Old Testament Law to New Testament Love
Well, how about we cover the entire bible today? You know, … cover to cover. We’ve got the time don’t we? We have the attention span for that right?? Genesis to Revelation. “In the beginning” to “Amen”. How about it.
No? Ok. But we are gonna get to that, you’ll see.
Today I want to start off by asking you how many of you know that it is great to live in the New Testament era? Next I want to ask you all to sum up the Old Testament in just a few words. If there was any prevailing theme of the whole Old Testament, what is it?? Anyone?
I would like to suggest that we collectively identify the Old Testament as God’s Law. Can anyone argue that its not? Believe me I am open to discussion. But just know that I’m not gonna change the title of the message for it. 😊
The Old Testament is collectively about following God’s law. Let’s look at the very beginning. How do we start this all off?
From the amplified version, and I have a reason for that.
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God ([a]Elohim) [b]created [by forming from nothing] the heavens and the earth.
Now let’s look specifically at the Hebrew word for “created”. The Hebrew word bara is used here to indicate that God specifically BEGAN CREATING FROM NOTHING. So, how did God do this?
Short answer…… I don’t know, because only God can create from nothing.
Most of you all know that I’m a Drug dealer (Pharmacist..HAHA!) by day, and only occasionally chaplain or speaker up here. And now we are off on an epic rabbit chase! But seriously….. as a doctor of Pharmacy, I have a lot of science under my belt. Can we at least agree on that part?
Ok, well with all of that science, we can still only CREATE (really is more like just rearranging things) from WHAT ALREADY EXISTS.
Now down in Genesis 1:27 when God starts to create Adam, the Hebrew here indicates that he formed him from EXISTING matter, from the dust of the Earth that He had already created out of nothing. So short version, WE rearrange. That’s what we do today. We rearrange what we already have, mix it, heat it, grind it up, separate the good stuff from the bad, we might stir it, or even just let it sit and mix for a while. BUT…. Do we ever create from nothing??? NO, we DON’T!
So, if any of you all know about science stuff, we have all these rules that must be followed. Anyone want to tell me what those rules are called? …. They are called Laws. We have Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion, The Laws of Thermodynamics, Boyle’s Gas Law, Hooke’s Law of elasticity, Kepler’s 3 Laws of planetary motion, Newton’s law of Gravity, but my favorite is this one ….. The Law of conservation of Mass/Matter & Energy. Simply put Matter and Energy are neither created nor destroyed in any process. They may be converted from one form to another, transform to higher or lower energy levels, or even be displaced from one location to another. But, they never come from nothing and they can never be destroyed completely by any known method.
So, why is this my favorite? Because only God has ever created something from nothing. And the science people that want to argue science over God have a fundamental flaw from the VERY BEGINNING. Their own “Laws” say that matter is neither created nor destroyed. Well doesn’t that actually prove God’s existence? I’ll let yall chew on that one. And feel free to use it on that “science person” or that “I need proof person”.
So back to my original train of thought. What was God doing in the very beginning? Back to our Hebrew word…. He was creating out of NOTHING. God was creating all those “little-L” laws that we know and follow today.
Before we get the 10 commandments…. And lets be honest… How many of you thought that’s where we were going to start today when I said God and Law??? Gotcha didn’t I? Don’t worry, I’m headed there. But before we get the 10 commandments, we have God creating out of nothing all of these Laws that honestly, us mere humans are only recently discovering. Considering that man has been on the planet for about 6000 years, the last 100 to 500 years is pretty recent. But look at how far we have come in just the last 50 years! Wow! That’s prophecy being fulfilled by the way.
Daniel 12:4- "But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased".
But GOD creates. In the beginning,… He starts with these Laws. Think about it…. If GOD had just made dirt … “poof” … and given it no rules, what should it have done? There’s a law that I left out of the list on purpose. Anyone know what that one is?? The law of Entropy ….
The law of Entropy says that things in order will without “other intervention” or “greater laws” to keep it together, things will tend toward DISORDER. In other words, they will fall apart! So, in the beginning, God made all of these Laws for us before he spun the first bit of matter into existence. HE HAD TO OR IT WOULD HAVE ALL FALLEN APART!
