"What is this that you have done?" Genesis 3.13

Anyone who has ever got caught doing something wrong can remember being asked, usually by some authority-figure, “what did you do?” It was not always a question asked in ignorance. More often than not, the person asking us this question knew full-well what we had done. Now, what if the person asking this question “what have you done?” is God Himself? That is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve had eaten of the Forbidden Fruit. God, it seems, sought them out even though they were trying to hide. God confronted them, though He surely had to know what they had done and knew ahead of time that they would do it. So if God already knew what they had done, why ask them the question?

But before we answer that question we have to ask another question first. Why did God set up the circumstances that brought about the fall of mankind? I am referring of course to that Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Why did God put that tree in the Garden in the first place? So much sorrow and misery could have been avoided if the possibility of evil had not been allowed. Why give evil a chance? This may be a dangerous path because we are beginning to speculate and that is not the reason for Biblical revelation. The Bible is not concerned about the “what if?” The Bible is concerned about what is. The Bible gives us the truth about the way things really are. This is what makes the Bible different from a work of philosophy. Philosophers are always asking questions, but not always arriving at answers. The Bible is not just raising questions for us to think about if we find the time. The Bible is causing us to face certain realities that are not very pleasant and that we might otherwise choose to avoid altogether.

And the first reality the Bible is causing us to confront is God Himself. That is the point of this entire Creation account. “In the beginning God…” Everything starts with God. So let’s start there too. That Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has something to do with God and our relationship with Him.

God had given the commandment concerning that tree. And so the knowledge of good or of evil has something to do with God. I don’t think there were poison apples on that tree. The tree was not off-limits because it was inherently bad. Everything God created was called “good” by God Himself. God doesn’t make bad trees or bad fruit! Adam and Eve were immediately confronted with the option of good or evil which was defined for them and made concrete by the commandment of God and nothing else.

And then the Serpent appears in Eden. We know from other Scriptures who and what the Serpent is, but Genesis does not tell us anything except that the Serpent is crafty or subtle. That description of the Serpent becomes the most important feature of the very first account of temptation. The Serpent just wants to talk. But it doesn’t declare its intentions. Deceivers never tell you what the real game is until they have won and you have lost. The game the Serpent was playing with Eve was that of poisoning the mind. It has to do with changing the way one person thinks about another person. It is usually used by someone who wants to disrupt a relationship and separate friends, lovers, or spouses. All you have to do is introduce a thought that causes doubt in one person’s mind about the intentions of the other person. When this seed of doubt is sown it begins to grow if not immediately uprooted and produces suspicion and distrust. Suddenly the other person begins to seem selfish or manipulative. Maybe everything they do is for some ulterior motive. Maybe they don’t care about you at all and are just using you. The person who introduces this thought knows that if the strategy works, you will do yourself what he or she could not have ever forced you to do. The Serpent’s poisonous thought is introduced into Eve’s mind in this way:

“God is keeping you from something that is really good. He is withholding a wonderful experience from you because He wants to keep you down. God cannot really be trusted. He is just pretending to care about you and really just wants to control you. You need to break free and do your own thing. Take what you want. Determine your own destiny and don’t let yourself be ruled by this Tyrant” (See Gen. 3.4-5).

Strangely enough, it is the Serpent’s words that come true when they eat the fruit and not God’s word. They did not die, at least not immediately or visibly, but they did experience a new kind of knowledge. That knowledge was the experience of shame. At first they were naked and unashamed. Now they are naked and ashamed of themselves. But what are they afraid of? They are the only two people alive on earth! Who is going to see them naked? In whose presence were they ashamed to be caught naked? They were hiding from God. That relationship had been forever changed, which was exactly what the Serpent had wanted. But it seems that the man and the woman did not get what they wanted or expected, which is often the case when we sin. There were unforeseen consequences. Now there was shame, guilt, fear, and alienation between man and God. And mankind has been hiding from God ever since, trying to avoid Divine scrutiny and accountability.

But God will not allow them to remain hidden from His view. He will not let them go or let them off the hook. God pursues them and there is a confrontation there in Eden between God and the entire human race. God begins by asking that question that every guilty conscience fears more than anything else: “What is this that you have done?”

The response of Adam and Eve to God’s question should not surprise us because it is something that any of us could have done and probably have done in similar situations. Adam and Eve tried to blame someone else for what they had done. Eve blamed the Serpent. Adam blamed Eve, and indirectly he also blamed God who had made him a wife. They did not take full responsibility for their actions. Do you see how much like Adam and Eve we really are? Modern people have become adept at blaming everyone and everything for what is wrong in their lives and in the world. No one wants to take responsibility and say “it’s my fault.” We should be able to see ourselves in Adam and Eve. I think that is the point of the text. We are truly sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. The Apostle Paul argued that Adam represents the entire human race so that his sin has impacted all of us (See Rom. 5.12-21). What Adam did is what all of us would have done if we had been there. In some sense we were there, in the loins of our father Adam.

In our individualistic culture it seems unfair to be held responsible for what someone else did. But we have all done what Adam did. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3.23).

Not only have we sinned like Adam, but we also tend to try to hide it, avoid God, and transfer the responsibility to someone else, just like Father Adam did. Being honest and truthful about sin (our own sin not someone else’s sin!) is one of the hardest things to do. It is no wonder that the whole concept of sin has all but disappeared from the modern vocabulary. We speak ourselves in psychological terms now and seek self-actualization and self-esteem. Modern people eschew guilt. We go to therapy and get counseling to get rid of guilt like we might go to the doctor to get rid of an infection or the dentist for a tooth-ache. We want to silence that annoying conscience rather than get to the source of the problem.

But God will not let us get away so easily. God does not choose to ignore our sin but to confront it directly. Until we are truthful and acknowledge what we have done there can be no reconciliation and healing. Salvation does not amount to God ignoring sin and pretending like it is not there. In His questioning of Adam and Eve after they sinned, God is teaching us about the importance of confessing our sins and acknowledging the truth about what we have done. Until this happens we remain in a state of alienation from God. But it is God’s good purpose to bring us to a point of salvation and reconciliation.

The account of the Fall of Man is really about alienation and what has caused it. Mankind is alienated from God, from the Creation, and from each other. They were cast out of Eden. This act of being cast out or exiled is another way of showing this fundamental alienation that pervades human life. We seem to sense that there is something wrong. Life is not what it should be. We find that life is frustrating and we never really get what we want, no matter how hard we try. And then there is the sentence of death that hangs over us all of our lives. Where did this alienation begin? That is the question the Genesis account of the fall of man is answering. What Adam and Eve did is the source of this alienation. And the human race has continued what they started.

The idea of alienation is taught throughout the Bible in various ways. I will mention two examples here:

1. Alienation is taught by Solomon in the entire book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon was blessed with more earthly wisdom than any other man. And here was Solomon’s astute observation about human life: “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

2. Alienation is also taught by Paul, echoing this theme of vanity, frustration, or futility: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it…” (Romans 8:20).

Solomon is really giving a commentary on the effects of sin on human life. Life is vanity because of what happened in Eden. And the Apostle Paul is also commenting on what happened in the Garden of Eden. The Creation has been subjected to futility or frustration because of Adam’s sin. In other words, life is inherently flawed and imperfect because of our alienation from God. Apart from God life is simply not what it was meant to be and we seem to be able to sense that, even without the revelation of the Scriptures. Frustration is just a part of life. We were not created to be independent from God and so in a state of alienation life simply does not make sense. We can’t understand ourselves apart from God and we can’t understand the meaning of life. We have gained our independence from God, but have become like a ship that has lost its mooring and is drifting aimlessly at sea.

But the world did not start that way. When God had created everything He said that it was good, very good. What made everything so good? I don’t think this goodness was simply a description of the natural beauty of Eden, though I am sure it was very beautiful. The original goodness of Creation was not just the outward beauty that pleases the physical senses, the world still has that even in its fallen condition. The original goodness (the Hebrew word is “shalom”) of creation is a state of being that is completely wholesome. Nothing is missing. Everything is full and complete.

And at the center of it all is the presence of God Himself. With God everything is good. It is really impossible to even understand what “goodness” means without God. Goodness is not some philosophical abstraction. God is good. His presence sanctifies everything else and makes everything good, as it was meant to be.

But take God out of the equation and life loses its quality. That is not to say that human life is devoid of everything good. That would literally be Hell. God has not completely withdrawn. You might say that there is still a scent of His presence, but it can be very faint and fleeting.

In spite of the alienation, life is still good because God has not completely abandoned the human enterprise. Things are not as they were. But that does not mean we should despair of life. In the darkness of sin and alienation, even in death, the goodness of God continues to shine through. God’s goodness is seen in how He deals with Adam and Eve even after they had disobeyed. God is incredibly patient with them. His questioning of Adam and Eve is not done harshly or in an adversarial fashion, as if God is trying to drag a confession from them, like on a poorly played TV detective show. God does not beat a confession out of them. God is not simply trying to point out their sin, gather the evidence, and then thunder forth His verdict of swift justice. If God had wanted to simply find fault and punish Adam and Eve He could have done that.

But what Adam and Eve did was not the end of God’s dealing with humanity. The fact that God had any dealings with them at all after their disobedience is a revelation of God’s goodness and His good purpose. Why not just dispose of the disobedient rebels and start over? Clearly God had something else in mind for humanity. What God wants to do and what He wants to reveal about Himself would not be accomplished if God were only looking for a reason to find fault or destroy. God is already beginning to reveal something of His mercy and grace.

From what we know about the fall of Satan and his angels God had not given them any mercy. They were cast out and that was the end of the matter, until the Day of Judgment when they will finally be cast in the Lake of Fire. There is no record of God coming to Satan to ask him “what have you done?” There is no hope held out to Satan and his fallen angels after their rebellion in heaven.
But there is hope for fallen man on earth, though he has also rebelled against God. Surely the angels are watching God’s dealings with fallen mankind (1 Peter 1.12).

In God’s dealing with mankind, He is not just looking for a reason to condemn and to destroy. God is not harsh, hard, uncaring or unkind. It is important that we understand this about God. God is not a cruel and heartless tyrant. The closest God came to destroying the human race was the Flood. We should not think that God is soft on sin. He does have His limits. But even before the Flood came it said that, as God surveyed the wickedness of that antediluvian world, “The LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6). Sin grieves God in His heart. Do we think of God in these terms or is God something like a cool, calculating judge who renders an objective verdict without any personal feelings in the matter? God is the judge of all the earth and He will do what is right. But God is also a Father who cares for His wayward children. How different would our lives be if God had no care for us and only treated us as our sins deserved? Not only would we be unredeemed, but there would be things about God that would never be made known. In redemption more about God is being made known than would have been possible if God had simply cut us off in His wrath.

