Bondman

PRACTICAL NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTIANITY

MESSAGE #37

NEW OR OLD TESTAMENT?? - Part 1


This contains very important information raised in Fluffy's post about her Seventh Day Adventist friend (above). SDA's are NOT the only ones who don't understand how the Old Testament/New Testament thing works. In their case it can prevent them from EVER having any ASSURANCE OF SALVATION at any time! - that's how serious this matter is!! So it's my earnest hope that this will be a help to MANY here, hopefully sweeping away an awful lot of cobwebs that have gotten into the church about this important matter!


THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

God set His people to keep these in OT times - and I'm sure we all agree they are GREAT commands indeed! Just one problem: you can't keep them (perfectly)! Not possible!! Think God didn't KNOW that?!! He gave them to His people, as much as commands to (try and) keep, as to show we human beings THAT WE'RE SO SINFUL WE CANNOT EVER HOPE TO KEEP THEM!! That is, to help CONVINCE/CONVICT us of sin!!! - without which not one single person can ever get saved!!!

Paul specifically deals with this MAJOR subject in Romans and Galatians (plus other places - very worthwhile to have a read straight thru Galatians after you've read this message! I'm just summarising, okay, or we'll be here all day! *smile*) Alright, if the Ten Commandments cannot be kept, where does that leave US? Answer: FORCED - if you will - to accept God's GRACE to save us!!

Fluffy and her friend have raised what I've said here over and over: we do NOT live in the OT now. Since Christ we all live in the NT, are under the NEW Covenant!! We are NOT under LAW any more, hallelujah!! We're under GRACE (God's totally undeserved love and favour!) And believe it or not, because of this, we are NOT under THE TEN COMMANDMENTS any more, as so many think!

To prove this for yourself, do a search through the NEW TESTAMENT to look for just one place where it says we must keep the Ten Commandments. Oh, before doing that, please note that in many places where the word "commandments" may appear in your translation of the Bible, in context in the Greek it's perfectly simple to show that this simply means "COMMANDS" - and is certainly NOT referring back to the Old Covenant Ten Commandments. FACT: you won't find the Ten Commandments in the NT.

Jesus was once queried about this very subject, and what did He immediately do? He summarised the Ten Commandments, reducing them down to just TWO - for us, and for the rest of time!!

Matthew Ch 22
35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”
37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

In fact if you then look for actual 'commands' given to us in the NT, i.e., things God really has told us (since Christ) that we must do, you'll find that 9 of the 10 Ten Commandments HAVE come forward into the NT in one form or another. But one is missing. Bet you can't guess what it is!! The one missing is keeping the Sabbath, i.e., no work of any kind from Friday dusk to Saturday dusk, that good Jews still keep, and Seventh Day Adventists keep.

NO NEED, people! It's not in the New Testament as something God tells us to do!!! Rather we're told NOT to put ourselves back under LAW, okay! And of course Sunday has NEVER ever been the Sabbath. Rather it's the first day of the week when Jesus rose up from the dead. And nowhere are you commanded to do anything with it by God!


continued in Part 2...

- BM, with his Lady