So, if you sit there and say that God isn’t thinking about me, or doesn’t have a plan for me, or can’t possibly care about what’s going on here on earth……. Let’s just put all of those famous “excuses” to rest today, because we can prove that HE was planning so far ahead just to start creating the world that there is NO WAY that He has not thought out every single detail of your life. If He can keep dirt from falling apart with His laws, … He can keep your life from falling apart! Can we at least get an Amen for that???
And that’s a freebie for today …..
So, GOD, …… LAW…….. OLD TESTAMENT. Let’s dig a little further into the Law here. What is our next big milestone with the Old Testament? Well, for me it’s the flood. And the short version of WHY the flood is this. God was tired of man being evil….. Well to be evil, there had to be some kind of good vs. bad rules somewhere right. Let’s think about it. What happened in the garden? Adam and Eve ate from the tree of what??? The tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And Adam lived to be 930 years old. OUCH! I hurt at 45years old, so can’t imagine 930. Anyone got an amen there? …… Ok, Moving on.
They had the knowledge of good and evil. They knew God’s rules, God’s LAWS for living, and they passed those on verbally to their children and those children passed it on to others and so forth. But at the point of the flood, God himself says that the world had become so evil that (Genesis 6:5) “The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil.” Only Noah, a direct descendant of Adam was found to be righteous. We can argue about all the people on the earth and the giants and the fallen angels and all of that, but God wants everything wiped out at this point because it has all turned against HIS LAWS!
So….. he decides to start over with Noah and his family. And we all know the rest of the story, God sends the flood, wipes out everything, and saves Noah, his family, and a remnant of animals. These people and animals go out and repopulate the earth.
So, flood story over, what’s our next Old Testament Law milestone?
The TEN COMMMANDMENTS!
Thank you all (?) of you that helped me on that one. God decided that we couldn’t be trusted with just “Well Adam told us God said-so” and He decided to finally put it in writing! So, Moses goes up, and the Law comes down. Now we have the 10 basic commandments of God in writing so there’s no room to mess it all up. Its here, “carved in stone” for all to see. So now that we have Laws/Rules, we’re good right??? Well Moses talks to God for a while, and we get a few clarifications on the Law. So, 5 books of the bible later while wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, we have the whole Law.
Now do we follow the Law and please God??? Umm… Nope! We still find a way to mess it all up. And for the sake of time today I’m not going to take us through the 34 remaining books worth of Law making and breaking.
So, here is the fast forward short version.
Some of y’all were thinking that I wasn’t gonna make it by Lunch time didn’t ya?? Ok, hang on with me.
Children of Israel rebel and God punishes them. Multiple times.
Joshua leads the children of Israel into the promised land. YAY!
Judges rise and Judges fall. Vows are made. Vows are broken.
Sampson & Delilah
The story of Ruth starts to show us that outsiders really can become what God wants of all mankind. A heart that is set on Him.
David’s story of glory and curse, glory and curse, glory and curse is enough to rile up anyone’s bipolar tendencies. But in the end, he is a man after God’s own heart. And THAT is where our first step toward the New Testament begins. Anyone read the Psalms? We still can’t do better that what David wrote over 3000 years ago. But we aren’t quite there. We still have a few more Old Testament Law things.
Ezra and Nehemiah call Israel to renew their covenant (agreeing to follow the Law) with God.
We have prophets and kings that are told what to do directly from God. And even with the Law AND being told what to do by God, we still don't always get it.
Anyone here wish God would just tell you directly what to do? I sure do!! Ok thank you the couple of honest people we have here today. Yall better be glad we live in the age of grace! Take that halo off every now and then, it will let the blood flow back up into the brain. Ooops! Did I say that out loud?? Haha!
Solomon gives us wisdom and clarifies the true intent of some Law. God through Solomon and David starts showing us the full compassion and patience God has for us.
Isaiah and Jeremiah tell Israel that they need to repent. Isaiah even starts predicting far future events and his predictions are still with us today.
Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel, Hosea, Amos, they each give us more predictions some of which have come true, and some that are still to come. In fact, Joel is the one that tells us in Joel 2:28 “Then, after doing all those things, I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions.” And how many of us are seeing that going on now? I have never seen or heard the number of people having dreams and visions from God as I have the last few years. Adults and children alike. And this pushes us even closer to the New Testament and the age of the church. This verse here actually lines up in Acts chapter 2 for those of you who have been joining us for Sunday School. Spirit poured out on the day of Pentecost??
Then we have Jonah. God told Jonah exactly what He wanted him to do. But we talked about this, yet again in Sunday school a few weeks ago. God had to talk to us directly in the Old Testament. That’s why we had the temple. A place to go and meet HIM. To hear from HIM. To go make sacrifices and prove that we were sorry for breaking His LAW.
Am I making a good argument for living in the Church age? The age of grace?? I think I am.
But was this enough? Did it work? Did we all straighten up and follow God to the letter of the Law?
No???
Definitely not! We didn’t come close. And we’ve talked about this in Sunday School before as well. There was no way for any of us to live up to the code of the LAW. And in fact there were groups of people that had warped and twisted the Law to the point that there were factions of “I’m better than you’s” all over. Making a total mess of the system that God intended to be very simple. Any of you ever met one of those “Better than you’s”? I sure have. And I’m pretty sure they are called “Church people” by some. Any of you been pushed around by a “Church people”?? Well in the Old Testament we had those too! Wait, but there’s no church until the New Testament. We are reading Acts right now in Sunday school. Jeremy haven’t you been listening?? Yes, yes I have, but we had these guys in the Old Testament. They were the Sadducees and Pharisees. They were the Jewish “Church People”. And boy did they make it messy. So messy in fact that God had to send His Son down here to straighten it all out.
Can you imagine sitting there in heaven when God turns to His Son Jesus and says (Jeremy’s unapproved extra biblical commentary of what God really said) “You know they have it so messed up at this point that you are going to have to go down there and straighten it all out.” Jesus turns to the father. “Wait, what, why me? Let’s Paper/Rock/Shears (that’s the Old Testament version) for it”. And after countless ages of neither losing because they are both God, Jesus decides to just go do it, and the holy spirit is sitting back cackling while its all going on and Jesus and the Father both turn to the Holy Spirit and they say, “ohh….. just for that you are going to have to go down there and deal with those hooligans for 2 millenia!!”
Ok, Ok, lets get the New Testament part in here.
So, what did I say about the New Testament when we first started? How can we sum up the entire New Testament real simply?
Old Testament…..LAW. New Testament ….. LOVE.
The whole New Testament is about Love.
Jesus comes to earth as one of us. To prove that it can be done! To show just what a perfect and LAWFUL life looks. He did it! A perfect example. The perfect lamb. And HE became the perfect sacrifice for our inability to keep God’s Laws. And its in that sacrifice that we find the theme of the New Testament.
LOVE!
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
WOW! …… Love. With one clean sweep God wiped all of our slates clean.
All of us deserved death, we still do!
But Jesus brought us the precious gift of His blood. His pure blood, that has never tasted sin. He took our sins UPON Himself, not IN Himself. HE CARRIED OUR BURDENS/SINS for us! And He showed us that through Love we can please God.
The Greatest Commandment (Mark 12:28-31) I’ll switch back to NLT for this one so everyone understands! And I like Mark’s version just a little better. Its more complete.
28 One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The LORD our God is the one and only LORD. 30 And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] No other commandment is greater than these.”
So, is any of that unclear? Well if it was, there are 26 other books in the New Testament that tell the same thing. That Jesus…..GOD…..Loves us! He loves us so much that He died just to prove His Love.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell us the story of the time that Jesus spent with us. Showing us how to love and in which order we should love. Love God, then Love people. Its that simple.
So all of those Old Testament Laws are just a waste of the first 4000 years of man’s time on earth?????
NOPE! Jesus even tells us that specifically.
Matthew 5:17-20
17 “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose. 18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God’s law will disappear until its purpose is achieved. 19 So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
20 “But I warn you—unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!
