Is God really all good?: # 3

                                             Adapted from unrealreality.org

    Before we take a look at Jesus, let’s see what the Old Testament prophets had to say about the New Covenant, that was to come: Jeremiah 32:40 "And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good …" and Isaiah 54:10 " For the mountains shall depart And the hills be removed, But My kindness shall not depart from you, Nor shall My covenant of peace be removed,” Says the LORD, who has mercy on you." (See also Is 55:3, Is 61:8, Jer 31:31-33, Ez 16:60). So we can see that the prophets predicted a new, everlasting covenant, of goodness, kindness and grace, which God had told them, was to come ... and it did. There are also over 300 direct prophecies of Jesus, spoken about in the Old Testament as well as many more types and shadows of the coming Messiah; He was prophesied as being the Christ, or the anointed one. He would be the one who would set the captives free, be the prince of peace, establish a new kingdom on earth and be the savior to the world. He came and He did all these things and more, He established a New Covenant.

    In Hebrews the writer says this 8:7 "For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second" and later on he says in v13 “A new covenant, He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” The 'He' that is being spoken of is Jesus and the covenant that is being made obsolete in the old-covenant, the Mosaic covenant. Galatians 3:13-14 says, "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree'), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith"

    So, if we are under the new covenant, how does God relate to us? He has made the covenant of the law of no effect, nullifying the curses and amplifying the blessings. See above versus for reference on God's inherent nature, but most obviously we must look at Jesus' life, to see how God relates to us. JESUS IS PURE THEOLOGY. If we look at Him we see love, we see kindness, gentleness, wisdom, righteousness, justice, patience, we see all the fruit of the spirit endowed in one person; a sinless person. When we put our faith in Jesus and the finished work of the cross, God sees us through Jesus, He sees our born-again spirits as being perfect and blameless, just like Jesus (Eph 1:4, 2:7, 2:13; Col 1:22). As the atoning sacrifice, Jesus, was the beginning of the New Covenant (Heb 9 -10), the beginning of God's best for all who choose to believe in His Son.

    When questioned on fasting, by the Pharisees, Jesus had this to say in Matthew 9:16-17, “No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse. Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” Jesus uses the metaphor of the new patch onto the old garment and the new wine into the old wineskin to illustrate the fact that He has come to bring a new covenant, one where the old ways of a works-based religion won’t work anymore, He has come to do the will of His father and nothing else.

    This point was made even clearer when Jesus’ disciples wanted to call fire down from heaven on those people who rejected Jesus, in Luke 9:55-56, as Elijah had done in 2 Kings 1,. But Jesus rebuked them saying, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them” Showing a significant difference in how God relates to us now, under the new covenant, to how He related to us under the old covenant. (See also Eph 2:14-17)

    To conclude: God is not angry with us, He is not putting ridiculous trials on us to make us stronger, He is the giver of good gifts, always, all the time (James 1:17). Life is tough enough without God having to make it even tougher for us. The new covenant is a covenant of love and grace, by which we enter through faith (Eph 2:8), made possible by the sacrifice of Jesus (Col 1:21-22). It is a covenant by which we go from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18), where our sins are not held against us and GOD IS IN A GOOD MOOD!

Character

Pic by Annabelle Mintz

Is God really All Good? #2

A Covenant with Israel: Choose Life
 

    In Exodus 19 (see also Exodus 25:40) we read the account of Moses on Mount Sinai, where the Lord institutes the covenant of the law with Israel. This included the Ten Commandments and the other hundreds of commandments, which were linked to the ten. In Deuteronomy 5:2-5 it says, “The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb”, in reference to Exodus 19. This covenant is explained further in Deuteronomy 28, where God explains the blessings attached for obeying this law and the curses as a result of disobedience.

    The first thing we must realize that Israel had a choice, they could choose not to go under the law or not, God always gives us a choice. But, in their pride, they told Moses to go and speak to God for them, telling him they accepted the deal and that they understood the consequences (Deuteronomy 26:16-19). Deuteronomy 30:19 “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life" God always gives us a choice; He even gave us the correct answer, “choose life”. By saying this God was still true to His word, however, He gave the Israelites every opportunity to live in the blessing rather than the curse. He gave the Jewish nation 2000 years (from Adam to Moses) to run to Him and submit their lives to Him, out of their own free will, but they didn’t, the morality of the people went from bad to worse. Something had to be done if Jesus was ever going to come from this chosen people, even though the law had serious consequences, the alternative, a lifetime of separation from God due to our sin, was not an option. A temporary solution had to be made.

    What we see here is a covenant made with ISRAEL, not with us. One where they fully accepted the terms of the agreement, regarding obeying the laws, unto righteousness, and disobeying the laws, with consequences. GOD NEVER ACTS CONTRARY TO COVENANT, thus we see that when the Israelites contravened the terms of the covenant by sinning in some way, God was compelled to act in retribution, the way He promised He would, even if it meant torment on His chosen people. God is always righteous, just, merciful and true; (Ps 7:11, Ps 46:5, Ps 97:2, Ps 52:8, Ps 57:10, Ps 85:10) when He makes a promise He makes it and shows no shadow of turning, it's not in His nature to contravene His own nature. But, keep in mind, God His love (1 John 4:16), the covenant He made with Israel was out of love for all mankind.

