2002-01-01
Good Morning Faithful Readers,
When I first began to study the New Testament, no doubt later in my life that you did, I was not yet converted to the idea that all of the Scriptures were the revelation of God’s plan for us. That may seem strange, but you must understand that I had a pretty good working knowledge of the OT and very little experience with the NT. Of course, that was one of the areas of my faith that God decided to put His hand on and change. I am here to witness to the fact that, as always, He was successful. Some of the citations I share today are those which convince me of the truth of the NT. God leads me to continue discussing the New Covenant, the Covenant of Grace.
A real testimony of God’s omniscience and of Christ’s relationship to God [JN 14: 9, 11] is found in the story of the last supper. MT 26: 20- 25, “When it was evening, Jesus and the twelve disciples sat down to eat. During the meal Jesus said, ‘I tell you, one of you will betray me.’ The disciples were very upset and began to ask Him one after the other, ‘Surely, Lord, you do not mean me?’ Jesus answered, ‘One who dips his bread in the dish with Me will betray me. The Son of Man will die as the Scriptures [PS 41: 9; IS 53] say He will, but how terrible for that man who will betray the Son of Man! I would have been better for that man if he had never been born!’ Judas, the traitor, spoke up, ‘Surely, Teacher, You do not mean me?’ he asked. Jesus answered, ‘So you say.’” We know the rest of the story of what actually happened to Judas after the betrayal. MT 27: 3-5, “When Judas, the traitor, learned that Jesus had bee condemned, he repented and took back the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. ‘I have sinned by betraying an innocent Man to death!’ ‘What do we care about that?’ they answered. ‘That is your business!’ Judas threw the coins down in the Temple and left; then he went off and hanged himself.”
Now, one might ask: since Judas repented, why wasn’t he saved? The answer to that is in the fact that he repented with remorse but without faith in Christ. His repentance came only after he realized what a deep hole he had dug for himself. The thirty coins of silver mentioned here sent up a mental flag for me. I remembered reading in ZECH 11: 4-17 about how God had asked Zechariah to become like the “inept shepherds” who had been given responsibility over the Jews (their “sheep”) and had done such a poor job of taking care of them during the Babylonian Captivity. This may seem on initial inspection like a crazy thing for God to ask of Zechariah, but He was trying to teach the people a lesson here and at the same time foreshadow things yet to happen in the NT. ZECH 11: 11-13, “So the covenant was canceled that day [the day Zechariah broke the stick called “Favor,” canceling His covenant with the nations that were supposed to have taken care of Israel]. Those who bought and sold the sheep were watching me, and they knew that the Lord was speaking through what I did. I said to them, ‘If you are willing, give me my wages. But if not, keep them.’ So they paid me thirty pieces of silver as my wages. The Lord said to me, ‘Put them in the Temple treasury.’ So I took the thirty pieces of silver-the magnificent sum they thought I was worth-and put them in the Temple treasury.” Zechariah was clearly being sarcastic here, and justifiably so. MT 27: 7 tells us, “After reaching an agreement about it, they used the money to buy Potter’s Field as a cemetery for foreigners.” From the traditional Jewish point of view at that time, these people were ritually unclean, so the money was being used for an ungodly purpose.
The real value of these Scriptures is in demonstrating to all of us that God does indeed have a plan which arises out of His love for us. He is eager to bring as many people as He can to faith in Christ, so that they will be saved. The frustration that He must feel when people are exposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and reject it must be enormous. That is because I believe God has taught us to reach out to others in love to show us that love is what He is all about. He wants us to as closely as possible mirror His example. Through my study of the Scriptures, the hunger for which is a gift God has given me, He has been able to show me that the connections between the OT and NT make them parts of a consistent whole. Events which happen in the OT foreshadow those in the NT. I have come to believe that every jot and tittle of the Bible is the truth given directly to us by God. There are just too many consistencies for one to claim accidental coincidences. This is particularly true where Jesus Christ’s messiahship is concerned. Some theologian studying this matter actually did a statistical analysis on the probability that Jesus Christ is the Messiah based on all the prophecies about Him in the OT. Jesus Christ was the only person in mankind’s history to Whom all these prophecies applied, making it as close to a statistical certainty that He is the Messiah as mankind has the mathematical knowledge to calculate. That doesn't amaze me, because God has told me that is the truth. What amazes me is that this statistician and theologian went to all this trouble in the first place. We must also note that Jesus knew ahead of time that Judas Iscariot would betray Him. That was no accident. He knew God’s plan, even if none of His disciples understood it yet. Meditate on the truth of all of God’s word today.
PRAYER: O Lord, because You gave us free agency, we are not puppets on Your string. You desire for us to know the whole truth as You reveal it in both the OT and the NT. Then, You command us to use our free agency to live by it. There are some that reject You and Your Son. They pay a terrible price. Such is the case for Judas Iscariot. There is no accident in what happened to him. Because You are omniscient and the Creator of a magnificent plan of salvation for mankind, You knew he would betray Your Son as a part of that plan. While Your prophet, Zechariah, didn’t know the details, He was obedient to You and followed Your commands to him. Dearest Savior, that is what you want us to do. In his example and others in the OT, we are allowed to learn the lesson that your prophecies come true. Events of the OT really do foreshadow ones of the NT. We learn from Zechariah and from what we read in Matthew about Judas Isacariot’s nefarious activity that Your power is supreme and that You never use it for evil purposes. It is only mankind which is so capable of coming under the power of Satan and doing such evil. Today, we dedicate ourselves to learning these lessons well, to studying and believing both the OT and NT, and to putting our trust in Your ultimate righteousness. To that end, we humbly offer You our worship, adoration, trust, obedience, loyalty, glory, honor, praise, and thanks. In Christ’s name, amen.
Tomorrow, the Lord leads me to continue discussing the Covenant of Grace. The availability of His truth through the Bible and prayer in our everyday lives is a wonderful manifestation of His love for each of us. We cannot only take a part of it or extract Scriptures out of context and know the full truth. God knows this, which is why we are admonished not to add or subtract from anything said in the book of Revelation at the end of it [REV 22: 18-19]. Because Revelation is the consummation of all the prophecies of the OT and NT, it is wholly appropriate to apply this admonition to the entire Bible. God’s love undergirds this wonderful book from GN 1: 1 to REV 22: 21! Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn