80 - The Holy Spirit, New Covenant, and the Spiritual Life - Part 2 [B]

The Holy Spirit, New Covenant, and the Spiritual Life – Part 2
Romans 7:1–6; 2 Corinthians 3:6–18
Romans Lesson #080
November 8, 2012
www.deanbibleministries.org

I want to start tonight with just a couple of comments about the election the other day. Everyone I know was disappointed, at least I hope you were. In my conversations with a number of Christians I have ..., and I understand this although I'm going to be a little firm here. I hear this from people that whenever we get disappointed and I'm just tired of it. It just shows a kind of shoddy, simplistic wrong-headed thinking among Christians that has just gotten us into the mess we're in. They're saying, "Well, it's just God's will." In a sense that's true but in a sense it's not true. The reason it's not true is because you and I use that as a way to say, "Well, it really isn't bad." We dump it on God. It's God's fault. He planned it this way. You've just become a five-point Calvinist. You've just denied human responsibility and you've just laid it all on God's plan. And that's dead wrong. The reason evil succeeds is the same now as it was 200 years ago. Good men do nothing. It's volition. It's not God's volition. He allowed it; it's His permissive will. It's not His desired will. His desired will is righteousness, a righteous government, a government of justice, a government of law.

What happened on Tuesday was not the voting that put a government of law back in place or the potential for it but one that affirmed all of the evil that has been going on for the last four years and beyond. It's not just a Democrat thing but it is primarily a liberal problem and a moderate problem and a failure to understand absolutes. It doesn't help to ameliorate our disappointment by saying, "Well, it's God's will." In a sense it is; it's His permissive will but if you don't put an adjective in front of 'will', don't use it because you're muddying the water. This is a classic fallacy in logic. You're using the term and you're slipping from one meaning to the other without realizing it. It is God's permissive will but it's not His desire. What we do, very subtlety, when we say it's God's permissive will, what we're saying, is that God wanted it to happen so we can be okay with it. We can't be okay with it. You shouldn't be okay with it.

Not one place in the Scripture [you go back and read Isaiah, Jeremiah]. Yes, it was God's permissive will to allow evil kings to reign over Judah and Israel. But it wasn't His desired will and if you read the prophets they castigated the people because of it. They blamed the people; they didn't say, "Well, it's God's will so we'll just be happy with it." You don't find that attitude in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel and any of the prophets. Not once. So don't do that. We do that when someone dies. "Well, it's God's will." In a sense it is but Jesus wept outside the grave of Lazarus because the original desired will of God was not for people to go through the pain and the suffering and the horrors of death. He wasn't crying because He looked at the grave of Lazarus. You read the text. He wept because He looked on the heartache and the grief of the people and that was not the desired, intended will of God in the beginning for people to go through and to be spiritually dead and to go through the pain and the heartache of sin. That was His judgment but that was not His desired will, though that is His permissive will because He allows free will.

I heard one unbeliever say, "Well, what kind of God is this that allows this to happen?" That's the same argument but it's the unbeliever's version. "It's God's fault. It's a lousy God that would let this happen." We have to understand and I've said it all along: the reason evil happens is free will and as long as we have a God who allows free will, He permits evil to run its course but that doesn't mean we are to somehow rationalize the existence of evil and the horrible things that come with it by minimizing it with this cliché that it's God's will.

God permitted it. God permitted the Holocaust; he permitted the Black Death and we don't minimize the horrors of those things by just dismissing them as God's will. No, it's not God's desired will. God wants something that is much higher than that but that's the result of fallen human will. So we have to be careful with that. The reason we're in the mess we're in is because of human volition.

Part of that is because of the failure in Christianity, not institutional Christianity. I'm not using a vague and ambiguous entity to blame but Christians. Christians have failed. This room ought to be full every time I'm up here in the pulpit. That's a failure on the part of Christians who ought to know the Word of God. You look at what's happening among professed believers in this country under the age of 40. They're not showing up at church. Look out here. There are one or two that are here under the age of 40, maybe three or four, usually not on Tuesday or Thursday night. We've had a lot more on Sunday morning but they don't show up on Tuesday or Thursday. That's not my fault; that's not this church's fault. That's not the fault of "Oh, you're a teaching church. You teach pretty heavy."

