Entering into the New Covenant
By Noah and Anna McHugh
Defining the New Covenant
I had a dream four months ago that captivated my attention. I call it The Night Party.
In the dream, it was dusk, and there was a large group of people all having a picnic type dinner outside, and everybody was getting along. As I was walking around, I noticed two men talking with each other whose sons were pulling on a dog’s leg, hitting him with sticks and laughing about it. The men were reinforcing this behavior and telling their sons to keep going. I walked squarely up to one of the men, pointed my finger in his face and said, “We are not abusing animals here, and if I see this again, you’re out of here.” I turn to leave, and behind me, I hear the man mutter “You just committed suicide.” I continue walking and hear two pairs of footsteps behind me and whispering. I quickly duck behind a shed and hide against an alley in the shadows as the two men rush past, looking for me. I’m not hiding because I’m afraid of the men, I’m hiding because I am trying to avoid having to hurt them. One of the men keeps on running and the second man turns around and begins searching the alley I’m in. He stops about five feet from the shadows that I’m hiding out in, and I can see he’s wearing dress pants and a purple button up dress shirt. As the man stares into the darkness I can see that he’s beginning to adjust his eyes to the dark and I kept thinking I should attack him while I still have the advantage, but I don’t want to start a conflict so I wait. He finally sees me, I can tell he’s registered my presence and in that moment I woke up.
The interesting part about this one is that when I fell back asleep, the dream continued from immediately after the fight. Someone tells me to get everybody inside because the event is about to start so I yell to the group that it’s time to go inside now. I hang back to make sure everybody gets inside, and there’s a group of people who are staying outside. I told them again that it was time to go in. They insisted they were staying outside for a wedding that they had going on. When I looked around tables were set up for this wedding with decorations. I leave the group that stays outside and go inside with the rest of the group. Inside is a massive water tank that’s about the size of a football field and about waist high and I notice that everyone is standing around the water tank and there’s only one person in the tank. As they are baptizing the man, I jumped in the water and then I woke up.
The layers in this dream are clear depictions of the sifting process. Everyone is invited to the outer courts of the Temple. But abusers will froth at the mouth when told to stop hurting the weak of the flock. That is the FIRST layer. We all have to decide which group we fall into as the world continues falling apart. Are we staying in abuse? Are we staying for the Antichrist’s wedding feast? Or are we going deeper into the covenant and being washed and prepared for the Wedding Supper of the Lamb. The Bridegroom comes at midnight, we must go into his shelter and let him wash us or we get left outside in the dark. We each have to choose for ourselves which layer we are in. Israel, Jerusalem, The Temple, The court of the Gentiles, the Holy Place,The Holy of Holies. Each consecutive layer requires a more thorough cleansing to move forward.
When I had this dream, I had already been in conflict with one man who refuses to be accountable to the New Covenant and the Spirit of the Law. Weeks after I had this dream, the second man revealed himself and also showed the same refusal to the Spirit of the Law. When I attempted to gently correct him, he chased me down just like the man in the dream.
Another event that drew this dream into the real world was that the very next week we attended church with my wife’s parents on Sabbath evening, and as sunset happened, they baptized one man and the man’s name was ISRAEL! He was the only baptism they did exactly as in the dream.
This dream pressed me to share what the Covenant Yeshua has grafted us into entails and the responsibility we, as believers, have as a legal party written into the New Covenant.
We are New Covenant believers. But what does that mean? Most of us hear the term day in and day out, yet, although pastors use the phrase in response to pretty much every question, nobody has really taken the time to define the concept and explain what it means to be under the New Covenant. We just assume that now that Yeshua has died and risen again, and BOOM! We just have it. Yet, this is terribly flawed, and dangerous thinking. In the book of Acts, we see a group of believers who did not even know the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was real or possible, although they were doing everything according to the Law and believed In Yeshua. Paul had to baptize them and pray for the Holy Spirit to come and initiate them into the New Covenant.
Acts 19:1-7
While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?” “John’s baptism,” they replied. Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. There were about twelve men in all.
John’s baptism was the baptism of water and the forgiveness of sin. However, Yeshua’s baptism was the baptism of fire, that ignited a person for service to God and burned all obstacles before him. This baptism and its symbolism call to mind the covenant made with Moses at the burning bush, with Israel at Mount Sinai, and the covenant of protection that was over Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo in the fiery furnace. It also calls to mind the fire of the final judgment, and the 144,000 saints who are purified through the fire, and spread that living fire to every corner of the earth.
