THE TWO COVENANTS
May 5, 2018
(All Scripture taken from One New Man Bible unless otherwise noted)
When Y’shua ended His last Passover supper (or Seder) with His disciples He told us of the symbols of Him that we now use as the elements of Communion, which, by His words, speak of the New Covenant He and the Father were making with us.
Mark 14:22-26 “And when they ate, after He took bread and praised God, He broke it and He gave it to them, then said, ‘You must take this, this is My body.’ 23And having taken a cup, after giving thanks He gave it to them, and they all drank from it. 24And He said to them, ‘This is My blood of the covenant which is being poured out on behalf of many. 25Truly I say to you that never again am I drinking from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God.’ 26And after they sang the Hallel they went to the Mount of Olives.”
The Hallel is Psalms 113-118 and is sung not only at every Passover Seder, but every Friday evening in [practicing] Jewish homes before the Shabbat (Sabbath) meal is eaten that welcomes the weekly Sabbath which is from sundown each Friday until sundown each Saturday; which is the weekly rest period that our gracious Father built in for us so we don’t feel we have to work every single day.
Hallel means praise as you could probably tell by the meaning of hallelujah (the only universal word of every language since they were changed at the Tower of Babel), which means Praise the Lord. And in Hebrew is actually spelled HalleluYah, as in Yah Weh.
We won’t go through the whole of these Psalms, but let’s just look at a few lines of each. You may well recognize the lines of some songs we still sing in church that came from them:
Psalm 113:1-3 “HalleluYah! Praise! O you servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD! 2Blessed be the name of the LORD from this time forth and forevermore. 3From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same the LORD’s name is to be praised.”
Psalm 114:1-2 “When Israel went out from Egypt, the House of Jacob from a people of strange language; 2Judah was His sanctuary, Israel His dominion. 2The sea saw it and fled: the Jordan was driven back.”
Psalm 115:1&12-16 “Not to us, LORD, not to us, but give glory to Your name, for Your loving kindness, for Your truth’s sake.”
“The LORD has been mindful of us: He will bless us; He will bless the House of Israel; He will bless the house of Aaron. 13He will bless those who revere the LORD, both small and great. 14The LORD will increase you more and more, you and your children. 15You are blessed of the LORD Who made heaven and earth. 16The heavens are the heavens of the LORD, but He has given the earth to the children of men.”
Psalm 116:1-2 “I love the LORD because He has heard my voice and my supplications. 2Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live.”
Psalm 117:1-2 “O praise the LORD, all you pagans! Praise Him, all you peoples! 2For His loving kindness is great toward us: and truth of the LORD is forever! HalleluYah!” (This, by the way is the whole psalm.)
Psalm 118:1, 6, 24, 26 (This one is full of one liners we know.)
Vs 1 “O give thanks to the LORD, for He is good: for His loving kindness endures forever.” (Repeated in verse 29)
Vs 6 “The LORD is on my side, I shall not be awed. What can man do to me?” (See Hebrews 13:6)
Vs 24 “This is the day that the LORD has made! We will rejoice enthusiastically and be glad in it!”
Vs 26 “Blessed is He Who come in the name of the LORD! We have blessed you from the House of the LORD.”
And although His disciples did not yet know to Whom they were totally praising, as in the Messiah, Who was physically in their presence, they did sing a verse that spelled it out for them: Psalm 118:22, which was not only taken from Isaiah 28:16, which they knew well, but was also repeated by Messiah Himself.
Psalm 118:22 “The Stone which the builders refused has become the Headstone of the corner.” And the very next verse explains why it was not only necessary but allowed and even looked forward to, “This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” (vs 23, bold mine for emphasis) Marvelous in our eyes because of what the new covenant does for us and marvelous in His eyes for the same reason.
Isaiah 28:16 “Therefore thus says Adonai, the LORD, ‘Behold, I lay for a foundation in Zion a stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation…’”
Now although this cornerstone precept is repeated in three of the four gospels (Matthew 21:42, Mark 12:10-11 and Luke 20:17) after Y’shua shared His parable of the Vineyard and the Tenants, is it recorded by Matthew with the most detail.
The parable is about a wine maker who leased his land to some farmers and then went abroad. When the harvest time came he sent some of his servants there 3-4 times to collect, but the leaseholders kept getting more and more violent toward them and never did give him the grapes he had growing on his own land.