God’s desire and purpose was to overcome sin and its effects and to bring reconciliation. That is why God has not completely cast off humanity. But God cannot bring reconciliation by simply ignoring our sin. That is why God confronted Adam and Eve and asked “what have you done?” You don’t bring reconciliation by ignoring the cause of the alienation and enmity. It is wrong to think that forgiveness means ignoring or tolerating sin. That is denial, not forgiveness. Being in a state of denial and ignoring the truth does not heal a relationship.

In fact, it will only make things worse because now there is not only the original offense but also a fundamental dishonesty. You can’t have a relationship that is based on lying. There must be honesty and truthfulness for there to be a healthy relationship. Now we know that God is incapable of lying. God never misrepresents Himself and He demands that we also be honest. But this can be difficult for us.

Why do we lie and misrepresent ourselves?

1. First, we are trying to make ourselves look better than we actually are. We are ashamed of ourselves and trying to cover ourselves. This is exactly what Adam and Eve did with the fig leaves.

2. Secondly, we may want to try to avoid the consequences of what we have done. There may be some very unpleasant consequences that we would rather avoid and so we lie. Many times we are more concerned about the consequences of getting caught than about the nature of the wrong that we have committed! In other words, we are not really all that guilty about what we have done, we just don’t want to get caught!

3. Thirdly, we may actually be afraid of the person that we have wronged and we lie to stay in their favor and good graces. Perhaps we don’t think the person will be fair with us and we are afraid their punishment and anger will be too much to take. Adam and Eve probably reasoned that it would be easier to hide from God and avoid the truth because they did not really know what God would do. Was it not reasonable to assume that if God is the creator then He can also destroy?

We may conclude that God is hard and harsh, like a man with a really bad temper, and we don’t want to provoke Him to anger. Some people have had an earthly father who got angry and lashed out and so it becomes easy to think that God is that way too. You don’t want to make Dad mad, and you certainly don’t want to make God mad!

Men who are fathers may lose their tempers and lash out at their children without thinking about what is best for them. But God is not like that. God can get angry, but He is slow to anger. And while God’s wrath can be aroused it is not God’s first intention to just blow us away in His anger. God’s intention is to bring salvation, healing, and reconciliation.

And that is why God does not leave just us alone in our alienation. God pursued Adam and Eve as they hid among the trees of Eden: “Where are you?” And then: “what have you done?” This is a loving God asking these questions, not some angry tyrant.

Most people don’t really know what they are asking for when they want God to love them! Sometimes I think people just mean they want God to leave them alone. But that is not God’s nature. We have to learn to trust God and believe that His intentions toward us are good and that He wants what is best for us. If we don’t trust God then we will keep hiding from Him and avoiding the truth.

I don’t think Adam and Eve really knew that much about God. There is no timeline in Genesis so we don’t know how much time had passed since God had created the man and the woman before they took of the forbidden fruit. But it does not appear to have been a long time. Though Adam and Eve were in a state of innocence when they were created, this does not imply that they really knew that much about their Creator. I am of the opinion that we know much more about God than Adam and Eve knew, though we have never lived in a state of sinless innocence. We know more about God simply because we have more revelation. We have certain precedents we can consider because of the record of the Scriptures. We have the greatest revelation of God in Christ and the Gospel. Unlike Adam and Eve, we know the rest of the story and what would happen following the fall of man in Eden.

There were some immediate consequences for their sin in Eden. Not only did they realize they were naked and hide from God, which was a picture of shame and alienation, but God Himself announced some more far-reaching consequences (Gen. 3.14-24). These consequences included a disruption and inequality in human relationships, a frustrating and toilsome relationship with the natural world, and then the final curse of physical death. The way to the Tree of Life was blocked. This looks like a very bleak future for the human race.

But if we read about the fall of man with the Gospel in mind we can see a couple of bright spots where God gave some hope:

1. First, there is the prophecy that God gave to the Serpent, with the man and the woman listening in: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). A member of the human race would come and defeat the Serpent and his malevolent intentions toward humanity. God’s purpose was to overcome the evil and the alienation that the Serpent had wrought by his temptation. A man would overcome the Serpent and crush its head. God would have the last word. This was not the end of the matter. The power of sin and death would be undone.

2. Second, this is not the last time we will see the Tree of Life. The next time we read about the Tree of Life in the Bible is in John’s vision of the New Heavens and Earth (Revelation 21-22). In Genesis access to the Tree of Life is blocked because of what the man and his wife had done. Death would rule the human race. (Even this was a kind of mercy in that God was not making man live in perpetual alienation.) But God imposed the sentence of death in view of bringing life. In the World to Come death is no more and there is access to the Tree of Life. What made the difference? Remember how the Tree of Life was guarded? There was a flaming sword, flashing back and forth. Anyone who got to the Tree of Life had to pass under the sword. Death would be the price for access to the Tree of Life.

By sending His Son into the world to die it was God Himself who suffered the death necessary to open up the way to the Tree of Life. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Receiving the gift of eternal life begins by answering this question: “what have you done?” God is still asking humanity this question. Confessing our sins is necessary if we are going to be saved. Those who do not know they are sick, or who will not admit it, do not think they need a doctor. If we do not acknowledge the problem then we will not receive the solution. Those who are not convinced of sin will not receive the Savior. Self-righteousness or legalism is an attempt by man to undo or atone for his own sin. It is like we are sewing together fig leaves to cover our nakedness. God will not receive this. We cannot make-up for what we have done. Only God can correct the problem and we must receive His remedy. As uncomfortable as it might be to admit that I am a sinner who cannot save himself, that is exactly where we must be to receive the gift of salvation.

God is greatly pleased with honesty and truthfulness as opposed to lying and pretense, which He hates. God wants us to be honest and truthful about ourselves. The opposite of this would be to lie and practice hypocrisy. Real change begins here. Without honesty there is no hope of salvation. Blaming others for our sin is also a form of dishonesty.

God wants us to trust Him that He has our best interests in mind and that He is good. This is true even if the truth is painful for us. God’s desire is for our salvation and transformation and not just a temporary or superficial fix. God always wants to get to the real issue. This is not so that He can condemn us, but so that He can save us.

Confidence to Enter the Holy Place (Hebrews 10.19-22)

Ask almost any religious person today what they think is the most important aspect of God’s character, and they will probably say it is love. This has some profound implications for how people practice their religion. Religion is really just the externalization of what we think about God. And most people seem to be very casual about their relationship with God. This relatively comfortable feeling is perfectly logical if we believe in a God who loves and accepts us, no matter what.

But this casual attitude about God would seem very strange to the Jewish people. The people who are responsible for writing most of our Bible would probably not say that God’s dominant character quality is love. They would probably say it is God’s holiness that defines the nature of God. And holiness is not something you can take casually. Holiness can kill you, and that is why no sane Israelite would have wanted to get very close to the presence of God. When the people came out of Egypt and stood together at Mt. Sinai, the presence of God scared them so much they asked God to leave them alone and just talk to Moses. Moses got closer to God than perhaps any other man ever has, yet God did not allow Moses to see very much because full exposure would prove fatal to human flesh. Isaiah saw the glory of God in the Temple and thought he was going to die. The priests who served in the Tabernacle were risking their lives when they came into the presence of God. The Law that God gave to Israel at Mt. Sinai seemed to say “stay back!” The presence of God was an experience to be feared and avoided if possible.

With that Old Testament background in mind, the whole argument in the New Testament book of Hebrews sounds strange, almost unbiblical. Hebrews tells us to draw near to the presence of God!

The book of Hebrews is an elaborate argument that what we have in Christ is better than what the people of Israel had under the Law of Moses. The primary difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant has to do with our approach to God. Coming into the presence of God under the Old Covenant was facilitated by bloody animal sacrifices and the intercession of the priests. But Jesus brought something much better.

He is a better priest and He has offered a better sacrifice, which was His own life. Jesus has opened up a new way to come to God that was unheard of under the Old Covenant. This new way to come to God has made the old way obsolete. There is no reason to cling to the old when something new and better has come.

Most of the book of Hebrews is a series of contrasts between the Old Covenant that God made with Israel through Moses at Mt. Sinai, and the New Covenant that God made through Christ. There is a contrast between ceremonial religion and spiritual faith, between a shame-filled fear of God’s presence and a confident access to God. The Old Covenant had a physical, earthly sanctuary. The Tabernacle Moses built in the wilderness was a symbol of the presence of God among the people of Israel as they wandered toward the Promised Land. There were elaborate ceremonies by which the priests ministered to God in behalf of the people, who could not come near. But in the New Covenant there is no physical earthly place of worship. And we don’t come to God by a ceremony, we must come to Him by faith (Heb. 11.1, 6). Christ is our priest in heaven where He has entered the very presence of God and opened up a way for us to come after Him – to a holy place that was once forbidden and full of fear. We can come into that Holy Place, into the very presence of God, with confidence and even with boldness, knowing that we will be accepted there.

The book of Hebrews is arguing that the Old Covenant is now obsolete because Christ has established a New Covenant. But what was the purpose for the Old Covenant if it was simply meant to pass away? The writer of Hebrews argues that the Old Covenant, particularly the Tabernacle, the priesthood, and the sacrifices, were shadows or types of Christ.

So the Old Covenant was given to help us understand what Christ would come to do and why He needed to do it. How could we understand what a sacrifice would mean unless there was some kind of introduction to this concept? How would we understand the function of a priest unless we had seen this in action? And how would we understand the idea of approaching the presence of God unless there was an earthly sanctuary to show us what this looked like? What all of these types and shadows seem to emphasize is that there is a great distance or alienation between God and people.

God is holy, or separate, from the people. Sin is the cause of this separation and something must be done to make the people acceptable to God. It was not left up to the people to decide or to negotiate with God. It was God who gave the commandments concerning the Tabernacle, priesthood, and the sacrifices. The solution for overcoming the alienation between God and the people came directly from God. A crucial precedent was being established: the way for the people to come to God is established by God Himself. In other words, the only way to approach God is if God opens up the way for us to come to Him. The way to the presence of God is like a door that only has a handle on the inside and can only be unlocked and opened from one side. God must open the door.