We have not seen this fire in its fullness yet. In our lifetimes, we have not witnessed even a fraction of this fire. The accounts in the New Testament give us a taste, just a small sampling and shadow of what this final wave of believers will look like. Just to stick it in a few ears, no I do not think those 144,000 (which represent the first ripe crop) are the only people that will be saved through the tribulation. (As you may have noticed by now, I am not a believer in pre-tribulation theology). My studies and my research have been in trying to dig down and understand what elements made all the difference between the New Testament disciples after their initiation into the New Covenant, and what the conditions of that contract are; God is wise beyond all measure, and each of His Covenants are spelled out very clearly to all his would-be followers. He is not vague, nor confusing in anything He does.
I have to undo some of the majorly twisted theologies that the Church has long claimed sole interpretive rights on; and I will rely on you, the reader, in tandem with the Holy Spirit, to check what I say against Scripture and decide for yourself if I speak the truth. It must be noted that Jesus himself, whenever he healed a person, without fail told his people “go and sin no more.” In fact, after he healed the lame man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5, he found him later in the Temple and told him “Be careful, or what befalls you may be worse than what befell you the first time.”
Matthew 12:43-45
When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”
Yeshua was very clear. When he set you free of any ailment, if you go back to the sin that got you entrapped to that ailment, you are just like a dog returning to its vomit (Proverbs 26:11-12). The New Covenant is much more difficult than the Old Covenant. The Church teaches it as if it’s purely transactional, and magical, requiring no change or growth on the part of their members. Say these words in this way, raise your hand for Jesus, pay 10% of everything you earn to the pastors (and forgetting the command that the tithe also goes to widows, orphans and the disinherited), bring people to church, volunteer all your extra time to the “church family” and you will find your way into heaven. Paying your indulgences come to mind.
This is a blasphemous and destructive doctrine, and it has caused so much religious trauma that it is actually a shock to me that people still fall for it. The New Covenant was the covenant of fire that sealed and covered over the first Covenant, the covenant of Water and blood at Mount Sinai. God had intended to give this spirit of fire to all the Israelites at the mountain but the were afraid and refused it. The Church says all the time that God replaced Israel with the church, but they don’t realize that the New Covenant was only ever discussed by the Prophet Jeremiah (chapter 31), and there were only two parties listed: The House of Judah, and the House of Israel (Ephraim). These were the only legal parties involved.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
If you are adamant that the Church replaced Israel, you are adamantly mistaken. You are then claiming, you have no part in the New Covenant because the three legal parties, spoken of in Jeremiah and alluded to in the New Testament, are: God, the Houses of Judah, and Ephraim (Israel uniting the two houses that were split (Zechariah 11) combining into one house again.
Ezekiel 37: 16-17
“Son of man, take a stick and write on it, ‘For Judah, and the people of Israel associated with him’; then take another stick and write on it, ‘For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him.’ And join them one to another into one stick, that they may become one in your hand.
The Houses of Israel and Judah were not replaced with a mysterious church only mentioned in the last few books of the Bible. The Bride was, and will ALWAYS be, the Olive Tree, which is Israel.
Romans 11:17-24
But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.
The New Covenant was an addition to the Old Covenant, seeing as how God himself annulled that covenant when He sent the Northern House of Israel away in a divorce decree, as witnessed to by the prophet Hosea. Romans 7 speaks of the requirements of the Law, and how once a woman, (or a nation) had been divorced by God and sent out of covenant, if she engaged in a covenant with another god, (the gods of the nations, symbolically depicted by the golden calf at Mount Sinai) she could never be re-married by the original husband. In this case, God had written the decree, requiring the death penalty for his nation, due to their continually lewd behavior, sexual misconducts, and servitude to the pagan fertility gods of Egypt, Canaan, Rome, Greece, and Babylon.
Except, God, being the author of the laws, wrote in loopholes that he could use to show mercy to his estranged sons:
2 Samuel 14:14
For we will surely die and become like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. Yet God does not take away a life; but He devises means, so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him.
This subject is so intricate, and so unbelievably complex, it is no wonder that the rabbis and priests of our age tell us to leave the thinking to them while they explain how the contracts work. They then lead us into the very sex cults and fertility rituals that our ancestors were divorced for, and all in the name of “FREEDOM IN CHRIST”.