Well, across the spectrum in this city we have [broadening it out to the suburbs and the sub-suburbs and distant areas outside of Harris county] we have five or six teaching churches. Each one of these pastors has different levels of education, different levels of experience, and different levels at which they teach. Some of them, because of their congregation and the level of growth of the individuals, have chosen to teach at a lower, less challenging level, let's say second or third grade. Others are fifth or sixth grade, others are at ninth grade, and I shoot for a little higher level. I've always had people who come in and sit in front of me; it doesn't matter what their background, they learn a tremendous amount and they grow. Your resultant spiritual growth is not dependent upon your human IQ, your training, or your background, or any of those things. It's dependent upon your volition.

All of these churches, whether the pastors are teaching at a somewhat more elementary level because that's where the church is, or at a more advanced level, the young people aren't coming. Go to Baptist churches. They're having the same problem. Go to many other churches; they're having the same problem because Christians don't want to know the Word. They don't want to apply the Word.

They don't want to be involved in evangelism. They don't want to be a light to the world. They are self-absorbed, just like their pagan counterparts, and as long as that is true of the church, of individual believers, and they're not excited about the Word, not excited about explaining the Gospel to their friends and bringing their unsaved friends to church, giving their unsaved friends the gospel and bringing their saved friends to church so they can really hear what good Bible teaching is: then, this is what we're going to get in our culture because Christians have lost the desire to really impact the culture around them. When they think that all that is necessary to impact the culture around them is to come and study the Word and to keep a good doctrinal notebook and to go home and just apply what they've learned selectively in their own life; if that's all they do, then they're a miserable failure. They're a partial success, which means they're a complete failure. Because they're not doing what the Word says to do in terms of that outreach. They're not having any kind of impact or even attempting to have an impact on the culture around them.

I remember back when I was a small child in the fifties and a teen in the sixties and growing up in a church that was growing by leaps and bounds, it was because the people in the pew were excited about what they were learning. They were bringing people with them.

They couldn't wait to get all their friends to come and hear somebody teach the Bible. That's how that grew. I'm not jumping on people just in this congregation, but if the shoe fits, you need to wear it but it's not just a problem here. It's a problem across this country and that's a failure on the part of Christians.

Christians are more comfortable living like their pagan neighbors than being a distinct counterculture within our culture. The ones who do too often are just legalistic. They're the Christian deconstructionists crowd and the post-millennial, and that's as wrong on the other side. So that's the reason we're in the mess we're in. The only solution is to change the worldview and that's the problem, the pagan worldview of this culture. The only thing that's going to change that is not going to be somebody who just has conservative, political-economic values because that's not the real problem. The real problem is like Rush Limbaugh has been saying, "They want a Santa Claus. They want somebody who's going to give them everything. They want handouts from the government. They don't know enough to even look at Europe or the Soviet Union and see how this has been an historical failure because they've been denied a good education because of their volition or someone else's. Until that changes, we're going to see that go down. As long as that's going down, we need to be in the Word even more. It's not getting easier. It's going to get a whole lot tougher. The only thing that's going to get us through those difficult times is going to be the Word of God. And the only place you're going to get is to be in class every time the Bible is being taught because the only thing that enables us to get through some really tough times is the doctrine in our souls.

That is a sad thing because the few that are here represent the few that are involved as Christians throughout the country. It's a minority that is shrinking rapidly. Twenty years from now if things are going the same way when most of us in this room are in our 70s and 80s, then we're going to have some serious, serious problems facing us because the government's going to be broke. There's not going to be anything there. It's going to be hard to find a church because there has been such hostility toward Christianity for the last twenty or twenty-five years so we need to be in prayer. We need to do what we're supposed to do as individuals and that is, witnessing, that is being excited about the Word of God in our lives, and reaching out and being a light for the world and that's part of our job.

