[soc.religion.christian] OLD COVENANT == NEW COVENANT - Ishmael and Isaac

davidbu@loowit.wr.tek.com (David E. Buxton) (04/05/91)

ABRAHAM AND HIS TWO SONS - PAUL'S ALEGORY:

In order for us to better understand the two Covenants Paul offers the  fol-
lowing alegory:

     "For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by  a  bondwoman,
     the  other  by  a  freewoman.  But he who was of the bondwoman was born
     according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise,  which
     things  are  symbolic.  For  these  are the two covenants: the one from
     Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which  is  Hagar;   for  this
     Hagar  is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now
     is, and is in bondage with her children; "  --  Gal 4:22-25  (NKJ)

Man's reflex response to this scripture is to conclude that the Old Covenant
represents  a  law  of bondage and the New Covenant represents total freedom
from obedience to God's law.  By now it should be  obvious  that  we  cannot
accept  such  an  interpretation.   What  security  really is there in using
selected texts of our choosing to support an expedient philosophy?  We  need
to  examine  the story of Abraham a little deeper and then the true applica-
tion of this alegory will be clear.  Some highlights from the story of Abra-
ham:

     "I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and  make  your  name
     great; and you shall be a blessing. "  --  Gen 12:2  (NKJ)

     Years later Abraham complains that God has given him no offspring, sug-
     gesting  that  one  of his servants inherit the promise.  God takes him
     out to the stars and assures him that so will be his  descendants,  too
     many  to  count.   Abraham  believed  and  it  was accounted to him for
     righteousness. (Gen 15:3-6)

     Sarai urges Abraham to take her maidservant and have a child by her  so
     that  God's promise can be fulfilled.  The result of this union was the
     birth of Ishmael to Hagar, the  bondwoman  of  Abraham   (Gen  16:1-4).
     Abraham was 86 when Ishmael was born.  (Gen 16:16)

     God insists that Abraham will have a son  born  to  Sarai,  now  to  be
     called Sarah because she will be the mother of many nations.  Sarah was
     90 years old and so Abraham fell on his face and  laughed  (Gen  17:15-
     17).

     The birth of Isaac when Abraham was 100 years old.  (Gen 21:1-7)

From this story outline it should be clear that God's promise to Abraham did
not  change.   After Ishmael was born God renewed His promise and then Isaac
was born. Let us be clear, the new promise was exactly  the  old  promise  -
Abraham  would father many nations as the stars of the heavens and the sands
of sea.  God's promise was not at fault.  It was Abraham's response to God's
promise  wherein the failure lay.  Ishmael became a symbol of Abraham's lack
of faith and not a symbol of a faulty promise from God.   It  was  Abraham's
lack  of  faith that resulted in the birth of a slave boy to Abraham's bond-
woman.

We can remain in bondage to sin and rebellion as symbolized by Ishmael or we
can claim the victory and freedom from sin as symbolized by Isaac, the mira-
cle boy, the son of promise. We too, as Christians, can be the true son's of
promise, the evidence of a miracle worked out within our hearts:

     "And if you are Christ's,  then  you  are  Abraham's  seed,  and  heirs
     according to the promise. "--  Gal 3:29  (NKJ)

Under the New Covenant we can inherit all the promises God offered under the
Old Covenant.

To insist that the New Covenant simply does away with the 'law' is  to  deny
the  power of the gospel, they - "having a form of godliness but denying its
power. And from such people turn away! "--  2 Tim 3:5  (NKJ)

HISTORY OF THE JEWS -- PARALLELS WITH ISHMAEL

A study of the history of Israel and the Jews reveals  many  parallels  with
the story of Abraham and his son.  This story of Abraham is indeed a precise
alegory of the Old and the New Covenants being in reality the same Covenant.
As  my table showed, God was eager to place His law in their hearts, for His
law to be a law of love, to love God with all thy might and thy neighbor  as
thyself.   They  were eager to do it in their own strength and to have their
own king instead of God and His prophets.  As they turned  to  God  and  His
ways  they  prospered.   When they turned away from Him, God could no longer
protect and bless them.  God was eager to lead them and nurture them and  to
place  His  law within their hearts. But they so often turned away from Him.
And so, because of their lack of faith, their rebellion and their  idolatry;
they  ended up in bondage.  Instead of being the sons of promise they became
the sons of bondage - bondage to conquering nations, bondage to sinful  liv-
ing and the bondage of the Mishna laws of legalism.

DON"T CHANGE HIS WILL AND TESTAMENT:

Consider another point that Paul makes:

     "For where there is a testament, there must also of  necessity  be  the
     death  of  the  testator.    For  a testament is in force after men are
     dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives. "  --  Heb
     9:16,17  (NKJ)

     "Brethren, I speak in the manner of men: Though  it  is  only  a  man's
     covenant,  yet  if  it is confirmed, no one annuls or adds to it. "  --
     Gal 3:15  (NKJ)

Paul is saying that the New Covenant had to wait until  Jesus  died  on  the
cross  before  it  could go into effect.  Until then the priesthood of Aaron
remained the administrators of the Old Covenant and  it  was  expected  that
lambs and oxen continued to be slain.  Paul also makes it clear that as soon
as Jesus died, nothing could be added or deleted from the Covenant.  In  the
above  texts  Paul  makes it clear that nothing can be added or deleted from
the Covenant following that Friday of His death if we wish to call it a part
of  the  New  Covenant.  Baptism and the Lord's Supper were added before the
cross.  Nowhere in the New Testament do we see any new additions made to the
Covenant.  While Paul, for example, does magnify or explain, he adds nothing
new.

