “Because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.  Hebrews 8:9-13 Hebrews chapter 9. Then indeed, even the first covenant had ordinances of

정회원으로 가입하시면 전체기사와 사진(동영상)을 보실수 있습니다.