Let's look at 2 Corinthians 3. It's a crucial chapter. I haven't worked through it in the detail I am now in the past but it fits so perfectly with what Paul teaches in Galatians 5, and what Paul is teaching in the framework of Romans 6, 7, and 8. Just to remind anyone here for the first time or listening for the first time this is part of our study in Romans, especially Romans, chapter 7. We're seeing this focus on what is the Christian's relationship to the Law in the first six verses of Romans 7. And in Romans7:6, at the end of that paragraph, Paul says, "But now we have been delivered from the Law [the Mosaic Law] having died [we died to sin when we trusted in Christ] to what we were held by so that [why have we been delivered from the Law?] so that we could serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter."

There are a couple of key words you should circle in Romans 7:6. The first is that word "serve" which is the Greek word DIAKANEO, which means to minister. Then we circle "Spirit" and "letter". Those are all key words that are part of what Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians 3 where Paul is partially defending his own ministry which is to the Corinthian congregation as part of his ministry service as an apostle. He says in verse 3, "Clearly you are an epistle [the Corinthian church is a letter in the form of changed lives. You may be carnal, you may disobedient, but nevertheless there's a difference between what you were before you were saved and what you are now], ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is of the heart."

What do you write with ink? You write a letter so it's just a different way of talking about a letter. It's the same thing, the same concept there that we have in Romans 7:6. "Service", the "newness of the Spirit versus the oldness of the letter." Paul goes on to say in 2 Corinthians 3:4, "And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient [have the power in] of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves [our training, our background, our skill, anything else] but our sufficiency is from God." Whatever we face, not just as pastors or apostles or ministers but this applies to any Christian, the sufficiency [provision] comes from God." He's the One who gives us the resources to face it and handle it, whatever it is." 2 Corinthians 3:5, "Who also made us sufficient, in Greek HIKANOS, as ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit." Made us sufficient as what? As ministers. Here those three concepts show up again. What I'm showing you is that going over to 2 Corinthians 3 is not just a rabbit trail but what Paul says here about the newness of the Spirit versus the oldness of the letter helps us to understand what he's talking about in Romans 7. We have to really work at understanding all of this.

Last time I started looking at the concept of the New Covenant. This is central here. We are ministers of the New Covenant. In all the passages we have of the New Covenant in Scripture whenever there's a party involved, it's always between God and the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It's never with the church. If you've been around a while and you've been exposed to the teaching of various dispensationalists over time, you would know that back in the 50s in that stage of the development of exegesis and understanding, it was typical of people like Lewis Sperry Chafer, Charles Ryrie, Charles Walvoord early on, to teach there were two New Covenants. One was with Israel and one was with the church. This would be a passage they would go to and say we're ministers of the New Covenant. Therefore, there must be a New Covenant with the church. That's when you make a theological deduction that really leaps about four steps away from the passage because there are other ways to understand our ministry of the New Covenant without having a New Covenant with the church because it doesn't say there's a New Covenant with the church.

The New Covenant is with Israel and doesn't get established until the future but it has benefits that go to Gentiles today. Just as I taught several years ago in Romans, when you have these New Covenant passages there's the party of the first part, which is God, and the party of the second part, which is the house of Israel and the house of Judah. And then you have Gentiles over here. Now in the Old Testament God made a covenant with Abraham and in that contract it says that because of this contract Gentiles are going to get blessing. So in the Old Testament, although it doesn't say this, when Jonah went to Assyria, he was a minister of the Abrahamic covenant to the Assyrians. Okay, follow me? He's being a blessing, fulfilling the third part of the Abrahamic Covenant, which said you will be a blessing to all the nations so he's fulfilling that. He's a minister of the Abrahamic blessing to Gentiles in the Old Testament. It was the same thing with Elisha and Naaman the Syrian. He was a minister to the Gentiles.

When we get into the New Testament we have something similar, we have the New Covenant which is future but it's still between God and the house of Judah; but now it's going to bring blessing to the Gentiles in the sense of the church. But there's a different dimension here because of the identification of the church with Christ, who is the party of the first part so our participation in the New Covenant comes because we're in Christ. That helps us understand how we as Christians can be ministers of the New Covenant, even though there's not a New Covenant with the church like there is with Israel and with Judah. It has elements in it that are similar to the New Covenant, which helps us understand this role of the Spirit. All this plays together in helping understand the role of the Spirit and this is explained in verses 7 and 8.