So he finally sent his son thinking that although his farmers were disrespecting his servants, they will surely respect his son and he will finally be able to collect his harvest. After all, it was still his land. However, he miscalculated their evil hearts; because as soon as they recognized the owner’s son, they confabbed and decided to kill him so they could inherit by default, as the heir apparent would be gone.
Sounds like what the devil has been trying to do to God’s property since the Garden, doesn’t it?
Anyway, after He laid out this scenario, He asked them what they thought would happen. Their response is followed by His quote and their reaction in Matthew 21:40-46, “‘Then when the master of the vineyard would come, what will he do to those farmers?’ 41They said to Him, ‘He will destroy those badly, evil people and he will lease the vineyard to other farmers, who will pay to him the fruit in their time.’ 42Y’shua said to them, ‘And then have you never read in the Scriptures, “A stone which the builders rejected, this became a cornerstone: this was done by the Lord and it is a wonder in our eyes.”’
“43‘Because of this I say to you that the Kingdom of God will be taken from you and it will be given to a people making its fruits. 44And the one who falls upon this stone will be dashed to pieces: and on whomever it would fall, it will crush him.’ 45And when the high priests and the Pharisees heard His parables they knew that He was speaking about them: 46then although they were seeking to arrest Him they were afraid of the crowds, since the crowds considered Him as a prophet.”
So basically He was telling them that they were right by asking them, in an indirect way (that they seemed to catch immediately), how they could foresee what would happen in the parable yet not know what was happening right before their very eyes?
Then He turned back to the crowds and told the Parable of the Marriage Feast (see Matthew 22:1-14 or Luke 14:15-24), which was along the same lines.
Now, my immediate thought about this (especially for those who stuck around, which we can assume most of them did if we keep reading through the rest of this chapter of Matthew) is, that if they knew He was talking about them, how could they not know Who was talking to them?
Deception is more powerful than we know! Not only does it make you believe something that is not true, but it also blinds. It blinds you to the obvious, it blinds you to common sense, which I guess, when you get right down to it is discernment, so as head-shaking as that may be has to make sense in itself. But it’s like watching a magician – although you saw what happened, you also know that what you just saw couldn’t be real. BUT you saw it, didn’t you? So how could it not be real? Even though everything inside of us can tell us that something just can’t be, sometimes we give in and just think that somehow it just has to because it appears so real.
The popular passage of Psalm 118:22 is repeated two other places in the New Testament, or New Covenant writings also: Acts 4:11 and 1st Peter 2:7, both times referred to by the Apostle Peter.
First in Acts 4, when he and John were standing before the Council of the High Priests’ family after they were put in prison for preaching the Resurrection: “‘By what power or in what name did you do this?’ 8Then Peter, because he was filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Leaders of the people and elders, 9if we are judged this day because of a good deed for an infirmed man by means of which good deed this one has been delivered, 10it must be known to you all and to all the people in Israel that in the name of Y’shua Messiah of Nazareth Whom you crucified, Whom God raised from the dead, by means of Him, this one stands before you whole. 11This is “The stone, the one who has been rejected by” you “the builders, the one who became the cornerstone.” 12And deliverance is not in any other, for there is no other name under heaven which was given to mankind by which it is necessary for us to be saved.’” (vss 7-12)
Then in 1st Peter when he was speaking of us being living stones and a holy nation.
When Y’shua asked His disciples Who people thought He was and Simon (aka Peter) declared, “‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.’ 17Y’shua said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, because, not flesh and blood, but My Father, the One in the heavens, revealed this to you. And I am saying to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I shall build My congregation and gates of Hades will not prevail against the congregation.’” Matthew 16:15-18
So how apropos is it that he should be given that analogy us being living stones? We are His feet, His hands, His mouth. We are here to show others His heart, His compassion, His love. Because we are in His New Covenant, the Covenant of grace. The Covenant where He did everything and we did nothing but BELIEVE that He did everything. Isn’t that wonderful? “For you are saved by grace through faith. And it is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Messiah Y’shua.” Ephesians 2:8 and Romans 8:1.
Go out this week and shine the Light that lives within you!! Bring them in – time is short!
SHALOM
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