We cannot force our way into His presence or perhaps negotiate some kind of deal with God. God cannot be bribed or appeased. Either He lets us in or we remain locked out. We do not come to God in just any old way and we do not have the freedom to invent our own personal, private, religion or worship and expect to be accepted by God.

Hebrews was originally written to Jewish Christians who were being tempted to go back to Judaism. The writer is warning them that if they reject the way that God has opened through Christ, then they will have cut themselves off from God completely. There is no going back to the old dispensation because God has opened up a new way. You must come to God by the way that He has opened and prescribed. Hebrews argues that if disobeying the Law brought the sentence of death, what will happen to those who reject Christ (See Hebrews 10.28-29)?

God Himself has provided a way for us to come to Him and we dare not reject it or try to come another way. Jesus is the way to God (John 14.6). There is no other way. That “New and Living Way” was opened by Christ’s death. What Jesus has done is our source of confidence in the presence of God.

The fact that Jesus gives us full, unrestricted access to God is almost blasphemous to anyone familiar with the Old Testament and the Law of Moses. The Israelites could not just come into the presence of God whenever they wanted. Only the priests had some access to the presence of God and it was a very limited and regulated access. The reason for this restricted access had to do with the nature of God.

All true knowledge, even the knowledge of ourselves, begins with the knowledge of God. We must become familiar with God. It is in the Old Testament Scriptures, the Law and the Prophets, that we are introduced to God. The primary revelation in Scripture is God.

The primary revelation of the character of God under the Old Covenant was holiness. All of God’s dealing with the people of Israel had to conform to His nature, which could never be compromised. The love of God was also seen under the Law. God often referred to Israel as His wife or as His firstborn son. But what we must see is that the love of God does not simply cancel out God’s holiness. In other words, we must not think that God’s love makes Him “soft.”

It is a mistake for us to think of God in purely human terms, as if God is just like us. That is why we need to understand the holiness of God. Holiness means that God is not like us but is someone unique. God is not a man. God is in a class all by Himself. This is why the people of Israel also had to be different from the other nations. If you belong to a holy God you must reflect His character. (That’s the book of Leviticus in a very condensed form!)

God taught about holiness through a Holy Place (the Tabernacle), the priesthood, and the sacrifices. The Tabernacle represented the holy presence of God. The priests were to act as intercessors, or mediators, between God and the people. And the sacrifices were to make atonement for the people’s sin.

These were the things that had to be done if the people were to be acceptable in the presence of a holy God. And there could be no compromises or exceptions to what God commanded. Holiness was a life or death matter.

Some people almost seem to think that God changed at some point between the end of the Old Testament and the coming of Christ. Maybe God has relaxed a bit and softened up, perhaps lowering His impossibly high standards. The book of Hebrews is arguing that Christ has brought a significant change in how we come to God. But it is not the nature of God that changed. Our coming into God’s presence could not be on the basis of God having to compromise His holiness.

When you read about God’s dealings with Israel under the Law you might conclude that God can hardly stand being anywhere near the people. He is constantly angered by them and kills large numbers of them with poisonous snakes, plagues, and fissures opening up in the earth. But for Moses’ intercession, God would have wiped them out. God finally appears to be fed up with the people and their disobedience and grumbling and He tells Moses that He will not go up with them to the Promised Land lest He lose His patience with them and destroy them on the way (Ex. 33.3-5). God always seems to be restraining His wrath. God doesn’t want to destroy the people, even though that is what they deserved. God doesn’t give us what we deserve and that is what we call mercy, which is another aspect of God’s character. The only reason the human race has endured is because God is merciful. We deserve to die in our sins and yet God has allowed us to live. That does not just apply to the “really bad sinners” but to all who have ever sinned and fall short of the glory of God… yes, it even applies to you! But God is willing to forgive sin and He does not take pleasure in the death of wicked people like us.

The Law reveals a God who is both holy and merciful. It was Moses who received what is arguably the greatest revelation of God recorded in the Scriptures. This revelation came from God Himself and it summarizes everything God revealed to Israel in the Old Covenant:

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).

How can we reconcile the fact that God is merciful, gracious, and loving yet also holy and righteous? If God is going to treat us according to His holiness then there is no question that none of us would survive! But if God is merciful and allows sinners to live, then how can God still be true to His character?

It is almost as if humanity has presented God with a dilemma, if it is possible for God to have a dilemma. On the one hand, God wants to be with His people. (God dwelling in the mist of His people was the whole point of the Tabernacle.) But on the other hand, God’s holy wrath is aroused by the people’s sin and unrighteousness. It is actually dangerous to be in God’s presence. We could die in the presence of a holy God!

How can we come to God without being consumed by His holiness? He cannot simply pretend that our sin is not there. That is not an option. Obviously God does not immediately strike everyone dead the first time we sin. God is patient with us and some have interpreted God’s patience and His mercy as tolerance of sin. This is a grave error. There were times in history when God let the nations go their own way and seemed to turn a blind eye to their sin (Romans 1.18-32). But just because God seems to take no obvious action against sin does not mean that God’s disposition toward sin is neutral. God is always against sin because sin, by its very nature, is unlike God. God is righteous. Sin is unrighteousness. Sin is really rebellion against God. Does God simply ignore rebellion? What happened when Satan and his angels rebelled against God in heaven? They were cast out. Likewise, when Adam and Eve sinned they were also cast out. Sin casts us out.

So how can we get back in? I am afraid the answer is much more complicated than people tend to think. People seem to think that forgiveness is easy for God. After all, God can do anything, right? God does forgive sin. But if you think that forgiveness is easy then you don’t really understand the nature of God or what it means to sin against God.

Consider how difficult forgiveness is in human relationships. The need for forgiveness implies some kind of debt. We often hear of “debt forgiveness.” What does that mean? It means that someone owes something to someone else. There is an imbalance.

Picture an old scale that rests on a balance. We use this kind of scale to illustrate the process of justice and the legal system. Why? Because justice means a perfect balance. But if the scale is tipped in one direction, something is out of balance and must be corrected. If someone wrongs you and offends you, your relationship is out of balance. They are in debt to you. Will you forgive? You may be willing to forgive, but what has to happen? They have to “make it right.” They have to tip the scale back to zero. In other words, you expect them to pay the price necessary to repair the relationship. There is always a price to be paid in order to bring justice or repair a relationship. Who is going to pay the price? Now if someone is in your debt and you just forgive the debt, does that mean there was no price? No. It just means that you decided to absorb the debt and pay the price yourself. But there was still a cost. That’s why forgiveness is usually a very painful process.

Likewise, our access to God comes at a price. Someone or something has to pay a price because of the debt of sin. God’s love does not cancel out that debt, as if it doesn’t really exist. That debt must be paid. Who will pay that debt? Paying the price of sin will cost all we have to give. If we pay for our own sin then we will just be dead. This may sound extreme, but we must consider what it means to sin against God. God is not just another person. Offending God is a serious liability.

If God wanted to destroy us He could have found any number of good reasons to do that. But instead of destroying the people God gave them a way of atoning for their sins.

The idea of atonement, or offering a sacrifice, includes a covering and a substitute. The sin is covered, and the debt removed, but the payment is made vicariously. In other words, God provided a way for sin to be covered that did not require the life of the people to be taken as the payment. God accepted the life-blood of animal sacrifices as an atonement for the people’s sin.

So the Law of Moses gave rules and regulations concerning various animal sacrifices. The priests were to offer these sacrifices in behalf of the people. And the sacrifices had to be offered in the Holy Place that was the Tabernacle. Of particular importance was the sacrifice offered each year on the Day of Atonement (See Lev. 16). The sacrificial system was not something that the people negotiated with God. God is one who established it. God is the one who provided for the atonement of the people’s sin.

Some modern people find all of the blood in the Old Testament offensive. Is God some kind of blood-thirsty tyrant? What many do not understand is that when the Bible uses the word “blood” it is actually talking about the taking of a life. “The life is in the blood.” If the blood is shed the result is death. So it is not just the blood that makes atonement, but the taking of a life. A life is taken so that another life may be spared. That is atonement.

But animal sacrifices could never really pay the debt of sin, which is why these sacrifices had to be brought continually. That is one of the great arguments of the book of Hebrews (10.1-4). The animal sacrifices were a temporary provision, but not an ultimate solution to the problem of sin and alienation from the presence of God. No animal sacrifice could deal with sin in the aggregate. If an animal sacrifice could have taken away sin in its totality then there would have been no reason for more sacrifices.

But God has now provided a Sacrifice through the blood of Christ that effectively paid the debt of sin, all of it at one time. God paid the debt Himself and absorbed the cost of our sin. Jesus was the propitiation for our sin (Rom. 3.25). Jesus became the lightning rod for God’s holy wrath against sin. Christ’s sacrifice is superior to all the sacrifices under the Old Covenant because Jesus only had to die once (Heb. 9.12).

Jesus could not have saved us just by coming to earth as a man. The Incarnation alone did not atone for sin. The Incarnation was in order to make atonement for sin. Jesus had to have a physical body if He was going to offer Himself as a sacrifice.

But Jesus could not have saved us just by bleeding. When Christians say that we are saved by the blood of Christ we are really saying that we are saved by the life (blood) of Jesus being poured out until He died. So it is the body and the blood of Jesus that gave us access to God. There is a sense in which the body of Christ is the veil through which we can have access to God. When Jesus died the veil separating man from God was torn apart and the way into the Holy Place was opened. If we don’t come through Him we will not get to God.

But there is more to the Atonement than just His death on the Cross. There was something else that Jesus had to do in order to open up the way to God. He had to go back into Heaven.

The Tabernacle that Moses built was really a pattern, or a kind of earthly model, of Heaven itself and the presence of God. There was the Holy Place that was separated from the Most Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies, by a veil. Behind that veil was the Mercy Seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant. That Mercy Seat was an earthly symbol of the Throne of God. Only the High Priest could enter beyond the veil on the Day of Atonement. And he could never enter without the blood of a sacrifice being offered.

All of this is showing us how Jesus has given us access to God. Jesus offered the sacrifice on earth when He offered His own life. But then Jesus had to enter the presence of God. The Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ is when our great High Priest entered the Holy Place. Jesus did not stay on earth. He entered the heavenly sanctuary which is the true presence of God and not just symbolic (Heb. 9.24). His being there as our eternal High Priest before God is what gives us access to the presence of God. If Jesus were not there we could not go there either. (I am not talking about when we die and go to heaven. I am talking about us entering the Holy Place now! Jesus gives us access even now to the presence of God!)