Jude 1:4
For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Every person that Jesus healed was a prophetic picture of his people, Israel, and the wounds that had been inflicted upon them, even up to death, and how he would willingly trade his own life for theirs. Lazarus was the final depiction of this scapegoat reversal, when Yeshua called him out of his tomb 4 days after his death. The name of Lazarus is important but I will cover the meanings of the names in future content. For now, we are trying to focus on the physical death that goes with, and is symbolized by the first baptism.
There is a pattern that runs through the entirety of Scripture, which I touched on in my previous post titled, ‘Christianity’s VS the Mosaic Law’ that reveals the water then fire progression for anything one wants to cleanse water can wash the physical muck and grime that collects on a utensil during use, but it cannot purify or sanitize on its own. The microscopic, defiling bacteria and germs can only be removed after the debris is washed off, and then only with fire. If you try to sanitize something before you have washed it, it will permanently bake the gunk onto your utensil or tool, ruining it forever. The earth has to follow the same pattern, and so do believers.
When Israel died for their transgressions, they died to represent all mankind. But they could not pay for or atone for the sins of all mankind, so they remained dead for 4 days (4,000 years), until the Messiah came along, called them out of their tomb, and took his place among death. The Author of Life, the Husband, watched His bride die, brought her out of the water, and took her penalty upon himself so that he could be with her.
Imagine the insult that you would feel if you found your spouse cheating with another man, and you caught her in the act of cheating on you. You would be horrified and enraged, and she begs you to forgive her, telling you it was just a one time thing, not even a big deal. You forgive her and the next day, you catch them again. You find them together day after day, and every time she insists that she is sorry and will never do it again. Eventually, God took off His wedding ring and threw it out the window, and stormed off to let his bride be with the husband she had chosen (Jeremiah 3). This is what happened at the fall of Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile of the northern house of Israel. Israel was being formally divorced and sent to live with her husband, as God could not be a righteous judge if he was in relationship with a nation that was also in relationship with the Enemy. What place does light have with darkness?
This problem is so multi-faceted, it is almost impossible to sew together all of the pieces to explain to you how many mechanisms are moving. Each of these promises made by God OR his legal heirs is legally binding for eternity.
Deuteronomy 30:19-20
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
And God is weaving himself through time and space to ensure that every promise that every one of his sons always comes true as if it was his word from his very own mouth. When Adam ate of the fruit, his decision was legally binding for all his heirs thus forth.
Hosea 6:6-7
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
But like Adam they transgressed the covenant;
there they dealt faithlessly with me.
This is proof that there was a covenant, a legal and eternal union and partnership, with Adam and Eve, the first of man, and God. Both covenants are an eternal promise from God. The story of Scripture is a story of promise and the legal loopholes the Father has developed to keep human error and transgression from interfering with His promises and covenants.
When Abram married Hagar, the Egyptian, Ishmael became the legal heir of Abram and the legal inheritor of Abram’s estate. But God ordained to change Abram’s name. Abram was made into a new, spiritual man, Abraham, before he conceived a son through the Spirit; Isaac, the first-born heir of the PROMISE of God. Ishmael received the physical birthright of Abram. The son of the flesh went on to rule over and abuse Israel, the sons of the promise, for 400 years (Egypt means double bondage). So Ishmael was the heir of the flesh, and he ruled in the flesh.
Isaac was able to receive the physical birthright and the spiritual blessing of the new man, Abraham. Isaac was the heir of the promise and his rule was over that of the promise. Both the Promised Land and the priesthood were given to him. That very same promise was then passed down legally to Joseph, the firstborn next in line after Reuben his birthright by approaching Jacob’s wife. Each patriarch had both a spiritual promise and a physical promise to pass down to his heirs (and yes, women CAN be heirs as well! See Numbers 25:7-8.
So in Jacob’s case, Reuben was the first in line to be heir, as he was the firstborn son of his first wife, Leah. When Leah’s firstborn son removed himself from the birthright, the covenant passed to the firstborn son of the next wife of Jacob, Rachel.
This is why Joseph’s brothers were so jealous of him. Although he was their youngest brother, according to the Covenant of God with their family, the next heir to the promise of God was Joseph, whose name means “Multiplier”.