We started off looking at the New Covenant the last time and this is the eighth and final covenant in the Old Testament. It's the fifth Jewish covenant. So what are the other Jewish covenants? The Abrahamic. The Mosaic. The Land or real estate where God promises the land to Israel. The Davidic covenant [2 Samuel 7]. These others have all been made with Israel. The Land covenant is in Deuteronomy 29. God doesn't establish this covenant until later. The Davidic Covenant is already established. The Abrahamic Covenant is already established. The Gentile Covenants, the Creation Covenant, the Adamic Covenant, the Noahic Covenant, are all established. So the only one that hasn't been implemented yet, established with Israel and Judah, is this last one, the New Covenant.

A covenant is a contract between God and man. It's God's solemn pledge to fulfill certain promises that are outlined in the covenant. It has a legal nature. God is always faithful to His contract, even when man isn't. The term we used before, and still use a lot, is conditional versus unconditional covenants. There's a sense in which that's right and there's a sense in which that's wrong, too, because even in the Abrahamic, there's a condition. Israel is not going to enjoy the land that God's given them unless they're obedient. There's an unconditional nature to the Mosaic Covenant. What's the unconditional nature? It's still in effect! Deuteronomy 30. If you repent and turn back to me, I will restore you to the land. That hasn't happened yet and when it does happen, it happens as the final fulfillment, the unconditional promise of the Mosaic Law. So there are elements of conditionality within each of those other covenants. It may be primarily an unconditional covenant or primarily a conditional covenant. A better word is permanent versus temporary. The Mosaic Covenant was not designed to be permanent; it was designed to be replaced and it was, by the New Covenant.

I also pointed out that a covenant can be between two parties of equal stature or one is superior and one is inferior, and in Greek it has this idea of unilateral enactment from one to another. This goes along with the terms "permanent" versus "temporary". So the New Covenant is the third permanent covenant based on the Abrahamic Covenant: land, seed, and blessing. The land promised in the Abrahamic Covenant is expanded in the real estate covenant, the seed promised is expanded in the Davidic Covenant, and the blessing to the Gentiles is expanded in the New Covenant. It's an unconditional covenant, meaning the promise does not depend upon fulfillment of its promises but there will be a fulfillment. Israel will fulfill it because God gives them a new heart and new mind. He fulfills it for them.

Then I listed some passages and we started looking at them last week. Here's a list of various Scripture all of which mention something about the New Covenant although they don't use that term. The term that is usually used is "an everlasting covenant". Only in Jeremiah 31:31-34 do we have the term, "New Covenant". All these other passages either state results that are clearly stated in other passages as to what God promised in the New Covenant or it refers to the fact He will in the future make a permanent or everlasting covenant with Israel. In all these passages, including Hebrews 8 when it's mentioned in the New Testament, it's always between God as the party of the first part and the house of Judah and the house of Israel as the party of the second part.

Its importance is that it provides for the regeneration of the nation Israel, not of individuals, because they're already regenerate.

Remember in the Tribulation period, only those who are saved heed Jesus' words: “when you see these signs you're going to flee to the wilderness”. So they're already saved. They're already regenerate. In the new sense of the New Covenant that doesn't occur until after Jesus returns and establishes the kingdom. Just like Old Testament believers were regenerate, they got new life but they didn't get the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament regeneration comes with other features. In the future, in the Millennial Kingdom, regeneration will come with different features.

It's similar to software. I use Logos Bible software. When we bought Logos 3, that was a different dispensation. It didn't have nearly the features that Logos 4 had. Logos 4 was faster, slicker; it had all kinds of different tools that we could use. Logos 4 just got replaced last week with Logos 5. We're in the Millennial Kingdom now; we've got a whole new set of features. Okay? But it's still the same program. I hope that analogy works a little. There's regeneration in every dispensation but it comes with different features. It's sort of like the first regeneration is 1.0; then you get the next dispensation, you have regeneration 2.0. Then you get to the next one it's 3.0. Each one comes with new features [see I'm trying to communicate with the younger generation. The rest of you are going "hmmm??"].