If we really trust in the sufficiency of Christ’s death and eternal priesthood, then the result is that we will have full confidence that God has accepted us and all fear of punishment and alienation will melt away. What is your source of confidence in the presence of God? Is it your own morality? Your religious practices? Your doctrinal orthodoxy? None of those things provide an acceptable basis for approaching God. All of those things involve us earning our standing with God. If your focus is on yourself and what you do then you will not have an adequate basis for coming to God. Our confidence must be in Christ alone and His atoning death, as well as His current intercession. Christ is our confidence, not what we do. So we do not earn our standing with God. That is Old Covenant religion. It is for us to believe the Gospel and accept what Christ has done to bring us to God. We live by faith in Christ, not by religious ritual. Christ is the LIVING way to come to God. The way to come to God is a Person, not a religious ritual or ceremony.

Learning to live in the presence of God is now our goal. What does it mean to enter the Holy Place? It simply means that God dominates our attention. This is preparing us for the World to come where we will be forever with the Lord (Rev. 21.16, 22; 22.3-4). How can a person who never had any interest in the presence of God here expect to then be at home in a world in which the presence of God is pervasive? There can be no more separation of the sacred and the secular. We LIVE in the Holy Place! Everything in our lives in now holy to the Lord. We have a constant access to God. We can go to Him at any time and in any place. There is no longer an earthly holy place to which we must go to have contact with God. Everywhere is the Holy Place. Now we worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4.21-24).

This has a particular application to our prayers. We can approach the Throne of Grace in our time of need (Heb. 4.16). Notice that the Throne of God, which was once a place of fear, is now a place of grace and acceptance.

There remains a danger that we substitute ritual or ceremony for actually entering the Holy Place. For example, coming to church is not a substitute for entering and living in God’s presence each day. You cannot worship God by proxy. You have to come to God yourself.

This is why a system of priests or a clergy/laity division in the Church is so wrong. That system is essentially a reinstitution of the Law of Moses in which the people are kept at a distance from God. No person or priest on earth can bring you into the presence of God. Only Jesus can do that and we dare not settle for any substitute.

Coming to God is not only a personal, private activity. There are times when we need to come to God together. But those times of fellowship with other believers is not the thing that ushers us into the Holy Place, nor should it be the only time we spend in God’s presence. We should come together to exhort each other to stay in the Holy Place. We don’t come to Church to GET in the Holy Place. The presence of God is now our home every moment of every day.

There is no greater blessing or privilege than having access to God. “Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple” (Psalm 65:4).

The Silent Sovereignty of God (Esther 4.13-14)

Would it surprise you if I told you there is a book of the Bible that does not even mention God? Maybe you think I am making that up. How could a book of the Bible leave out God? Isn’t God the focus of Scripture? Well, yes, God IS the focus of Scripture. But the book of Esther does not mention God. At least, not explicitly or by name. However, the sovereign hand of God is evident in the events recorded in the book of Esther.

There are times in life when we don’t see how God is working. He is that silent, invisible Presence behind the scenes. He is the omnipresent and omniscient Author of the Story who does not always tip His hand about the plot until the time is right.

Even though the book of Esther does not mention the name of God, it certainly has a place in the Biblical canon. It tells part of the story of the history of Israel. The point of this history is not just for posterity, but for theology. It is theological history, or the revelation of God and His purpose. God made certain promises to Abraham and his offspring (Gen. 12.1-3). Part of this promise was the Land. But in the book of Esther the people are not in the Land but are in exile because of their sin. Had God deserted them completely? Was God still going to honor His promise to Abraham? The book of Esther is showing us that God was still with His people even in the Exile. We know that another part of that promise to Abraham involved the coming of Christ, who is the “Seed” of Abraham (See Gal. 3.16). So God had not abandoned His purpose, His promise, or His people.

The book of Esther tells about a significant threat to the People of God in their exile and how that threat was put down. God is not mentioned explicitly in the book, but it is clear that He was delivering His people, just as He had done when they had been slaves in Egypt, by using individuals to do the work. These individuals were Esther and her uncle, Mordecai. It becomes clear that both Esther and Mordecai have been put in these positions at just the right time.

A wicked man named Haman rises to power. He is an Agagite, an Amalekite, descended from a lineage God had ordered Israel to destroy because they had opposed Israel when she had come out of Egypt (See Exodus 17.8, 14, 16; Deut. 25.17, 19; 1 Sam. 15.2-3, 33).  Mordecai refuses to honor Haman. So Haman plots to not only kill Mordecai, but all of the Jews.

But through Esther’s and Mordecai’s bold efforts, the tables are turned. The Jews triumph over all those who sought their demise because of Haman, and the people establish the Feast of Purim to commemorate their victory. The victory of the Jews was made possible by the shrewd and courageous acts of Esther and Mordecai. They both made crucial decisions to act in just the right way and at just the right time. Though God is not mentioned, it is made clear that Esther and Mordecai are being helped by God and are acting as His servants in behalf of the Jewish people.

The book of Esther concerns a difficult period for the People of God. They are captives in a foreign land. The Persians were idolatrous and did not know or worship the God of Israel. It seemed like the enemies of the Jews had the upper hand, that God had deserted them, and that they would probably be wiped off the face of the earth.

God’s people are placed in circumstances that are far from ideal or perfect. They will face enemies and opposition as well as difficult problems that are not easy to resolve. The People of God will be tempted to compromise and disobey the Law of God in order to avoid pressure from the pagans. God’s people may face persecution, violent threats, loss of property, and even death. God does not always mitigate these circumstances and His people must learn how to pass through these times and remain faithful.

How can the People of God keep their faith in God in a context of hostility and opposition? Can the people count on God’s deliverance, or is it a futile exercise to do anything? Should the people of God be active or passive when facing opposition?

The book of Esther teaches the People of God today how to think and how to act when faced with difficult and hostile circumstances. Esther and Mordecai are excellent examples of how believers in every Age of history should conduct themselves in an evil world. The book of Esther is relevant for us today because our situation is similar to that of the Jews: we are exiles. We are strangers and aliens in the world. So how should we live in a place that is strange and potentially hostile to us?

We must avoid two extreme reactions not justified by Scripture: 1. we could compromise and just blend in with the surrounding culture and society. 2. We could try to physically separate ourselves and have little or no contact with the world around us. The third option might be called “righteous engagement.” This is where we neither compromise nor do we withdraw completely. Instead, we function in the world while refusing to be of the world.

We can count on God’s help because we are convinced that God is for us. The book of Esther is a perfect illustration of the principle that the Apostle Paul expounded in Romans: “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). God will not desert His People in their time of need. However, this does not mean that we are to be passive. We must trust God, yet we must also think and act in a way that serves the purpose of God.

Now it has often been noticed that those things that God works together for the good of His Elect may not be good in and of themselves. It is not that God only sends good things our way because we are His children. Rather, God is able to work out a good ending, one that is according to His purpose, even when the individual threads of our lives were less than ideal. Since there are no ideal situations in a fallen world, we must rely on God’s ability to work good things out of this mess.

The book of Esther is yet another Biblical illustration of God’s sovereign grace toward His people. We should remember that God had put the people of Israel in captivity, which is the setting for the book of Esther. But God was still God in Persia. He is over all of the nations, which is one of the things revealed to the prophet Daniel while he was also in captivity in Babylon and then Persia (See Daniel 2, 7-8). When bad things happen to the people of God, this does not in any way contradict the rule and reign of God. The prophet Ezekiel also received revelations of God in the time of captivity. Ezekiel, like Daniel, saw the Throne of God. Yes, God was still on His throne even though Jerusalem was destroyed, along with Solomon’s Temple. God was no regional deity like the false gods of the heathen. Ezekiel saw a Throne with wheels (See Ezek. 1)! God’s glory is everywhere in the Earth, even in places of captivity, and that means the people of God have a reason to have hope even in their exile.

Times of suffering, trial, and opposition from wicked men are not necessarily signs of God’s abandonment or displeasure. Now this contradicts a lot of popular teaching in the Church today. The Prosperity Gospel is embraced by millions who want to believe that the sign of God’s love and favor is a happy, healthy, wealthy, and successful life. We must conclude that if you are not enjoying prosperity in this sense then you must be spiritually deficient. During their darkest nights of trouble, when they need the most comfort and encouragement, many of God’s people are told that they lack faith or they would not be in that difficult situation! Now we know that God can prosper and deliver His people. That is illustrated in the book of Esther. But what I am utterly rejecting is the idea that God will spare His people from all adversity. Actually, the adversity may be evidence that God is working with His people.

For example, some adversity is the discipline of the Lord. This was certainly true of the Exile. God was treating Judah like a wayward son who needed discipline. Believers in Christ are to also accept hardship as discipline (Heb. 12.5-11).

Furthermore, adversity in the form of opposition is simply the natural consequence of living in a world that is wicked and opposed to God. God’s people have enemies, like wicked Haman, who hate them for no good reason, except perhaps because the people of God are different and won’t bow to the world’s demands. Jesus warned the disciples that the world would hate them because it hated Him and it hated His Father (John 15.18-25). So let us dismiss any foolish and unrealistic notion that if we are the people of God we will float through this world on a couch of ease and comfort!

But when we are in the midst of some kind of trouble it can become very difficult for us to see the hand of the Lord. In fact, we may conclude that He has abandoned us. It is not hard for us to feel that God is blessing us when everything is going the way we want. It is extremely difficult for us to see God’s hand in our troubles. And so this is why we need the book of Esther. God is hidden in the book of Esther. Sometimes God hides Himself from us and we cannot always see how He is working out His purpose. But the truth is that God never stops working. He is moving both people and events toward His ultimate goal, and we must learn to trust in the Lord, even when we can’t see Him.

Actually, theologians have a term for this invisible work of God: Providence. The book of Esther is a case-study in the providence of God. There is a series of events in Esther that we might call coincidence. A string of events just seem to happen at exactly the right time:

 It all began when the King of Persia got drunk (1.10). In his drunken state he wants his queen, a woman named Vashti, to make an appearance before him and all of his nobles. For reasons every woman can immediately understand, Vashti refused to obey the King’s request (1.10-22). This was a brave move that cost Vashti the throne.

 Esther just happens to be chosen as one of the young women to go before the King. She wins everyone’s approval, especially the King’s, and is chosen by him as the new queen (2.1-18).

 Because Esther is in the palace, Mordecai, Esther’s uncle and guardian, is hanging around the palace and overhears a plot to assassinate the King (2.19-23). The deed is recorded, but Mordecai is not rewarded.