This is the principle of passing down the promise of the future Messiah from one generation to the next. It had to be an unbroken chain of legal heirs and inheritors from Adam to the Messiah in order for it to be a fulfillment of God’s promise at the Garden to Adam and to Abraham. It is the very concept behind the scarlet thread that runs through the entire text of the Bible from beginning to end.
Joseph is sold into slavery, having had his robe, his symbol of inheritance stripped from him. Joseph’s brothers legally sold Joseph and his authority as their ruler to the firstborn seed of Abram, the Ishmaelites, who then sold him to Egypt. Is it any wonder that in perfect justice to the 100 years of his life that Joseph served as slave to the land that had purchased his inheritance and right to rule, God then turns over the whole nation into his hands, in a perfect flip of justice. He then uses this same nation to multiply the sins of Joseph’s brothers by 4, and forcing them and their offspring to serve under the heavy yoke of bondage for 4 times what they consigned their brother to.
Luke 19:8-9
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Again, we see the number four pop up painting a picture of a journey to repentance and redemption. Lazarus was deceased for four days just as Adam was dead for 4,000 years. Zacchaeus repented to Yeshua and vowed to repay his debtors four times the amount he took. Israel was in slavery and exile from their promised land for four hundred years, four one hundreds.
In God’s perfect justice, he consigned the sons of Jacob to 400 years of slavery under their chosen ruler, and on their exit from slavery, took all of Joseph’s and their own earned wealth with them as repayment for their time as slaves. Even the curse of bondage that came from the betrayal of Joseph, God turned for their good and made it into a blessing in the end. The most amazing part of this whole equation is that when the Messiah did come, he did not pass down any physical lineage or seed. His only inheritors were spiritual inheritors, to prove that the spiritual seed is far superior to that of the physical. His twelve disciples were his twelve adopted sons, who inherited his spiritual authority at his command after his death and resurrection. The covenant that the disciples partook of is ripe for the picking, but before we can enter into it, we have to understand the terms of this covenant.
The Covenants with Death
Isaiah 28:18
Your covenant with death will be annulled, And your agreement with Sheol will not stand; When the overflowing scourge passes through, Then you will be trampled down by it.
The covenants of God have a dark mirror. Satan also makes contracts with men and women all through the Scripture. His methods and contracts can be traced and understood just as much as the righteous contracts can. This is why it is important to understand the mechanisms that the Serpent uses to entrap God’s people in his own covenants and contracts. God has to withhold judgment upon the Serpent, for the sake of His people who He is trying to keep away from destruction. If we keep partaking in the covenants and contracts of the Serpent through rebellion, adultery and idolatry, we are outside God’s canopy of protection. This is why in Exodus and Deuteronomy, in particular, it states not to bring an abominable image into our home, or we will be set apart for destruction along with it.
When Israel left Egypt, they left the ruler and slaveholder, a legal repercussion of their enslavement of Joseph, completely destroyed. God had killed the nation, and judged its gods, symbolic of a man or husband in Scripture, who had defiled His people and He brought them out into the wilderness where He could initiate a covenant and a marriage with them. Just as in the Garden of Eden, when God was on the brink of consummating his marriage with humanity, the Serpent deceived and beguiled them into doing two things: committing sexual immorality therefore defiling their holy bloodlines and birthrights, and marrying themselves to the fertility goddesses represented by the golden calf. The ketubah was being prepared. The marriage supper had been prepared already, and even eaten by the elders of Israel alongside Yeshua on the mountain.
Exodus 24:9-12
Then Moses went up, also Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel. And there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in its clarity. But on the nobles of the children of Israel He did not lay His hand. So they saw God, and they ate and drank. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and be there; and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and commandments which I have written, that you may teach them.”
My study Christianity v. Mosaic Law takes a deeper look at Yeshua, the Angel of the Lord, and His involvement with the writing of the Old Covenant and the deliverance of the Hebrews out of Egypt.
https://www.food4thesoulmedia.com/blog/christianity-vs-the-mosaic-law
At the core of all of these threads is one very central concept. The idea of seed. Offspring. A plant continues its life from one generation to the next by spreading its seed as far as it is able.
