We have discussed what God wants us to do in light of the new covenant. Our job is to live a grace based relationship with God rather than the performance based relationship of the old covenant. Now, let’s take a look at what God wants us to have. Under the old covenant God’s blessings were primarily material. If you got back to the agreement God had with His people in books such as Deuteronomy and Leviticus, you will see that every one of the promised blessings was material. The foremost was the promised land. With that came material prosperity and protection from their enemies.

Is the new covenant the same? Is the primary blessing of the new covenant material riches? Some would argue that it is. I have heard folks quoting the promises of the old covenant as if they are still God’s central blessings. If you think that, consider that the central blessing of the old covenant was the promised land. All else revolved around that. Is God’s major will for your life to give you a hunk of real estate in the middle east? No, God’s new covenant blessing is a kingdom not of this world. All else revolves around that.

If we study the blessings of the new covenant, we see a remarkable shift in emphasis. Paul said that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 1:1-3). Jesus coined the phrase “treasure in heaven,” and he spoke of it as being far more important than earthly treasure. He also said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matt. 6:33).”

So, what is the new covenant’s primary blessing? In other words, how would you answer this question: What does God want to give me more than anything? What you believe God wants for you more than anything is the thing you will seek most, so it is important that our hearts are in alignment with God on this matter.

When we read the new testament, the new covenant blessing becomes obvious. The new covenant blessing is Jesus. It is to know Him and to partake of Who He is and what He has done for us.

The old covenant blessing was to participate in a land, a physical nation, and a physical blessing. The new covenant blessing is not a land but a Person. It is to participate in Christ. God wants us to participate in Who Jesus is every day. He wants us to participate in the glory of what Jesus has accomplished in His death and resurrection every day. In the old covenant God filled their stomachs. In the new covenant, He fills our lives with Christ. Just as they grabbed a hold of their old covenant blessing, we are to grab a hold of ours. We should expect God to give us a lot of His Son every day. In the midst of our troubles, in the midst of our enemies, in the midst of our failures and successes, we should expect a lot of Jesus.

In Jesus we see the breaking forth of grace and truth. At the cross we see the fullness of these things. There, instead of cursing those who deserved to be cursed, He became the curse for them that they might be blessed with the promise of the Spirit.

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” ), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Galatians 3:13-14

What does this say about our relationship with God under the new covenant? The old covenant framework said that we need to be a person worthy of God’s blessing. The new covenant framework says we are people who deserve a curse, but we have a blessing in Christ instead. We are people who deserve to be far from God, but because of Christ, we are near instead. We are a people who deserve to have nothing, but instead God has given us everything. We are a people not under the Law but grace.

Do you see the difference in relationship with God? God wants a grace based relationship with us under the new covenant, not a performance based relationship. When we can see ourselves as a person who gets far more than he could ever deserve everyday, we have begun to understand grace. Grace is for everyday not just for heaven someday. Grace is the basis of our walk with God under the new covenant.

It is hard to grasp, but trying to be somebody God can accept is actually counterproductive in our relationship with God. Accepted is something we are, not something to we become. Living in that acceptance is how we relate to God.

How do we relate to God? What does He want from us and what does He want for us? I believe if we don’t know the answer to these questions, we are going to have trouble with God. Yet, when we understand the new covenant answer concerning what God wants us to do and what God wants to give, we find a greater peace in our walk with the Lord. These are questions I would like us to explore in our next few posts.

And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John 1:16-17

In the above passage we see the difference between the old and the new covenants. The old covenant was based upon the Law. The new covenant is based upon the grace and truth found in Jesus Christ.

The old covenant was in many respects a performance based relationship with God. There was room for mercy in the old covenant, but by and large Israel’s blessing was based upon Torah keeping. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are in many respects written like legal contracts between God and His people. God said if they would keep all that He commanded them, they would be blessed, and God spelled out the specific blessings in great detail. However, He also said if they did not keep Torah, they would be cursed. He then laid out the specific curses in great detail.

In Jesus’ day many had the perception that God’s people were being cursed, because they did not keep Torah correctly. And they had good reason think this way. They saw what appeared to be God’s curses before their eyes. One of the great curses mentioned in Deuteronomy was the loss of their land and the triumph of Israel’s enemies over God’s people. That was exactly what was happening. The Romans had conquered Israel, and times were hard.

Some, some such as the Pharisees, thought that better Torah keeping would bring God’s blessing. They thought Sabbath keeping was really important to God, so they developed over the years what is called the oral traditions. These interpreted the Law of Moses to make sure they kept it correctly. For instance, they determined that you could only walk 2000 cubits without entering into work on the Sabbath. They held fast to circumcision making a distinction between the circumcised and the uncircumcised, and interpreted and enforced the purity Laws that kept Israel from touching anything unclean. Moreover, they kept the seven feasts of Israel religiously.

Then Jesus came and threw a monkey wrench in the whole thing. He blessed people who were supposed to be cursed such as the tax collectors and prostitutes. He touched people that were considered unclean such as the lepers. He even blessed the most accursed of all, the gentiles. That is not the way it was supposed to work. All Jesus did pointed to the fact that a new way of relating to God was breaking forth. It was a new covenant that was not performance based but grace based. More on this in my next post.

It is interesting how the book of Ephesians is divided. The last three chapters paint a picture of Christians should live. It covers all of our relationships. It talks about how we should treat each other in the church, how we should keep our unity, how husbands should treat wives and visa versa, how we should relate to the government, how children should behave, and how we should walk with God staying away from all impurity. There are are all kinds of commands in Ephesians chapters four through six.