 Meanwhile, Haman rises to power and is enraged that Mordecai will not honor him and so decides to build a gallows on which to hang Mordecai (5.9-14).

 It just happened that one night the King couldn’t sleep and for some strange reason he wants to read the royal records where he is reminded of what Mordecai had done for him (6.1-3). Haman was at that very moment on his way to the King to get Mordecai hanged on the gallows Haman had constructed earlier. Instead, Haman is humiliated and Mordecai is honored (6.4-13).

 All of that had to happen first so that when Esther finally reveals herself and the plot of Haman, Haman can be hung on the very gallows he built for Mordecai, while Mordecai is already known to the King and is therefore easily exalted to Haman’s place to undo the evil planned against the Jews (chapters 7-8). Because of Mordecai’s exalted position and favor with the King, everyone is now afraid to attack the Jews and they overcome their enemies (9.3-4).

Who could have made that happen so perfectly except for God? It is a story no Hollywood writer could invent! Only God can write an ending like that!! But the writer of Esther never mentions God in these events. We must conclude that this was an intentional omission. We are left to fill in the blanks and read between the lines. In this way Esther is different from every other book in the Bible. But even in its silence about God, the book of Esther is teaching us about God.

All of these events in the book of Esther are rather mundane and coincidental. Where is God in that? When we read the Bible we get used to God showing up and doing spectacular things for His people. In the Exodus He brought 10 plagues on Egypt. He parted the Red Sea. When God shows up we expect miracles, fire from heaven, the mouths of lions to be shut, and fiery furnaces not to burn human flesh. But that is not what happens in Esther. And that is probably not what happens in our lives. God is there, but He is hidden. If we are looking for God only in the thunder and lightning then we will probably conclude that He is not involved in our lives at all. But He IS there in a thousand little things that we usually do not see or that we simply chalk up to coincidence. Sometimes in retrospect we can look back and see the invisible hand of Providence in our lives. We see that if THIS thing had not happened like it did then THAT wonderful blessing would not have been possible. I suppose we will have to wait to see all of the ways God worked in our lives as He brought His dear children along the path to Glory.

We usually come to understand things in retrospect. But understanding what God is doing in the middle of any given situation, especially a trial, is impossible unless we were to have some kind of direct revelation. When we read the Bible we are used to God giving this direct revelation. But in Esther there is no such revelation. There is only silence. It is the silence that disturbs us. We usually want to know what God is up to. So how do we deal with the silence? We have two excellent examples in Esther and Mordecai.

We have to first deal with the fact, however, that Esther is initially reluctant and needs a rather heavy push to enter the fray and do her duty. She was afraid. If she went to the King without being invited, she was risking her very life. She lets Mordecai know her hesitancy to go to the King uninvited (4.11). She does not look like a person of faith here who is as bold as a lion. But that was not the end of Esther’s story. God was working with her and he was doing so through her uncle, Mordecai. Mordecai’s answer to Esther’s fear is probably the most important statement in the book of Esther:

“Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (Esther 4:13-14)?

We should take notice of Mordecai’s confident faith in God, though he does not mention God: “Deliverance WILL rise for the Jews.” The only question was whether or not Queen Esther would be willing to play her part in God’s work. Even when we are afraid, and even when we do not understand what God is doing behind the scenes, we must always live by faith and according to what we know is right. We have to learn how to live wisely and to be bold when necessary. God will bless our efforts if we do these things. But if we draw back and allow fear to dominate God will not be pleased with us (See Heb. 10.39). God’s work and purpose will continue on without us.

Mordecai’s crucial word to Queen Esther shows us that the work of God must be done by the people of God. If God was working in the background, it was Mordecai and Esther who were working in the foreground. We don’t see what God was doing but we DO see what God’s people were doing.
Now this seems to be wrong. We are used to God performing mighty acts which are impossible for men to do. We have been trained to think that it is only God’s work that matters and our work only gets in the way of what God wants to do. So the best thing we can do is to just do nothing and let God do it all! What if Mordecai and Esther had reasoned like that? What if Esther had refused to go to the King? What if Mordecai and Esther had organized prayer meetings and then done nothing else at all? Mordecai was confident that deliverance would arise for the Jews. And then he purposed, with Esther’s help, to BE that very deliverance! Mordecai exhorted Esther to be active, not passive, and to do what was in her power to do. Later, when the King had exalted Mordecai, he was again proactive in countermanding the plot of Haman (8.8-14).

Mordecai seemed to be confident that whatever he and Esther did would be successful. Why was he so confident? Was he just arrogant? Some people do act out of pride for their own purposes and self-aggrandizement. That is exactly what Haman did. And Haman’s plans come to nothing. Haman is a perfect example of the fact that “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). In this way Haman and Mordecai provide an instructive contrast. Haman is a proud man working for himself. Mordecai is a faithful man working for God. And we know who was successful. Mordecai was confident and proactive because he knew that no man can successfully oppose God, as Haman was doing, and, conversely, no man can fail who has aligned himself with God. So Mordecai knew he had to do something, but whatever he did would be successful because he was doing the will of God. You can’t beat God’s people because you can’t beat God! “If God is for us, who can be against us” (Rom. 8.31-39)?

At every stage of the story of Esther and Mordecai we see that there was a kind of synergy between those providential “coincidences” and the bold, wise actions of the human actors. It is as if Esther and Mordecai were in perfect sync with what God was doing and were making all the right moves and decisions at those crucial moments. Clearly the Jews were saved by the brave actions of Esther and Mordecai. While we cannot claim all the credit for the victory, we do participate in the purpose of God and what we do does matter.

But it is equally clear that God was working, albeit silently, to save His Covenant People. There are some things that only God can do. God’s people always trace their salvation back to what God has done. However, God does not simply thunder out of heaven and command salvation, like He did at the creation of the world. Salvation is a more complicated work than creation. The book of Esther is really about how God provides salvation. Esther is an Intercessor for the Jews who pleads for their lives before the King. Mordecai is an Exalted Ruler who is placed in a position of authority for the sake of his people. For the Jews to be saved and to be victorious over their enemies, they needed an Intercessor and an Exalted Ruler. Esther abandoned herself when she determined to go before the King and intercede for her people: “if I perish, I perish” (4.16). And she was received by the King and her intercession was heard. This reminds us of  “the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:34). It was Mordecai’s position that made the final victory of the Jewish people possible. “For Mordecai was great in the king's house, and his fame spread throughout all the provinces, for the man Mordecai grew more and more powerful” (Esther 9:4). This reminds us of how God has exalted Jesus: “he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:22-23). We are victorious because Jesus has been exalted. God has provided for our salvation by supplying both an Intercessor and an Exalted Ruler.
Salvation requires a sovereign God. What if God wanted to save His people, but could not carry out His desire? On the other hand, what if God did not want to save His people? Would anything that we do to save ourselves amount to anything? If God had not been working behind the scenes in the story of Esther, would anything that Esther or Mordecai did have been effective?

But there are some people who interpret the sovereignty of God to mean that there is nothing that we do that makes a difference. In fact, you can push sovereignty and predestination to such an extreme that even prayer becomes irrelevant. If everything is already determined by a sovereign God, then why do anything at all? If Esther and Mordecai had thought that way then they would have accepted the fate of the Jews as a God-ordained decree. So we must strike a balance between trusting in God’s sovereignty while also being willing to do the will of God in concrete ways. I do not mean to imply that we can earn salvation. Being saved by grace means we also do good works God has prepared beforehand for us to do (Eph. 2.8-10).

Trusting in the sovereignty of God does not imply that the people of God can afford to be simple or foolish. Esther and Mordecai both acted with forethought, wisdom, and tactfulness. Furthermore, the people of God are exiles and that means there will be a strong temptation to compromise with the pagan culture. We see this pressure on Mordecai when Haman is exalted by the King. Mordecai is the only one who refused to bow to Haman. God’s people must understand that the world is not really tolerant of those who will not conform. There are times when we have to draw a line and refuse to bow. Trusting in the sovereignty of God does not mean we expect God to make everyone our friend. It means that when we do have to take a stand, a stand we know will probably have consequences, we trust in our sovereign God to take care of us. “Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” (1 Peter 4:19) We don’t always know what will happen when we live to please God. But we trust Him no matter what happens to us.

Even after Esther exposes the plot of Haman and Mordecai is exalted to take Haman’s place, the Jews still have to fight (9.5, 16). But now their fighting is effectual and they triumph over their enemies. In some sense it had been Esther and Mordecai who actually won the victory, and then the rest of the Jews benefitted from that victory. The rest of the fighting was just a consolidation of that victory. Now the Christian is in a similar position. Christ has already won the decisive victory. He has spoiled Principalities and Powers through His Cross. And He is seated at the right hand of God in Heaven – far above all other earthly Powers. The plots of our Enemy, Satan, have been exposed and utterly defeated. However, there is still some fighting to do. God’s people still have enemies and we are still aliens and strangers in a world that is opposed to Christ. Even though we do not fight a physical kind of war, we must be armed for a spiritual battle and not intimidated by conflict. We are not confident in our own ability. But we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us (Rom. 8.37).

Fellowship of the Burning Heart (Luke 24.25-27, 32)

What a sorrowful walk these two disciples were having as they left all of the hustle and bustle of the city of Jerusalem for the little, sleepy village of Emmaus. They were leaving Jerusalem sad and disappointed. They had put all their hopes on the teacher from Nazareth and now he was dead. And he died by the most public and excruciating kind of execution ever invented. He was not just killed, he was humiliated, exposed, and mocked. There was nothing pretty about crucifixion. I wonder if these two disciples had even been there at the hill called Golgotha. Perhaps they stayed away, not being able to see him die. And then they left the city. Why stay any longer? It was over. So they thought.

After a tragedy and a great loss, there is a kind of calm. When all of the tears have been cried, the funeral service is over, and the mourning friends and family members have gone home, life has to slowly resume and we are left to ourselves to reflect on what has happened. Then we try to come to terms with reality, to accept things as they are now, not as we want them to be, and to understand what we have seen. But sometimes, try as we might, we do not understand. And that is what makes life so difficult. Perhaps we could handle those things that we can make some sense out of, even if those things are tragic and painful. Some things have a sense of inevitability, like the death of an aging relative. We can even do some of the grieving in advance and prepare ourselves for the blow. But then there are life’s sudden, swift kicks to the solar plexus that leave us doubled over and gasping for breath. These things defy all trite explanations and pat answers.