Last time we looked at the core passage Jeremiah 31:31-34 where God promises, future tense, at the time of Jeremiah roughly 600 BC. Verse 31: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah..." It's yet future. It didn't happen any time in Jeremiah's lifetime. It didn't happen prior to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then in Jeremiah 31:32 God says, "Not like the covenant I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt..." When was that? That was 1446 BC. It's not going to be like that covenant. So here's a clear statement. The New Covenant replaces that old covenant. Jeremiah 31:33: "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord ..." "Those days", most of the time in the major prophets and some of the minor prophets like Nahum and Amos and Zechariah, those dealing with the end times, it's a reference to the time of Jacob's trouble, which we refer to as the Tribulation. So it's after those days, it's after the Tribulation, it's after the time of Jacob's trouble that God is going to initiate this New Covenant with Israel.

Then, "I will put my Law in their minds, and write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor and every man his brother ..." We covered that the last time, there's not going to be a need for one person to teach another because with regeneration will come an intuitive, exhaustive knowledge of the Scripture. We don't have that today; we don't have anything close to that today. We have something similar. We have the Holy Spirit, who enables us to understand the Scripture, but we still have to spend a lot of time reading and studying the Scripture to understand it. Then I went to Ezekiel 61:8-9. I think this is where I stopped last time.

Now I want you to turn with me to Isaiah 61. Isaiah 61 is a wonderful chapter on the future kingdom. I just want to point out a couple of things, go back and pick up the context. The context begins in Isaiah 61:1, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me. [This is the servant, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 speaking here] because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Jesus read this at the beginning of His ministry when He was asked to read in the synagogue the day this was the reading in the synagogue. But He stopped half way through, right where I stopped. Why? Because up to that point it's His first Advent.

After that, it's talking about what happens later in the Second Advent, the Day of Vengeance of our God. "To comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes [everything's been destroyed in the Tribulation and God restores beauty], the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Notice the contrast here. It is only God who provides real comfort. Now we share that comfort. 2 Corinthians 1 talks about the fact that we suffer so that we can comfort others with the comfort with which we've been comforted. So part of our fellowship with other believers is to comfort. Now that's not just putting our arm around someone, telling them we care. That's important. I'm not minimizing that but the real comfort comes from the content of doctrine, from Scripture. Sending someone a note with a promise in there that relates to what's going on in their life, telling them that, sending them an e-mail just to encourage them with the truth of Scripture. What we see in the Tribulation is that only God can comfort those who mourn; that is, the Jewish and Gentile survivors. They're sad; they're sorrowful, they've lost so many friends and family that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified."

Isaiah 61:4-7 continues, "And they shall rebuild the old ruins. They shall raise up the former desolations. And they shall repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations. Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks and the sons of the foreigner shall be your plowmen and your vine dressers [that is, the Gentiles will be under the authority of Israel] but you shall be named the Priests of the Lord, Men shall call you the Servants of our God. You shall eat the wealth of the Gentiles, and in their glory you shall boast.

Instead of your shame you shall have double honor and instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion, therefore in the land they shall possess double. Everlasting joy shall be theirs." What's the context here? The context is that this happens in the land when they're restored and when they're placed over Israel. This is important for understanding the timing related to this covenant.

Isaiah 61:8-9: "For I the Lord love justice." This is the point I was making earlier. God loves justice. He hates injustice. How can it be God's will in a positive sense when an unjust government gets elected? He doesn't love that; He allows it but He doesn't love it. So don't try to minimize it with some sort of supercilious rationalization. "I hate robbery for burnt offering. I will direct their work in truth and will make with them an everlasting covenant." So this is when the Lord makes an everlasting covenant. "Their descendants will be known among the Gentiles and their offspring among the people. All who see them shall acknowledge them that they are the posterity whom the Lord has blessed." So this just emphasizes that it is a future covenant and it is an eternal covenant.