According to Paul's statement even the following Sunday would have been  too
late to shift things from Sabbath to Sunday.  Jesus had said nothing about a
change to Sunday and He is the testator of the Covenant.  You  may  wish  to
say that any day will do, but you cannot say that Sunday comes under the New
Covenant.  And from history we confirm that the shift  came  after  all  the
Apostles  were  in  the  grave.   A  key  issue of the day was the Judaizers
insisting on the annual Sabbath sacrifices of  the  Old  Covenant.   From  a
study  of  history  we  see that the 7th day Sabbath was not at all an issue
until much later, after the Apostles were in their graves.  The  context  in
which  Paul  urges that we study for ourselves the question of Sabbath days,
was in the historical context of deciding what to do about the  annual  Sab-
bath  days  such  as  the Passover.  It was the sacrificial system which was
nailed to the cross (Heb 10:1-14Rev 14:6).   These  annual  Sabbaths,  which
occured  on  any  day  of  the  week, did very much involve the sacrifice of
animals.  Even in the context of the Gentiles the Apostles do their  preach-
ing  on  the Sabbath (Acts 13:14, 15, 42-45; 14:1; 15:21; 16:13; 17:1-4). In
Acts 18 we see that Paul preached 78  Sabbaths  to  Jews  and  Greeks  (Acts
18:4,11).   The  New  Testament  is  full of examples of Sabbath keeping and
lacks examples of Sunday observance.  Nowhere in the  Bible  can  Sunday  be
associated with the New Covenant.

There are several places in the Old Testament where God's prophets  sound  a
warning  that  if they continue to turn away from the Sabbath that they will
be taken into bondage (Jer 17:19-27).  My reading of this is  NOT  that  God
drew a line in the sand and announced that He would punch in the nose anyone
who stuck his big toe across the line.  Rather God intended His  Sabbath  to
be  a  hedge about them to keep them from an increasingly materialistic life
style so that they would have some time to spend with Him.  In spite of  the
warnings, they trampled the Sabbath hedge, became increasingly materialistic
and turned more and more to idolatry.  How could God place His law in  their
hearts  when  they  refused to spend even one day a week with Him?  How else
can God place His law in our hearts unless we slow down for His Sabbath  and
spend  the  time  with Him (Hosea 4:6).  Consider what the "any day will do"
philosophy has done for the majority of Christians who are  mere  spectators
to  religion  for an hour each week in church and have no time to be serious
Bible students.  How can people claim God's law  in  their  hearts  if  they
don't  give Him the time to do it.  Siting that there are exceptions to this
generality is like siting that some young teen  agers  get  married  without
ending  in  divorce.   The  Sabbath is clearly part of the secret of how God
goes about placing His law in our hearts - if we will but let Him.

THE LAW UNDER THE NEW COVENANT:

Some texts to consider:

     I know that his commandments lead to everlasting life.  (John 12:50)

     ". . . it is those who obey the law who  will  be  declared  righteous"
     (Rom. 2:13)

     Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith?  Not at  all!   Rather,  we
     uphold the law."  (Rom. 3:31)

     The wicked - immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosex-
     uals, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers, swindlers - none of these
     will inherit the kingdom of God.  (1 Cor. 6:9-10)  "And  that  is  what
     some  of  you were.  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were
     justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our
     God."  (1 Cor. 6:11)

     No immoral, impure or greedy person has any inheritance in the  kingdom
     of Christ and of God.  (Eph. 5:5,6)

     "But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that  gives  free-
     dom,  and  continues  to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but
     doing it -- he will be blessed in what he does."  (James 1:25)

     He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar,
     and the truth is not in him.  (1 John 2:3,4)

     "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and
     keep  His  commandments.  For this is the love of God, that we keep His
     commandments. And His commandments are not  burdensome."   --   1  John
     5:2,3 (NKJ)

     The remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God,  and  have
     the  testimony  of  Jesus Christ.  (Rev. 12:17)  "To the law and to the
     testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it  is  because
     there is no light in them."  --  Isa 8:20  (NKJ)

     "Here is the patience of the saints:  Here are they that keep the  com-
     mandments of God."  (Rev. 14:12)

     Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right  to
     the tree of life.  (Rev. 22:14)

     Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right
     to  the  tree  of  life, and may enter through the gates into the city.
     (Rev 22:12- 14)

WE CANNOT KEEP THE LAW

We are certainly correct when we say that man cannot keep the terms  of  the
Old  Covenant nor the same terms of the New Covenant, to keep God's law.  To
attempt to do so would be to give birth to a  life  symbolized  by  Ishmael.
Legalism  is born of man's attempts to keep the law.  With both Covenants we
see God eager to place His law in our hearts.  Also,

     "that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;  that  you,  being
     rooted and grounded in love, "--  Eph 3:17  (NKJ)

     " "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice  and
     opens  the  door,  I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with
     Me. "--  Rev 3:20  (NKJ)

That is the secret, the gift of His presence that He offers us.  The  secret
is  in  having  Him  keep  God's law within us.  We must ask God to work the
miracle so that we can be born again.  It is a re-birth into a life of  vic-
tory  in  Christ, a death to the old self.  We can ask for the miracle birth
of Isaac, a re-birth of promise.  That is  what  being  born  again  is  all
about,  a miracle, as was the birth of Isaac.  It is the power of the Gospel
for victory in Christ Jesus, a power  that  no  true  Christian  will  deny.
Without  the saving power of the Gospel we are born again as was Ishmael and
the bondage of sin continues to grip us. The re-birth that Jesus  offers  is
to be born as Isaac, a re-birth of promise and not of bondage.

Dave (David E. Buxton)
From the Silicon RainForest of the Northwest