“But their (Israel) minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” – 1 Corinthians 3:14-16

    So, does God still relate to us based on the covenant He made with Moses and Israel? Does He still punish us, today, as He did with the Israelites back then? Most people believe this, but the answer is an emphatic NO. In order to understand this, though, we must take a look at the new covenant. JESUS CHANGED THE EQUATION. Everything leading up to Jesus was inferior, a type and a shadow (Hebr 10:1); it was never God's best for the people He loved, Jews and Gentiles (Hebr 8:7). Paul spends most of his time in his epistles proving that the law of Moses has no relevance to the born-again believer and that we are under the new covenant: a covenant where God is not holding our sins against us, He does not bring sickness or disease on us to make us stronger and is not angry with us. Let's take a look at how this can be possible, is it possible that God is in a good mood? (Hebr 8:13, 2 Cor 3)

More in the next post ...

Is God really All Good? #1

   The question that I'm attempting to answer is a common one. Most people are taught and believe that God is good up to a point. That He is good in certain areas, but in other areas He does things, bad things. He does these things to us for us to learn some sort of lesson. So, why is it important that we have the correct perspective on God, that we understand His true nature? It is important because the way we see God determines the way we relate to Him and the way we relate to God will determine the strength and openness of our relationship with Him. The kind of relationship you have with God determines directly how you see the world and where you fit into it. If we have an incorrect, warped view of Him and His intrinsic nature, things that happen to us and to those around us won't make sense, we will blame God for things that He isn't responsible for, thereby putting huge strain on our relationship with Him. Herein lies the problem: The very thing we believe to be true about God can cause us to want nothing to do with Him. There is something wrong with this picture.

   Let's take a look at what the bible says about God's nature. We must look at scripture in context; context is a powerful weapon to the person making claims from it. We need to make sure our exegesis is spot on in our study of His word; this can help eliminate some elementary confusion. You must be prepared to draw conclusions from the Word and not from what someone tells you. As individuals, we are responsible for how we see God, no one else. Most people don't let the bible get in the way of what they believe; they let their own experiences determine what the bible must be saying. We can't afford to lower the truth contained in the word to the level of our experience, rather we should see and understand the truths contained in the bible, then believe that our experience of God lives up to that.

   Firstly, to understand why God does what He does, we must take a look at the different covenants He has had with man over the ages. God relates to us based on covenant, a covenant is a promise that is made between two parties, in the Old Testament times these covenants were made between God and Israel and now, through Jesus, the new covenant is made between God the born-again believer, you and me.

   His first covenant was with Adam in Genesis 2. Noah and his family, in Genesis 6, were the next to have a covenant with God. The bible says in Gen 6:8 “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” and later on in verse 18 God says, "But I will establish my covenant with you ..."As God’s plan for the redemption of the world started to unfold, He then made a covenant with Abraham, which is recorded in Genesis 17. The human race still continued to decay in the moral abyss and thus a covenant was made with Moses and the children of Israel in Exodus 34. The final, everlasting covenant between God and man was through Jesus. Prophesied of over 500 times in the Old Testament and looked upon as the defining factor in the New Testament, this is where our focus will end up.

   Let's take a look at two of the Old Testament covenants and see why they were made and how it affected God relating to us. We know that when God made the earth it was perfect, sinless (Gen 1 and 2) however, at the fall of man sin entered into the world. Did God know this was going to happen? Yes. Did He make provision for this eventuality? Yes. Revelation 13:8 says that Jesus was slain before the world was even created. God knew what was going to happen and He knew what needed to be done. I can just imagine Jesus saying, “Create them; I’ll pick up the tab” About 500 to 800 years after creation, God made a covenant with Abraham, this is the first indication that God wants to use a specific people group to bring forth the Messiah. God said this to Abraham in Genesis 17:7, "And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you ... for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you" God goes on to describe the covenant with Abraham, one where He will bless him and all his descendants, bringing them unparalleled prosperity and only have good intent towards them.

   So what has God's promise with Abraham got to do with us? The whole reason God chose a person, Abraham, and a people, Israel, is so that He could bring forth a messiah, Jesus, the anointed one. Paul writes in the New Testament in Galatians 3:7-8 "Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, 'In you all the nations shall be blessed.'" and later on in the same chapter he says v29 "And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise."

   It becomes quite clear then, that as born-again believers, we are the seed of Abraham and therefore heirs to all the promises that God made to Abraham all those thousands of years ago. However, the confusion for the modern day believer comes in when, around 600 years later, God instituted the covenant with Moses (Mosaic covenant), this covenant included a series of laws that the Israelites had to follow. There were blessings and curses which followed as a result of keeping or breaking these laws. Keep in mind that God doesn’t like sin at all, He abhors it, but we are/were sinners, so how do we harmonize this?

Read on in the next post to follow shortly.

Pic Courtesy of runawayjuno.com