Now we skip over a couple of books. Go from Isaiah past Jeremiah over to Ezekiel. Now Isaiah was about 730 BC or so to 720 or 710. Ezekiel and Jeremiah are contemporaries about the time of the destruction of the southern Kingdom of Judah. Go to Ezekiel, chapter 11. Ezekiel has been taken captive in one of the early transports and is taken over to Babylon and he is ministering to the Jews in captivity, which also included Daniel. In Ezekiel 11:17-19, he writes [at this point he's still in Israel; he hasn't been transported yet] "Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples, assemble you from the countries where you have been scattered..." That scattering is known as the diaspora which began in 722 BC when the Northern Kingdom has been taken into captivity, followed in 586 BC with Diaspora 2.0 as the Southern Kingdom is taken out. When they return at the time of Zerubbabel in 538 BC, it's only a partial returning. The Jewish community is scattered all over the Levant, the Roman Empire. The Jewish community is in Parthenon and Babylon still. There were more people outside Judea at the time of Christ than there were there. A partial return was necessary so there was a group there for the Messiah to come to.

Do you see a parallel with today? There has to be an entity in Israel for the Tribulation to take place. Otherwise there's no one for the anti-Christ to make a peace treaty with at the beginning of the Tribulation period, according to Daniel 9. So God is talking here about gathering them at the end of the Tribulation, "... and I will give you the land of Israel." That is the fulfillment of the Land covenant.

Then in verse 18, "And they will go there, and they will take away all its detestable things and all its abominations from there."

That's a removal of idolatry. That hasn't happened yet. Most Jews living in Israel now are not Orthodox; they're not observant; they're just secular but they're not religious at all. So there will be a spiritual cleansing. In verses 19-21, "Then I will give them one heart, and will put a new spirit within them,[the people this is happening to have already been saved and justified; they escaped to Petra, and they came with the Lord into the land but now they're getting this regeneration 5.0 in the Millennial Kingdom] and take the stony heart out of their flesh." A heart of stone is one that's hard and not responsive. That relates to what we see in the illustration of the Spirit and the letter in 2 Corinthians 3. It picks up on that analogy of the hardness of the tablets because there's no change internally on the part of the Jews under the Mosaic Law. "... and give them a heart of flesh that they may walk in My statues and keep My judgments and do them, and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. But as for those whose hearts walk after the heart of detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their deeds on their own heads." That's the judgment on the unbelievers that go through the Tribulation and they're sent to the Lake of Fire. That applies to Jew and Gentile.

Ezekiel 36:24-28 is the next passage on the New Covenant. Do you see some things that are similar to the Church Age? They're similar but not the same. That's why we can't say that the New Covenant went into effect on the Day of Pentecost because we're not experiencing this kind of ministry from God the Holy Spirit. This is only something similar in some ways. In Ezekiel 36:24, God says "For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all the countries, and bring you into your own land." See it's the same time period as the passage we just looked at in Ezekiel 11. It's talking about the end of the Tribulation period when all of Israel is restored to the land. Then God says in Ezekiel 36:25, "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you [they're already saved individually. This is a national cleansing because there's a restoration to their national ministry and national function among the nations in the world.] Back in Ezekiel 36:23 He says, "And I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst."

Contrast to verse 25 where He says, "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness, and from all your idols." This is talking about the nation as a whole, the distinction between individual and corporate involvement of ministry. "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." Ezekiel 36:27, "I will put My Spirit within you [that's the indwelling of the Spirit but it doesn't come with the same features that the indwelling of the Spirit comes with today. It has these other aspects to it] and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them." He puts His Spirit in us today but He doesn't cause us to walk in His statutes. And we don't. Just look at what happened Tuesday, prime example. We don't walk in His statutes. He doesn't make us... that's the difference between now and the Millennial Kingdom. There's going to be this total internal change that goes beyond anything we've seen before. They will keep His judgments and do them. Ezekiel 36:28: "Then you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; you shall be My people and I will be your God." This is the fulfillment of the promise in the Land covenant.

Then we go to the next chapter. We get a little more expansion on this. Again we have the dry bones passages and then in Ezekiel 37:21, "Surely I will take the children of Israel from among the nations wherever they have gone, and will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land." This is the end of the Tribulation period. "And I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel [Samaria and the hill country of Judea] and one king shall be king over them all [the Lord Jesus Christ] and they will no longer be two nations nor will they ever be divided into two kingdoms again." It hasn't happened yet. Not even close.

