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THE COVENANT WITH DEATH

Part I

In determining the boundaries of the Spiritual Substance in the Triuniverse, the Lord has revealed important information about the Spiritual realm.

The previous series, The Iniquity Machine, enlarged our perspective of the triune nature of reality. We have, for instance, learned that God exists as the Spiritual Singularity, in that His will is initiated through His own existence.

"Who hath declared this from ancient time? Have not I the Lord? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me" (Isaiah 45:21).

The blueprint for our knowledge about eternity, and existence in the domain that is commonly called "heaven," is the Holy Bible. Many "spiritually" oriented men have come and gone, but the Scriptures inform us that all the non Christian religious men that have come to prominence arose out of the earth – and are therefore, not to be trusted.

"No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven" (John 3:13).

Jesus made further revolutionary statements concerning the exclusivity of His assertions.

"He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber" (John 10:8).

Christ stated the central theme of Scripture, as He plainly stated He was sent by God to redeem the "lost sheep" of the Lord's chosen people of Israel. The sequence which is seen where that phrase "to the Jew first and also the Gentile" (Romans1:16, 2:9-10, etc), is seen in the chronology of Christ, where He sends His disciples exclusively to the Judaeans.

"These twelve [disciples] Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not" (Matthew 10:5). 

He never said He would not include the Gentiles in the Father's plan, only that at that stage of the sequence, salvation was of the Jews. Indeed, we have previously shown how God progressively releases His will, as we learn to wait upon the Lord for His direction.

In fact, under the Old Testament order of salvation, the LORD had already made provision for the "stranger" (meaning Gentiles) who was willing to join Himself to the family of Israel.

"When a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and will keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised…and he shall be as one that is born in the land" (Exodus 12:48).

As Christ pronounced He is the "good shepherd" who cares for His sheep, He even hinted that there was more to be revealed in His timing, as He indicated He had "other sheep."

"I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd" (John 10:14,16).

Thus, there was a provision for those who recognized the LORD was with Israel, from the beginning. Essentially, the story of Israel is the story of the LORD's work in His efforts to redeem mankind, as He chose to partition mankind into portions to achieve His will. In an effort to demonstrate His deity, Israel was chosen as His mediator between God and the rest of the nations.

"What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy…even us whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?" (Romans 9:22-24).

This verse articulates the plan to redeem the Gentiles through Israel (the "vessels of mercy") as His mediator to the balance of the nations (the "vessels of wrath," i.e. the Gentiles). Obviously, instead of exporting "his glory" to the Gentiles, Israel imported the Spiritual darkness of the Gentiles, and served their "gods."

Because the New Covenant was repeatedly prophesied to be directed towards Israel – including the details of how the LORD was re-approaching Israel in spite of their lack of repentance -- it would not be appropriate for Jesus to include the Gentiles in the early stage of the Lord's moves of redemption because the Old Covenant was broken by Israel, as opposed to the Gentiles.

Israel's turning away from the Lord to follow the ways of the Gentiles was precisely what God had warned them about from the earliest time.

"Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods" (Exodus 23:32).

The Old Testament laws of God had insisted that the Israelites remain separate from the Gentiles.

"Lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them" (Deuteronomy 4:19).

As Israel turned against the LORD and worshiped the many heathen deities of the Gentiles, their apostasy reached its apex under Solomon, who allowed the worship of the heathen gods into the temple that he built. Solomon's leadership in allowing the mingling of heathen deities in the temple of the LORD resulted in sharp rebukes from the Lord.

Non-biblical Jewish writings suggest that Solomon was subsequently plagued by evil spirits, and his solution was to bring an image into the temple that he thought would shield him from the oppression he was evidently experiencing. In accord with Ezekiel 28:12-19, this emblem was thought to have originated in Tyre, and Jewish sources uniformly indicate it was the six pointed star, as most Jewish extrabiblical writings refer to it as the Shield of Solomon.

It is also mentioned in the Old Testament as the Image of Jealousy.

"The spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate…where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy" (Ezekiel 8:3).

The prophet Amos also connects the emblem with the temple, as the image has become the universal symbol of Israel, for it is now erroneously called the Star of David. 

"Ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves" (Amos 5:26).

Not only is there no Scripture whatsoever linking the 6 pointed star with good king David, it was the fiery denunciation of the Christian martyr Stephen – when he also linked the star with the "Tabernacle of Moloch" – that enraged the Jewish priests to the degree that they chewed on him with their teeth like wild animals when they murdered him.

After a detailed recounting in which Stephen described Israel's worship of the Gentile "host of heaven," he included the Lord's reaction.

"Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness?"

"Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon" (Acts 7:42,43).

Thus, as the New Covenant between God and Israel was being revealed, the Lord had scattered Israel in judgment, but because His prophets had already indicated the light of God would shine to the Gentiles through Israel, He chose to forgive the Jews with the offer of salvation through the New Covenant.

God found that the evil that had taken root among His chosen resulted in no one being worthy to take the lead and resume His program wherein Israel was to be the mediator of the LORD's glory, shining before the Gentiles.

"The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none" (Ezekiel 22:29,30).

Since the LORD had already anticipated Israel's fall -- but that He would "yet choose Israel" (Isaiah 14:1) to shine His glory to the Gentiles -- He purposed to send His only begotten Son as the Saviour, so He could keep His promise to the Gentiles.

"I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles" (Isaiah 42:6).

He called Israel through His Son to receive the new aspects of this covenant – and all of it was a fulfillment of prophecy specifically directed to Israel.

The LORD recounted the circumstances of Israel's fall through the prophet Ezekiel.

"When the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their own way and by their doings…wherefore I poured my fury upon them for the blood that they had shed" (Ezekiel 36:17,18).

The prophet went on to recount the LORD's judgments on Israel, and it is apparent He was particularly angered because He had chosen Israel for an extremely honorable role, and they not only turned against God, they worshiped the heavenly host.  

"And [so] I scattered them among the heathen…and when they entered unto the heathen, whither they went, they profaned my holy name" (Ezekiel 36:19,20). 

To the prophet Isaiah, the LORD telegraphed His moves – even including the fact that He would call the Gentiles through the New Covenant.

"For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob" (Isaiah 14:1).

This set the stage for the splitting of Israel into two entities: Those who yielded to the promise of Spiritual Life in JESUS CHRIST, and those who rejected the Life through their rebellious nature of Flesh and Blood, so that they indirectly re-affirmed their Covenant with Death. In short, in the Christian age, there were two Israels.

"They are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children...that is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise [of the Savior] are counted for the seed" (Romans 9:6-8).

- James Lloyd

To Be Continued