Verse 20 right there tells us that nobody ever lived up to the fullness of the Law. Jesus says that we can’t get there by following the law. Now that’s not to say that nobody from the Old Testament made it to heaven. No, its up to God to judge them based on their keeping of the Law and their Heart for God. But Jesus came to share a better way. He came to show us the real way. The way of Love.
We have all fallen short of the requirements of the Law. And like we have said here before, it doesn’t matter which Law you have broken. All of them are sin and are worthy of death and hell. Well, all I did was tell a little lie, …. All I did was spread a little gossip, ….. All I did was take just a few bucks from that register, ….. All I did was take a little sip, …. All I did was try it once…..
Any of yall have another, “I only did………..”?
Well guess what? You need Jesus! Simple as that! He’s the only one now that can cover your sin and make you worthy of meeting God in heaven.
Look beside you. Seriously, look beside you! We are all in the same boat. The sinking boat of sin. No sin is heavier than another. They are all heavy enough to sink our boats like the Titanic.
Did you come here today expecting to meet “church people” that want to judge you? How long did it take you to just get here? To walk through those doors? To sit in that pew? To maybe listen to a guy up here talking? How long?
How long have you been holding on to the excuses. Those lies from satan, the enemy. “You’re not good enough”, … “They’ll make fun of you”, …. “They will never understand where you’ve come from”, … “Those church people don’t have a clue what you’ve been through”, … “If they find out what you’ve done, you’re cooked.”??????????????? “You don’t need Jesus to Love you!” ….. “I’ve got something better that will fill that blank spot in your heart and soul.” … “You better not go down there and pray, they will make fun of you, or better yet, they’ll ask you what’s wrong, then they will toss you right out on your tail!!!!”
Guess what………. EVERYONE in here NEEDS THE SAME JESUS!!
The same Jesus that said the Greatest commandment was to FIRST…… LOVE GOD!
Then #2 but no less important…… LOVE PEOPLE!
If you are afraid today from that little voice that keeps pulling you back, then In the name of Jesus Christ MY Lord and Savior, I command that those evil whispers and thoughts be banished from your presence and this building right NOW!
Now listen very carefully without all that distraction……… Jesus spent 27 books of our bible telling us how Love is the primary reason that He came. HE LOVES YOU! He Loved you enough to give His life for you! If He … God can give His life to you for all of eternity, then the least we can do is to give Him the rest of our lives here on earth now!!!
One of the Last things Jesus told us before He went back to his rightful place in heaven was this:
Matthew 28:20 - And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
And Revelation 22:20-2 follows that up by saying: 20 He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. 21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.
The GRACE of the LORD JESUS. At the beginning I asked you how many of you were glad to be living in the New Testament times. Well, I hope you can all say that you agree now. HIS grace is enough to cover a multitude of sins. He loves us enough to continue putting up with our silly shenanigans. All the garbage we have already done, all we continue to do, and all we will do in the future. His blood is powerful enough to cover it all. All the excuses, all the past, all the burdens you’ve carried and never shared with a single living soul.
Jesus doesn’t want “Church People”. “Church people” will hurt you. It was Church People, those Sadducees and Pharisees, that crucified our Lord!!! I can tell you that we here at East Alcoa don’t aspire to be “Church People”. We aspire to be Children of God. Warriors in the Army of Christ. To live up to the name of our Youth program…. Accepted.
He is ready and waiting to take that burden from you today. The message of LOVE is still going forth from the eternal Word of God. The whole WORD is still alive today and HE stands at the right hand of the father just waiting for you to open the door to your heart. He tells us that He stands at the door knocking. Will you answer that call today??
If you haven’t made the decision to follow Christ and ask Him to be the Lord of your life. Today is the day. Do not wait! You are not guaranteed a single second more in this life. Come join us today. You don’t have to come to this altar. This church will be the first to tell you that you can come to Christ right where you are. The parking lot, The front porch, In the back hallway, Down in the Children’s department, In the Kitchen. But…… I do invite you down here today. Today this is a SAFE PLACE for you to let it go and to meet God. If you need healing or just to pour your heart out to God. He is here waiting to meet you. Come now and meet the Lord who poured out His precious blood to cover your sins. To fulfill the LAW that we could never keep. To show us LOVE and GRACE. Come now as they play.