Verse 23, "They shall not defile themselves any more with their idols nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions but I will deliver them from all their dwelling places in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them. Then they shall be My people and I will be their God."

This is the faithfulness of God. However much Israel was unfaithful; however much the nation corporately rejected God, God doesn't reject them. He's true to His covenant. Verse 24, "David My servant shall be king over them [this is literal David; in his resurrection body he's going to be the prince who rules over Israel a lordship under the Lord Jesus Christ. "...and they shall all have one shepherd, they shall also walk in My judgments and observe My statutes and do them. Then they shall dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob, My servant, where your fathers dwelt, and they shall dwell there, they, their children, and their children's children, forever, and My servant David shall be their prince forever." Finally verse 26, "Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them..." So the New Covenant is also called an everlasting covenant and now it's called a covenant of peace. He connects the two together in the terminology. "... and it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; I will establish them and multiply them and I will set My sanctuary in their midst forevermore." That's what's going to be described in chapters 40 and following with the Millennial temple. "My tabernacle also shall be with them and I will be their God and they shall be My people. The nations also will know that I the Lord sanctify Israel when My sanctuary is in their midst forevermore." That's all New Covenant stuff. The point of this is that we see that all of these passages again and again emphasize that this goes into effect when God restores Israel to the land, brings them back from the four corners of the earth and re-establishes the nation under the rulership of David, the Prince, in the Millennial Kingdom. It's not today. We have similarities and foreshadowings today that are based on the New Covenant but it's not the New Covenant. It gives us just a hint in some ways of what it will be like.

So we get into this question then, going back to 2 Corinthians 3: What does 'letter versus Spirit mean?' What we have here in verse 6 "who also made us sufficient as ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." So there's this contrast between letter and Spirit. Look at verse 7, "But if the ministry of death, written and engraves on stones, was glorious..." In verse 8 the ministry of the Spirit is 'more glorious'. There's this contrast. So we have to decide what's the contrast of letter versus Spirit.

Remember, the letter written on the stones has its own glory so it's not wrong; it's not bad; it's just insufficient. This contrast between the letter and the spirit is grossly miss-taught. The first interpretation is that 'letter versus Spirit' is the idea of a literal meaning versus a spiritual or allegorical meaning. This has a root going back to the early 6^th century with a church father by the name of Origen, who did some good things and a lot of bad things in terms of his teaching, one of which he brought in this whole allegorical system of interpretation and he argued that 'letter' referred to the literal, external Scripture and that 'spirit' referred to a spiritual, internal and hidden sense of Scripture. So you had to get to that hidden sense, which didn't have anything to do with the literal, historical, geographical surface meaning of the text. That opens the door to making the text mean anything you want it to. You'll hear people use it that way many times...that the 'letter kills but the spirit gives life'. This is almost an idiom in the English and means don't emphasize the details of that law. If you emphasize the details of that law, then that's just going to destroy everything.

Then you have another interpretation of this, which tries to state that 'letter' refers to a legalistic interpretation of the law. But Paul is not contrasting different ways of interpreting the Mosaic Law here. He's talking about what's provided, not its interpretation. So this view says that the letter is a legalistic interpretation of the Law and tries to relate the meaning of the letter to the veil that's mentioned down in verse 14, "But their minds were hardened. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ." They are saying the 'letter' is the veiled mind of the Israelite hearing the Law. This is a very popular interpretation but again, it doesn't fit what's going on here. It's not a contrast between what humans do and what God does. In Romans 7:12, Paul says the Law is holy, just, and good so he's not condemning the Law here. What he means is that the Law on stones didn't give people the ability to obey the Law on stones. The letter didn't change the internals of the person. That's what the New Covenant does. It's going to give them a heart of flesh. It's going to give them a new mind, a new heart, and that's not given by the old Law. It's not that the Law was wrong; it's just that it was insufficient.