To those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, the Cross was one of those things. They were trying to come to terms with the fact that Jesus was dead, but they clearly did not understand nor could they explain what had actually taken place back there in Jerusalem. If we look at the Cross in its bare, stark reality, without any theological explanations, it does seem to be beyond understanding. It is simply a horrible tragedy, like so many other events in the sad history of the human race. We can perhaps, without any additional revelation, come to see Jesus as a brave, young martyr who was dying for his radical beliefs. And martyrs are noble, though sad, and they are capable of inspiring us, even shaming us for our lack of devotion, but martyrs are dead all the same.

Then where do we go? Back to the routine again. These two disciples headed to Emmaus. Peter went back to fishing. Life goes on. We should probably say it is the routine -- the frustrating, pointless, vain repetition that we call life -- that really goes on. Every now and then there is this little flash of something different, something new and exciting that stirs our souls and starts us hoping that maybe real life has begun and things will be different. But there is nothing new under the sun. Just the same old thing, over and over again.

But not this time! These two disciples were never going to be able to go back to their old routines again because something had happened that would give new meaning to everything under the sun. They were going to come face to face with Life. Christ has risen! Though they knew it not and everything seemed on the surface to be the same. But the Gospel is new indeed – news that something new has come into the world and things will never be the same again. Life has come and so now we can say that life does go on, because eternal life has been revealed.

Without the Resurrection, the Cross could not have been properly understood. Calvary was not just another human tragedy and Jesus was not simply a courageous, young martyr of another noble, yet hopeless, cause. There was a Divine purpose that had been in the works for a long time, even before Time itself. The Resurrection is the lynchpin of the Christian Faith. We do not worship a dead martyr. We walk with a risen Christ.

Jesus has entered a new mode, or level, of existence. The meaning of the Ascension, the essential sequel to the Resurrection, is that Jesus can now be anywhere and everywhere and is therefore always with His disciples wherever they may be – in a locked upper room, by the sea of Galilee, on the road to Emmaus, in a jail cell, or on the lonely Isle of Patmos.

Jesus Opens the Scriptures

These resurrection appearances are for the purpose of preparing the disciples to become witnesses. Jesus is going to send out these confused and timid souls who always seem to be a few steps behind where Jesus needs them to be. They weren’t ready for this mission. But Jesus will make them ready. They needed confidence and boldness. They needed to understand how everything that had happened fit together in God’s great Kingdom program. And so Jesus would spend 40 days with them, explaining the nature of the Kingdom of God, before He ascended (Acts 1.3). Jesus prepared them in much the same way He instructed these two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He opened the Scriptures to them.

That was what they were missing. They did not understand the Scriptures. They had not yet made the right connections between what was written in the Scriptures and what Jesus had done (John 20.9). There is no greater handicap than not understanding the Scriptures. But Jesus is not satisfied with ignorance in His people. He is the authorized Interpreter of Scripture. Not only that, He is also the message of the Scriptures. Jesus is the key to the entire Bible and if we do not understand this we will never be able to really understand.

On the Mount of Transfiguration Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus (See Matt 17.3). Moses represents the Law and Elijah the Prophets. But God said “this is my beloved Son, you must listen to Him” (Matt. 17.5) Jesus is the greater revelation and the One the Law and the Prophets spoke about. The Gospel of Christ is in perfect agreement with the Law and the Prophets (Rom. 3.21).

Reading the Scriptures and not coming to Christ is to miss the whole point. It is like visiting Paris and missing the Eifel Tower! Jesus warned the religious leaders about this serious error. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). This is not an innocent mistake but is actually evidence of unbelief. Jesus exposed what people really believed about the Scriptures. “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me” (John 5:46). The religious elites knew the Scriptures but not the Author of the Scriptures.

C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors. But his works are filled with philosophical arguments and intricate allegories. What if I could talk with C.S. Lewis while I read the books he had written? Do you think that would give me some insights I would have missed on my own? If I could speak with the author of the book I could know his intended meaning. I can’t talk to C.S. Lewis about his books. But I can talk to Jesus about His book. Jesus is a living Presence who can walk with us and teach us. That is the significance of the Resurrection. The Emmaus Road experience can be ours today.

Why We Fail to Understand Scripture

Studying the original language and the principles of hermeneutics are insufficient. If we really want to understand Scripture we must know the Author of Scripture and the One who is Himself the focus of the Scriptures. We don’t learn about Jesus like we learn about American history or the multiplication table. There are certain facts that I can learn intellectually, but these have no impact on my life. But this knowledge of Jesus is intensely personal. We must be willing to listen to Jesus, to follow Him closely, and to submit to what He teaches. If we are not willing to do these things then Jesus cannot teach us.

Rather than learning from Jesus there are many who would rather keep their personal freedom, or what they think is freedom. They are free from Jesus at least. The paradox of freedom is that we must submit ourselves to Christ and to His teaching in order to be free. “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). Bob Dylan was right. “You have to serve somebody.” The more we serve Jesus, the more liberated we become. We were never meant to be our own master, just like a fish was never meant to live out of the water. “Thou hast made you for thyself and our hearts are ever restless until we find rest in Thee” (Augustine).

Those who resist Jesus are making themselves slaves to their own carnal mind with its dark ignorance and raging passions. “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8). This is a moral problem. There is a part of us that naturally resists God and His Word. We are children of our father Adam and we live in a world infected with the Devil’s spirit of rebellion against God.

The World is proud of its unspiritual wisdom and laughs at the foolishness of the Cross (1 Cor. 1.18-31). Simply explaining spiritual things in simple language or translating the Bible into the language of the street will not by itself overcome this natural resistance we have to God. This is why Jesus had to tell a Biblical scholar, an expert in the Law of God, that he needed to be born again before he could really understand heavenly things and perceive the Kingdom of God (John 3.3-12). The Kingdom of God is spiritual, but we are unspiritual. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14-15). The purely human way of thinking is not God’s way. Unless we get some help from Heaven, and unless there is some kind of radical change in us, we will never understand the things of God.

Not only is the carnal mind a hindrance to our understanding of the Scriptures and the truth of God, we must also overcome religious traditions. Traditions can nullify the Word of God, rendering it powerless and ineffective in our minds (See Matt. 15.1-9). And the influence of false teaching that we have heard can linger in our minds like cobwebs in the corners of an old house. At some point we have to clean house and make room for the Master to come and live there.

Jesus has His own agenda. If we want to pursue our own interests we must do so without Jesus. People who read the Bible as if it is about them and their earthly lives, i.e. how God can help me get what I want out of my life, will never be taught by Jesus. We have to take up our cross, which means we must die to our own plans for life, before we can follow Jesus and learn from Him (Matt. 16.24). God has His own plan. He is building His Kingdom, not our kingdoms. God’s wonderful plan for your life is for you to die to all the wonderful plans you have for your life. His plan and what He is building is infinitely better than anything we could have dreamed of anyway. God is not going to give us our dreams, He wants our dreams to die so that He can give us an entirely new vision.

If we are unwilling to take up our cross, if we are slow of heart and unresponsive to the Lord’s Word, or if we refuse to trust Him, then our understanding will be hindered and deficient. If our hearts are not right then we will have to confess along with the Psalmist that “I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you” (Psalm 73:22). Animals run on instinct, not on understanding. So it is good to be reminded to “be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you” (Psalm 32:9). Don’t be like that generation of rebellious Israelites in the wilderness who heard the Word of God, but turned away from Him in their hearts (Hebrews 3.12; 4:2). We can listen without really hearing.

How Jesus Helps Us Understand

The problem with the two disciples walking to Emmaus was not that they were unwilling to listen to Jesus. They had been disciples of Jesus and had followed Him in order to listen to His words. Clearly they did not understand what the Christ would do, probably having a political and earthly understanding of the Kingdom. They told Jesus dejectedly that “we had hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel.” He had redeemed Israel, but not as they expected. That earthly, political vision of the Christ and his Kingdom needed to be shattered because it was a false hope that did not come from God.

But that misunderstanding does not mean that they were not devoted to Jesus. It is possible to be a devoted follower of Jesus and yet have an incomplete understanding. However, Jesus does not mean for His people to remain ignorant. We must learn to recognize the difference between a person who is devoted to Jesus, yet lacks understanding at some point, and someone who is disinterested. A person who is disinterested can expect to receive nothing from Jesus. But Jesus can work with a person who is interested, yet lacks understanding. Remember that there was a time when each of us lacked understanding of the Scriptures and the Kingdom of God. We may still have areas of deficiencies that we are perhaps not even fully aware of at this time. (Remembering that we don’t have a perfect understanding will help us be more patient and merciful to those who are not at our level. In fact, we might not really be at the high level we think we are and should not become puffed up with pride because of our knowledge.) Jesus did not appear to these disciples because they were disinterested in order to scare them into becoming interested. Jesus does not work like that. He did not appear to His enemies but to His friends and those who believed in Him and followed Him, though they did not yet understand what had happened.

However, this process of learning from Jesus was a difficult thing. Some people oversimplify what it means to learn about the Kingdom of God, as if it is something that just requires a few weeks in Sunday school class. Others think it is just an intellectual exercise and if you study long enough or go to the right theological school then you will have this perfect understanding of the things of God. That is an illusion. In fact, this simplistic or academic approach can actually be a setback and can keep a person from really learning from Jesus. I am not saying that we don’t have to study the Bible and use our minds. I am saying that this is not all that we need.

Before we can really learn from Jesus there will probably be some preparations that must be made. The farmer must prepare the soil before he plants the seed, or the seed will fall on hard ground and never penetrate the soil. There are areas of our hearts and minds that must be plowed up before the Word of God can be planted there. We may have character flaws that must be addressed, old ways of thinking that need to be removed, and selfish desires that have to be crucified. These kinds of things cannot be removed just through academic information. And even after we are born again these things are not instantaneously rooted out of our lives. The Lord will have to prepare us by showing us those areas of our lives that are deficient. This means He will allow us to go through times of failure, disappointment, and pain so that the weaknesses in our character can be uncovered and then corrected.

We often interpret this kind of instruction as the Lord’s displeasure with us, or that He is not with us at all. This is the Lord’s discipline. It is the Lord saying something like “this particular way of thinking, those goals, and that desire that you have all need to be put away. You did not get those things from me. And because you did not get those things from me, you will ultimately be disappointed when those things fall through. But what I want to give you will never fall through or disappoint you. You will have to let those things go, even if it is painful, so that I can give you something which can never be taken from you.”