Most sermons preached from Ephesians come from its last three chapters. How many times have you heard messages about what Paul says concerning husbands and wives in Ephesians? How many times have you heard exhortations about staying away from the sins of the world, or about the importance of loving one another? Sometimes our sermons are a weekly pep talk to redouble our efforts in doing these things.

Yet, Ephesians does not begin with chapter four does it? The first three chapters are all about seeing. Chapter one begins with the great prayer that God’s people would see who they are because of what Jesus has done. Chapter three ends with another prayer that we would see just how much God loves us. There is not one command in the first three chapters of Ephesians. They are all about who Jesus is and who we are because of Him.

Paul understood that all doing must begin with seeing. All overcoming must begin with seeing that Christ has overcome all things, and because we participate in Him, we are overcomers. We don’t create our own victory, we live in His. Likewise, all loving God as we should, and all loving our neighbor as we should begins with seeing how much God loves us. It is only in seeing who Jesus is and what He has done for us that we can be what we are supposed to be.

Paul’s prayers in the book of Ephesians remind me of Elisha’s prayer for his servant at the city of Dothan (2 Kings 6). The king of Syria was warring against Israel. Yet, God would tell Elisha what the Syrians were planning which gave Israel a great advantage.

Finally, the king of Syria grew frustrated and called on his counselors to tell him why the king of Israel knew his plans almost as he spoke them. One of the counselors spoke up and said that Elisha, the prophet of Israel, was the cause of the king’s troubles. The Syrian king grew furious and sent an entire army to get Elisha.

That morning the servant of Elisha awoke to the sight of the Syrian army surrounding the city where Elisha was staying. He did what we would probably do. He panicked. Elisha calmly told his servant not to worry, because more were on their side than the enemy’s. He prayed that God would open the servants eyes to show him who was really in charge. God revealed that the Syrian army was actually surrounded by the army of God. A great victory was won that day.

Likewise, no matter what the early church faced in their day or what we face in our day, we are not the underdog. Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus that the eyes of their heart would be opened to that fact. He knew that we Christians can never be overcomers until we see that Christ has overcome all things.

“…I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” (Philippians 3:8)

God’s definition of a good life is Christ. What God wants us to have more than anything is the fullness of His Son. The problem is that we at times have a different definition of “the good life” than He does. We have our ideas of what makes a full and successful life. We measure our worth based upon these ideas. However, God will not be satisfied until we find the measure of our life in Him. He might even take away our definition of life that we might find our measure in Christ.

This is something I can personally relate to. When I was quite a bit younger and starting out in ministry, I dreamed of having a great ministry that would reach a lot of people. People tend to measure a minister’s importance and worth by how big their church or ministry is. The first thing people often ask me when they find out I am a pastor is “How big is your congregation?” To have a good life and to be somebody, I had to have a successful ministry.

Eureka Springs is not the same as it used to be. I don’t need to go into why or how things have changed, but they have. Thorncrown Chapel still gets plenty of visitors, but it is nothing like it used to be. We used to have three Sunday services. We would start at 7:30 AM, and at times we would have up to 100 people for the early service. Then we would go to our larger building, the Worship Center, and have up to 300 people for the 9:00 AM service, and we would fill the building again for our 11:00 service. That was just Sunday. Some weekdays we would have up to 50 buses a day visit the chapel. There were days when there were people lined up from the chapel door to the parking lot waiting to get in. We had to have four people staffing the chapel just to handle it all.

Now, we have only two services, and if 75 show up for either, it is a good day. The chapel is now staffed by only one person, and there is never a wait to get in. When things were declining, I would sometimes wonder if God had forsaken us. I often questioned the Lord. “Why are you doing this?” It made no sense at the time.

Over the years I began to see what God was doing. He was changing the measure of my life and my worth to Christ. I no longer need a big ministry to be have a good life or to be somebody. I have Christ. In fact, I cannot imagine going back to the old measures of my life. God could have given me a great ministry, but if He did, I may have never gained His Son. Sometimes our failures are God’s greatest successes.

Truly, what God wants to give us more than anything is Christ. At times He will take away anything in our lives that is a substitute for Christ. If the measure of our worth is found in anything but Jesus, God will sometimes bring bankruptcy to old finite measure, so we can know the infinite riches of His Son. Likewise, if our definition of the good life is less than Christ, the Lord will bring our old definition to an end, so we can possess Him.

The scriptures tell us that our God is a jealous God. Yet, what might look like His wrath is never actually that. Whenever God takes away, it is always so He can give His Son.

I heard a story long ago about two strangers traveling on an airplane. One was a younger man and the other was older. As they began to talk, they discovered that each was a Christian. They soon began to share some of the experiences they had with the Lord over the years. Suddenly, the younger man got a very sullen look on his face. He began to open up and talk about his failures as a Christian.

“I try so hard to do what God wants me to do. I go to church and I try to read my Bible and pray. Yet, I always seem to fail. I never can seem to reach God for very long. My life is more like a roller coaster than a consistent walk with God. What am I doing wrong?”

The older fellow thought about the young man’s dilemma for a while, then he slowly spoke. “I think I see your problem. You are a different type of Christian than me. You are a 'do' type of Christian. You depend on what you do to make you close to God. The problem is you can never do enough. I, on the other hand, and a 'done' type of Christian. I depend on what Jesus has done to make me close to God. No matter what kind of day I am having I know what Christ did by dying and rising from the grave is enough to bring God’s kingdom into my life. I don’t have to deserve God. Through Christ He gives Himself to me as a gift.”

I think we are all like the young man in this story from time to time. We must understand that when our efforts to reach God fail, it is not because God does not love us. It is because God is training us to be the done type of Christian that He might give Himself to us without measure.