The third interpretation is simply that 'letter' refers to any type of warped interpretation or misuse of the Law. Part of the problem here is that Paul uses this analogy of the 'letter versus the Spirit' in only about three places. One is in Romans 2:27 and 29; another is in Romans 7:6, and then we have this passage here and that's most of it. But in Romans 2:27 the 'letter of the Law' doesn't refer to a perverted understanding of the Law but to possession of the Law in written form. The Jews of the Old Testament had the letter of the Law. This was a great thing. They had the Law. In Romans 2:29, letter refers to the external rite of circumcision, which is the application of the Law which Paul contrasts with spiritual circumcision which is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. So possessing the written code is only wrong because it led to a false sense of security in an insufficient Law. In Romans 7:6, '"the oldness of the Law and the newness of the Spirit" has this same idea. It focuses on two different ways of serving, one under the Old Testament dispensation and one under the New Testament dispensation of the Church Age. Letter refers to the concrete demands of the Law written in stone, whereas the Spirit refers to the new nature that is given to the believer and the enhancement from God of the Holy Spirit that you get with that.

Then fourth, this is the correct interpretation, it refers to different modes of the life of the believer. The letter is the Old Testament; it's insufficient; it's not wrong, it's insufficient. The Spirit is the new power given in the Church Age. This is what we see in our passage in Romans 7:6 "But now we have been delivered from the Law, having died to what were held by..." It condemned us. It didn't provide life. We're delivered from it so that now we should serve in the newness of the Spirit, not in the oldness of the Law, which was insufficient. This is the same thing Paul is saying in Galatians 3:10-14, "For as many as are under the works of the Law are under the curse..." The best that you could get from obeying the Law was a realization of condemnation. The Law just condemned you. It was a condemnation of what Paul calls "the ministry of death". It made people realize they were spiritually dead and incapable. Verse 11 says, "But that no one is justified by the Law in the sight of God is evident, for 'the just shall live by faith'." Galatians 3:12-13, "Yet the law is not of faith but 'the man who does them shall live by them'. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law..."

So in the Church Age that judgment of the Law is what we're redeemed from. Look at verse 14, "That the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus so we can receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." So Christ fulfills the Law so that the Law, which only condemns us, is ended and we can receive the promise of His Spirit which now gives us the ability to fulfill the Law.

So briefly, what we see here in 2 Corinthians 3:7-11 is this contrast between the insufficiency of the Law and the sufficiency of the Spirit. This is a problem today. Nobody in the church, whether you're charismatic or not, believes in the sufficiency of the Spirit.

People believe in the sufficiency of the Bible plus something. Christians today give it a lot of lip service and no internal obedience and reality. Verse 7 says, "If [and it's true] the ministry of death [the Law] written and engraved on stones, was glorious [see, it's a good thing] so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance.." It had a glory of its own but it's not the glory we have today. The second part of this verse asks, "... how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?"

The glory of the Law was like the glory of God. It was wonderful. But what we have today from the Spirit is even more wonderful.

Then in verse 9 we have the second condition, "For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory." What we see here, if you look at the bottom note, "ministry of death", "written on stone", and "the ministry of condemnation" all refer the Mosaic Law; they're just different ways of talking about it. It made people aware that they were spiritually dead. It was written on stone; it was a ministry of condemnation, and was replaced by a ministry of the Spirit and the ministry of righteousness in the Church Age. So Paul concludes in verse 10, "For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect because of the glory that excels [reference to today].

Compare the Old Testament Law to today; it really had a minimal glory because of the glory that excels it. 2 Corinthians 3:11, "For if what is passing away was glorious [the Law] what remains is much more glorious." That's what we have today. We have to understand that. This parallels what Paul says in the first four verses of Romans 8 so next time I'll show how all of this dovetails with Romans 7 and 8. The Law was just insufficient; that's what Romans 7 is about. It can't do it. Morality is great but it's not spirituality.

Morality is human beings being ethical in their own effort and energy. It doesn't cut ice with God. It doesn't make you more spiritual. The only thing that makes it in the Christian life is for us to learn to walk by means of God the Holy Spirit, walking in fellowship, learning the Word, and living it out in our life. Without that it's just a sham; just going through the motions. You have to focus on these riches that God has given us in the Church Age.