The pain comes from loving and valuing the wrong things. The World has switched the price tags and told us that there is value in things that are not from God and will pass away, breaking our hearts in the end. But Jesus will never break your heart. It is the false hopes and vain promises of the World that will disappoint us, not the Lord. It is not the Lord’s purpose to make all of our earthly hopes and dreams come true. The Lord wants to give us an entirely different vision and a completely new Hope that is beyond anything this World can offer. The problem is that our desires are too weak and our thinking is too small. If the Lord is busy breaking things up in our lives, it is not because He wants to hurt us. He is tearing something down so that He can build. Let Him have His way. Work with Him, not against Him.

The amazing thing is how patient the Lord is with us. If we look back down the Road we have traveled we can remember places where the Lord gave us a lot of grace and was very gentle with us. There were times when we were stubborn and we are ashamed of how foolish we have been. But the Lord was still walking with us. He was still working on us. We probably didn’t always know what He was up to, and we may have even been too blind to recognize His presence, but He was there beside us on the Road. He was there with us in every circumstance and situation. He was there working with us in the form of other people whom He was using to teach us, even though we may not have recognized Christ in them. But He was there nonetheless. This is why the Fellowship of Saints is so crucial. Jesus is not just revealed to me but to us.

The Burning Heart Experience

No one should think that I am advocating some kind of subjective, mystical approach to understanding the Bible. There have always been people who claim to have some kind of special line of communication with Jesus that no one else enjoys and the way they understand the Bible, while being different from everyone else, is the one true interpretation. This is the stuff coming from the cults. The Bible cannot mean just anything we want it to mean and there is no replacement for carefully studying the Scriptures. There are those overly spiritual people who tell us not to worship the Bible or to put down the Bible and get to know the God of the Bible. The people who try to discourage us from knowing the Scriptures are either trying to twist it themselves or are just lazy and want a shortcut. There is no shortcut to spiritual understanding that bypasses our personal involvement and the use of our God-given faculties.

One of the things that the Jewish people had that we don’t have today, even in the Church, is a familiarity with Scripture. The Jews were always reading Scripture and they treated it with great seriousness and reverence. That does not mean they always understood it. But when Jesus began to open the Scriptures to these two disciples on the road to Emmaus, He was not talking to men who had never read the Scriptures. The text of Scripture was already in their minds, like a seed that has been planted in the soil. It was Jesus who brought that seed to life and made it grow. Jesus will do this again for the Jewish people in the future. And He will do it for us today.

Even for those who are familiar with the Scripture, it can lay around in our minds in broken fragments. It is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with the pieces lying scattered across the dining room table. How do we put this picture together? If the Bible is the Word of God we can expect God to have given us a single, consistent, coherent revelation and not some kind of hodge-podge that goes down a thousand rabbit-trails. So what is the Word, or the message, that God has given to us in the Bible? Men have argued about this for centuries. Only Jesus has the answer. Jesus IS the answer.

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” I wonder what Jesus said to them as they walked along the road? We can use a little sanctified imagination. Maybe Jesus told them that He is…

• The Seed of the Woman who had just bruised the Serpent’s head

• The Seed of Abraham through whom God was about to bless the world

• The Passover Lamb who had just been sacrificed

• The Prophet that Moses promised would come

• The Great High Priest who has opened the way into the Holy of Holies

• The true Tabernacle in which the glory of God came to dwell among men

• The true Joshua who will take His people into the Promised Land

• The true Kinsman-Redeemer of Ruth

• The Son that was promised to David who would sit on His throne forever

• The King that God has set on His holy hill of Zion in Psalm 2, against whom the nations would rage

• The One whom God had briefly forsaken on the Cross, as predicted in Psalm 22

• The Wisdom from God that is greater than that of Solomon

• The Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53

• The guarantor of the New Covenant promised in Jeremiah 31, put into effect by His own blood

• The Son of Man that Daniel saw approaching the Ancient of Days to receive an eternal kingdom

• The Sign of the prophet Jonah

As He opened the Scriptures to them their hearts began to burn within them. Their hearts burned with recognition – they knew the voice of the Lord --though their eyes did not know him and their minds were slow to understand. It was a voice they thought they would never hear again and yet they were hearing it. Hearing is always more important than seeing. Faith comes by hearing. It was their faith in the risen Lord that gave those first disciples the boldness to preach that Jesus was the Christ promised in the Scriptures.

We should not expect to see Him like they did. He has ascended and is not going to be seen until He comes again. But we can still hear His voice. He is still speaking from heaven. He is still speaking to us through the Scriptures, if we will listen to His voice. We do not see Him, but He is with us, and is still speaking to us. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2). Are you listening to Jesus? If you are, then I welcome you to The Fellowship of the Burning Heart!

“The Covenant God Promised to Make” (Hebrews 8.8-13; Jeremiah 31.31-34)

The very first revelation of who God is involves something that God made. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And then God said “let us make man in our image.” But why did God make all these things? Why did He make us? We know God was not lonely because the Godhead had always been in loving fellowship. God wanted to create because He wanted to share Himself and reveal Himself to another personality who could appreciate this same loving fellowship.

The first man and woman that God made chose to reject this Divine fellowship and go their own way. And humanity has been following in the footsteps of Adam ever since. But God did not reject humanity entirely and He did not forsake His original desire to create a People for Himself. So God began a new work, a new creation, in which even more of His Divine attributes would be displayed.

The new work began when God called Abraham and from him created a nation that was set apart from other nations. He gave them His Law and made a covenant with them. But throughout their history Israel failed to keep that covenant.

Through the prophet Jeremiah, when the clouds of judgment were gathering over Jerusalem, God promises that He would make a new covenant. This covenant would be very different from the covenant God made with Israel through Moses. The writer of Hebrews quotes the prophecy of Jeremiah and argues that through Jesus Christ this has been fulfilled and a new covenant has been made. That old covenant has become obsolete.

The Jeremiah quote comes in the middle of a brilliant argument that this New Covenant is better than the Old. Jesus is Himself the basis of a new and better covenant. “This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant” (Hebrews 7:22). The English word “guarantor” is a financial term. It is a surety, bond, or promise by one party to assume responsibility for the obligations of another party. It is a better covenant because Jesus is a better priest, it is founded on better promises, and Jesus has offered a better sacrifice.

• The obligations of the New Covenant are undertaken by a better priest (Heb. 7.1-28). Jesus has entered into the true Sanctuary, Heaven itself, to intercede for His people. Jesus is a permanent priest, with the power of an indestructible life. This means that Jesus can take us farther than the priests under the Old Covenant.

• The covenant Jesus now mediates is also based on better promises. “But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises” (Hebrews 8:6). This is a reference to the promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The New Covenant is actually the original covenant (Genesis 12:1-3). The Covenant of Law was added to the original promise made to Abraham (Gal. 3.19).

• But it was the death of Christ that finally made it possible for the promises that God made to be fully realized. “Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant” (Hebrews 9:15). Sin had to be taken away so that the Promise could be fulfilled. The Old Covenant never took away sin. But since He died to take away sin, Jesus can now mediate all the blessings of the New Covenant that were originally promised to Abraham.

The writer has to make these arguments because these people, who were Jewish Christians, were being tempted to leave Christ and go back to observing the Law. But this would be a huge mistake because God has made a New Covenant. You can’t go back to the Old and those who do so cannot be retrieved again (Heb. 6.4-6). If those who disobeyed the Law were severely punished, what do you think God will do with those who refuse to hear Jesus and obey Him (Heb. 2.1-3; 4.1-2; 12.25)?

Why make a New Covenant?

So why did God have to make a New Covenant? Was there something wrong with the Law? Was God surprised by the people’s failure? We know that God is never surprised. In this case, man’s failure was part of the Divine Plan. God did not cause Israel to fail and break the Covenant, but He knew that they would. God made a covenant that He knew would be broken. The Covenant God made with Israel was like a controlled experiment to prove human frailty and failure.

But human failure does not negate the Divine Purpose. Though Israel broke the Covenant, that did not annul the promise God had previously made to Abraham. This means that God never changed His plan at all but has been perfectly consistent. The New Covenant is not “Plan B”! The failure of man does not derail the purpose of God.

God’s doesn’t make mistakes and His Word is without flaw. The Covenant did not fail because there was something wrong with the Law. The Law is holy, righteous, and good. It is an expression of God’s nature. And our response to God’s Law is an expression of what is in human nature.

God found fault with the people.

The problem with the Covenant was not the Law, it was the hearts of the people. The people did not keep the Law and therefore they did not keep the obligations of the Covenant. A covenant is between two parties that each agree to do certain things. As long as both parties hold up their end of the deal then the covenant is good. But if one or both parties fail to keep their agreement the covenant is broken, and there are usually penalties. A curse was pronounced on anyone who failed to keep the Covenant (Deuteronomy 11:26-29).

Were the commandments too hard? Perhaps God was just being unreasonable with the people. There are many people who think that God is some kind of ruthless tyrant who enjoys making our lives miserable.

The trouble was not that they could not obey it. The trouble was that they would not obey it. They had two paths set before them – life and death, blessing and cursing – and they chose to break God’s Law. This shows us what happens when human beings are given a choice. They inevitably make the wrong choice, just as Adam and Eve did. Free-will only results in death.

The people broke the Covenant.

Even though the people of Israel had good intentions to obey the Law of God, they did not do it. The people had said to Moses at Sinai to

“Go near and hear all that the LORD our God will say, and speak to us all that the LORD our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.’ 

And the LORD said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever (Deuteronomy 5:27-29)! 

So much for all good intentions! We say we are going to do our best, but we don’t. Neither did Israel. And it did not go well with them and their descendants. Many generations later Jeremiah charged Israel with breaking the Covenant:

“Hear the words of this covenant and do them. For I solemnly warned your fathers when I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, warning them persistently, even to this day, saying, Obey my voice. Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but everyone walked in the stubbornness of his evil heart. Therefore I brought upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did not” (Jeremiah 11:6-8).

Why didn’t Israel keep the words of the Covenant, which was the Law? Moses knew why the people would not remain faithful. “But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear (Deuteronomy 29:4). Even after receiving all of the blessings of God they people still turned away in their hearts. They did not love God, which was the first and most important commandment of the Law (Deut. 6.5).

Why didn’t God give them a heart to love Him? Because He was demonstrating through them the truth about human nature. There is something wrong with the heart or nature of man that Law cannot change. All of us have broken God’s Law like Israel. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The Law was given to teach us about sin. The Law stirs up sin in our hearts, making it come out of its dark hiding places. In Pilgrim’s Progress Bunyan compares the Law to someone with a broom sweeping a dusty room – the Law does not clean our dirty hearts but only stirs up the mess.

