The New Covenant

Excerpt from Discover the Story of Your Biblical Heritage, pp. 57-60

To understand what the Bible says and what it means in regard to the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, the historical background you learned about in the previous chapters is, once again, ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL. So, let’s do a quick review of the important truths and facts that we have covered that are foundational to what you are about to discover in the rest of the chapters in this book.

· God made unconditional covenant promises on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their physical descendants. The important implication to remember is that God would fulfill these promises. This is certain! (Review these promises if you need to on page 13.)

· God and Israel agreed to a conditional marriage covenant through Moses. This conditional covenant was based upon the obedience of the people of Israel to the laws of God.

· Israel remained a united nation until the death of King Solomon.

· After Solomon’s death, the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, called Israel, became a divided nation (the house of Israel and the house of Judah) and became mutual enemies of each other.

· Both houses rebelled against the God of their fathers and broke the covenant God made with them through Moses. The important implication was that they continually sinned against God and each other by violating or transgressing God’s laws and, thus, became subject to God’s promised curses.

· One of those curses was that God’s people would be scattered or dispersed “among the nations.” The house of Israel went into captivity and exile in Assyria and “among the nations.” The important implication is that they were divorced by God and reckoned by Him as not His people any longer nor in covenant relationship with Him. They were cast off as God’s covenant people.

· Several years later, all of the fortified cities of Judah were also taken captive to Assyria. Only Jerusalem remained to represent the house of Judah.

· 133 years later, the remaining house of Judah went into captivity and exile to Babylon, but a small portion of them returned to their own land after 70 years. God never divorced the house of Judah. Now only the house of Judah represented the nation of Israel until the New Covenant.

So, here we have a hopeless situation for the vast majority of Israelites who were of the northern house of Israel. They have been cut off from God. Would God forsake His people forever? No. How could He? God made unconditional and certain covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their physical descendants. How could God go back on His own oath to them? But how would this situation regarding the divorced house of Israel be remedied?

The answer is revealed in God’s faithfulness and plan to form a New Covenant that would completely replace the Old Covenant. That is what you are about to discover.

Promised Restoration

We begin with the prophecy of God’s plan of a future restoration of the house of Israel and the house of Judah in the words of the prophet Jeremiah:

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. – Jeremiah 31:31-32

There are five important facts about this promised restoration in these verses:

1. It was a New Covenant that God was going to make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah – all twelve tribes.

2. The New Covenant would be made with the same physical descendants of the “fathers” who God brought “out of the land of Egypt.” These physical descendants would be comprised of the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

3. This New Covenant would be in contrast to the “covenant” which God had “made with their fathers.” That “covenant” was the Old Covenant through Moses that God made with the ancestors of the house of Israel and house of Judah who “broke” that covenant.

4. The Old Covenant through Moses was a marriage covenant because God said He “was a husband” to all Israel.

5. In the New Covenant, God would forgive their “iniquity” and “sin.” “Sin is the transgression of the law” (I John 3:4, KJV).

The New Covenant was a promised restoration and reconciliation between God and the house of Israel and the house of Judah. What the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could not do to justify themselves before God nor be reconciled back to their God as His people because of their sins and rebellion (transgression of God’s laws), the New Covenant would remedy. What a great hope the twelve tribes must have had from the prophecy of Jeremiah that one day in the future, God would make a New Covenant with them.

In addition to the promised benefits of the New Covenant, God would not only take away their “sin” but put His “law within them” and write it “on their heart” (Jeremiah 31:33). In place of the written law of God through Moses on tablets of stone, God would write His law on their heart. What a magnificent promise that God would not and could not forever “cast off all the offspring of Israel for all they have done…” (Jeremiah 31:37).