The Law was external. God knew that He would have to make another covenant, one that would address the internal condition of the heart, which is deceitfully wicked (Jeremiah 17.9).

God will make the Covenant.

The Covenant is not something that is discussed between God and man. There is no negotiation. No one can make a deal with God, though many people try. It is important to notice that Abraham did not go to God and ask for a covenant. Abraham was called by God. And the people of Israel did not ask for a covenant, but God brought them to Mt. Sinai.

The initiative to make a covenant was always with God, not man. The fact that God would make a covenant at all is a demonstration of His grace. He owes us nothing. We owe Him everything.

The New Covenant that God makes will not be the same kind of covenant that God made with Israel at Sinai. There is a significant different between the Old Covenant of Law and this New Covenant.

The Covenants are not the same.

Now remember that this New Covenant is actually a fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham, and then to Isaac and Jacob. The Covenant at Mt Sinai was a separate covenant and was a different kind of arrangement. The Abrahamic Covenant remained in force even after God gave the Law at Sinai.

But the promise that God made to Abraham was unilateral. That is, God simply made a promise to Abraham. There was nothing for Abraham to do except believe the promise. And Abraham did believe God, and his faith was credited to him as righteousness (Gen. 15.6). Later God gave Abraham the sign of the Covenant, which was circumcision. But Abraham already had the Covenant and had already been justified BEFORE he was circumcised.

Now this is an important point that Paul makes in his letter to the Galatians. The Galatians did not understand these things and they were trying to be justified by the Law and by being circumcised. So Paul made this distinction between the Promise God gave to Abraham and the Law He gave to Israel through Moses:

“This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one” (Galatians 3:17-20).

“God is one.” The Law was not unilateral. Moses was a mediator because there were two parties involved in the Covenant – God and Israel. This is the traditional model for a covenant. Israel had to obey to keep their end of the covenant. The blessings were conditional.

But the covenant God made with Abraham was not a traditional covenant. It was simply a promise and that is why there was no mediator between God and Abraham. God spoke directly to Abraham about what God was going to do. The Abrahamic blessing was not conditional. God Himself would bring the blessing. Abraham had to simply agree with God, or believe the Promise, to seal the deal.

If I came to you and told you that next year I would transfer a large sum of money into your account, and all you had to do was receive the money, then that is like the promise to Abraham. But if I told you that you had to sign a contract and agree to do a certain kind of work for me in order to receive the money, then that is like the Covenant at Mt Sinai.

The New Covenant that God made through Christ is just like the covenant God made with Abraham. In fact, it is a fulfillment of that Promise and so really the Promise and the New Covenant are one and the same.

The Law was added to the Promise because of the radical problem of human sin. The ministry of the Law was to prepare the people for the coming of Christ. That is why there were so many types and shadows, so that the Redeemer would be recognized and His work understood.

The righteous requirements of the Law are not erased.

Was God suddenly repealing the Law? Are the Ten Commandments themselves now unnecessary? Are we to become antinomians who have no standards for righteous living? It seems that some have taken the position that righteous living does not matter under grace like it did under the Law. So let us just keep on sinning so that grace might increase (Rom. 6.1)!

We must make two distinctions. First, there is a distinction between the Law, or the commandments, and the Covenant. The people of Israel entered into the Covenant with God when they agreed to obey the commandments. Secondly, there is a difference between moral commandments and ceremonial commandments. The moral commandments are universal, absolute expressions of righteousness and will never pass away, according to Jesus Himself (Matthew 5:17-19). It was the ceremonial laws – priests, sacrifices, washings, food, and tabernacle – that have become obsolete because these were types and shadows.

So the moral requirements of the Law still stand. God did not change and He did not relax His righteous requirements. In fact, the New Covenant is actually more demanding than the old, because it takes into consideration even the thoughts and motives of the heart. This was the theme of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Our righteousness cannot just be external, like that of the Law. We have to actually BE righteous, even in our hearts.

The New Covenant is not an “easier” covenant. It is not that God decided that the Law was too hard for us, and so He came up with something that was more laid-back. And yet there are some who seem to compare the Old Covenant and the New Covenant in this way: “Law is really hard and we can’t do it. But grace is easy. We all sin, you know, but its ok now! God is gracious and just forgives us when we mess up.”

There are multiple problems with this way of thinking. First, it makes God soft on sin as if God’s righteousness is something bendable or negotiable. Secondly, it ignores what God promised to do in the New Covenant. God does not change. But God would work a change in the hearts of His people. This is the promise of the New Covenant.

The Promises of the New Covenant

You can think of the prophecy of Jeremiah as an exposition of the promise of blessing given to Abraham. God promises blessing through Abraham’s Seed, which is Christ. How, exactly, will God bless His people in the New Covenant that Jesus established? God made four promises about the New Covenant, all of which come directly from the prophecy of Jeremiah.

1. The New Covenant promised that God would work in the hearts of His people.

That is the difference between the covenants. In the old covenant there was no transformation of the Heart. There was forgiveness, but no gift of the Spirit. This New Covenant is something God does in us, it is not something that we do, which was the case under the Law – “this do and live.”

God is going to perform spiritual surgery and circumcise the hearts of His people. This is why Jesus told Nicodemus, an expert in the Law, that he needed to be born again. Having the Law of God written on the heart is the same as being born of the Spirit (John 3.3-5).

The New Covenant is internal, not external. It is spiritual, not ritual. We worship God in spirit, putting no confidence in the Flesh (John 4.23-24; Phil. 3.3). The Old Covenant was a carnal covenant with carnal blessings. We don’t baptize infants because we recognize the difference between the Old and the New Covenant. The Old Covenant was something you were born into because you were a Jew. The sign of the Old Covenant was circumcision, which was done in the flesh.

But to be part of the New Covenant you have to be born again. And circumcision is done in the heart, not by man, but by the Spirit (Rom. 2.28-29; Col. 2.11)). God is not impressed by carnal religion. He looks at the heart. The Old Covenant was written on stone, but the New Covenant is written on the heart (2 Cor. 3.3-6).

The primary blessing or mark of the New Covenant is that God turns His people from their wickedness (Acts 3.26). God did not relax His righteous requirements, instead, he made His people capable of actually being righteous (Rom. 8.4). We now have those portable GPS systems in our cars that can direct us to our destination. The believer has been given an internal, spiritual GPS that always points us in the way that we should go. So if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the lusts of the Flesh (Gal. 5.16).

The prophet Ezekiel also prophesied about this new work that God would do in the hearts of His people:

“And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 11:19-20). 

“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:26-27). 

Notice the emphasis is placed on the work of God: “I WILL.” Anything that we do is simply a response to what God has done in us.

The work of God in us is so radical that Paul compared it to being raised from the dead (Eph. 2.1-5). C.S. Lewis said that we were like statues made of cold, hard stone that God has brought to life. Now we can live unto God like real people who can think, serve, love, and be loved.

2. The New Covenant promises that the people will love God and be faithful to Him.

Remember that love is the fulfillment of the Law (Matt 22.37-38). Israel had always struggled with loving God first and being faithful (Ex. 32.9). New Covenant people are NOT wayward or inconsistent in their devotion to God and have thrown down all the idols of the heart. If this has not taken place, then there is no New Covenant. When you have a group of people who are basically wayward, yet insist on being religious, then that is Old Covenant religion, and it is obsolete. Perhaps you have even heard Church people say “we are just like those Israelites.” Well, that is an amazing confession! What they are really saying is that they are not members of the New Covenant.

When we were children we related to our parents mostly through law. There was a parent-child hierarchy. We had to obey or there were consequences. Children need parents to guide them because they are not grown up yet and they don’t understand. Those who are under Law are like little children under the authority of parents (Gal. 3.24-25). What parents really want is for their children to begin to INTERNALIZE certain things so that they mature and become responsible adults. What God wants is mature, adult children who have actually participated in His nature (2 Pet. 1.4), who understand His ways, and who love Him freely. Eventually you have to move beyond a law-keeping mentality in your relationship with God and grow up in Christ. That’s the kind of people God wants.

3. The New Covenant promises that the people will know God.

The people were not intimate with God under the Law. The whole system told the people to stay back, lest you be destroyed! The very existence of the Tabernacle, with that curtain in front of the Most Holy Place, declared that there was a separation between God and the people.

But in the New Covenant, God Himself will teach the people. There is no person in the New Covenant who is ignorant of God. This is an intimate knowledge that is fellowship, not just an academic or intellectual knowledge. This is very personal, even though it is not private.

This does not mean that we don’t have to learn about God from Scripture or that we don’t need teachers and pastors to help us. But no one in the New Covenant will be ignorant of who the true God is, nor will they be kept from having intimate, spiritual fellowship with the Father.

There is no special class of people in the New Covenant who know God while the others remain ignorant and alienated. All of God’s people are priests and have access to God.

4. The New Covenant promises that God will forgive the sins of His people.

This is a once-for-all-time remedy for sin, not the constant reminder of sins that accompanied the bringing of sacrifices to God. The sacrifices under the Law were actually a reminder of sin, not of forgiveness. But the blood of Christ cleanses the conscience of the worshiper (Heb. 9.14). The Law was only a shadow that provisionally forgave sin. The repetition of animal sacrifices meant these did not take away sin. But the blood of Christ gives us confidence to approach God (Heb. 10.19-22). When Jesus died the veil was torn apart and the way to God was opened!

The only way to come to God is through Christ, not through Law. The Law is no longer in force as a covenant, or as a way of coming to God. The destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. – as prophesied by Christ (Matt. 24.1-2) - ended the sacrifices and the priesthood. The Jews have a future with God, but not through the Law.

If people do not give some kind of evidence that their hearts have been changed, that they love God, that they know God, and that they have confidence that their sins have been forgiven, then those people may be religious, but they are not members of the New Covenant.

The New Covenant is not found in the pages of Scripture, in a Creed, a denomination, an institution, a Church group, or in a theological position. You can have those things and not have the New Covenant. The people will just be religious and will be rejected by God.

But the same God who created the world and everything in it is in the process of creating a People, a Bride, who can share His life forever. Covenant is all about intimacy and the merging of two hearts into one. And so God’s greatest work, surpassing even the glory of the brightest stars in the universe, is His creation of a People to whom He could reveal His infinite love and who could freely choose to love Him in return forever and ever.

And that is the New Covenant.