Isaiah 49:6
He says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Each subsequent plant that grows up is a piece, a spiritual part of the last plant, and shares in the genetic code and structure of the original even if it has never seen or touched that original tree. When God gave Adam the earth, he gave them all herbs of the field and all seed bearing plants as food. They were to take dominion by working as partners with nature. They were to work as a team to create new life by producing and training their own seed while tending to all the other seed-bearing things in the Garden with them. Adam was a pure tree, and his seed was holy. The good grapevine that God laments over later in the prophets.
Isaiah 5: 1-2
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
and he looked for it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
When Adam ate of the Serpent’s perverted knowledge, his seed was defiled and the stalk withered. When God told him,” On the day you eat of it you shall die,” He was speaking to Adam as a spiritual father. Adam died on the same day he ate the fruit. He was trapped in the physical dimension and his life-span dried up and now exposed to the strife and thorns of his labors and his now dying body. The more mankind disobeys the father and obeys the snake, the more our lifespans shorten and wither, from one generation to the next we grow weaker and smaller.
When Moses led the people out of Egypt and bondage, he was sprinkling them with the blood and the water of the Covenant. They were being washed from the dirt of Egypt: the physical representation of sin, slavery, and bondage to death. The Hebrews were being washed for a purpose; so that when the fire passed over them, it would consume all of the gods they left behind in Egypt and shield them. If they had either the images representing those gods in their house OR the behavior patterns of the animals that those spirits represent, then you would pass under the same judgment as the one you cling to. Will you cling to the Author of Life or the gods of chaos, death and destruction? Will you cling to the Author of Life as both a physical AND spiritual heir?
This leads us to the letter of the Law vs the Spirit of the Law.
He has made us competent to be ministers of a New Covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life
2 Corinthians 3:6
Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
People use this verse to justify ignoring the commands of God ALL the time, but it actually means the opposite of what teachers try to use it to say. If you listen to the words of Yeshua on the subject, not only did he expect everyone to fully keep the Law as he did, (albeit with flaws, the effort was still required) but he expected them to go a step further. Keeping of the Law was the washing with water. Keeping and observing the Spirit of each Law was the washing with fire; The step that God was angry with the Israelites for refusing at Mount Sinai.
Ezekiel 36: 25-27
I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
The heart of stone written about by the prophet Ezekiel was the stone that the commandments were written on. In Exodus 34, after the Spirit Himself had written the Words on the stone tablets, Moses came down the mountain at Sinai and finds the Hebrews engaging in spiritual and physical adultery, the commandments already being broken. Enraged, Moses throws the tablets of stone on the ground and shatters them. Moses must ascend the Mountain of the Lord once more. This time, God makes Moses write the commandments prophesying of the “Second Adam” to come who would act as intercessor and unite Israel once more into covenant with the Most High. This was also the point where God instructed Moses to build the Ark of the Covenant, the vessel that would carry and protect the tablets of their covenant until the coming of the Messiah who would come and claim that Mercy Seat as His very literal throne with the commandments, rod of Aaron, and Manna, under his feet. The symbolism is ripe for the picking! That is for another study, however.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit is only available to those who are already actively participating in the cycle of physical repentance to the commandments of God. Only after you have walked through the Red Sea, died to your Jacob, and re-surfaced as Israel, can you then be ignited as a lamp, set on fire by the Holy Spirit, activated to teach His words. If you are teaching people that you can ignore everything God ever wrote and follow whichever commands feel right to you, but ignore the ones the inconvenience or convict you, you are lying to the Holy Spirit and lying about the Holy Spirit. The Heavenly Father wants willing participants to partner with in raising up a Holy generation.
The last part to Ezekiel 36 is holds even greater truths that we miss entirely when we throw Yeshua’s commandments to the wind.
Ezekiel 36: 28-37
You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant, that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations. Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations. It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord God; let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel.“Thus says the Lord God: On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt. And the land that was his land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are now fortified and inhabited.’ Then the nations that are left all around you shall know that I am the Lord; I have rebuilt the ruined places and replanted that which was desolate. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it. “
The truth of the matter is, that we as believers in Yeshua, have only been betrothed into the New Covenant, but the consummation of that spirit has not descended yet, nor will it until the marriage supper of the lamb after he comes to gather his people into the bridal party. The modern church teaches that we are in the age of the New Covenant, and that if you say a special prayer and tithe to them, then you will also have a portion of that spirit. According to the Torah, if a woman who is betrothed to a man gets raped, the rapist is due the death penalty for committing adultery. Even though the marriage has not been consummated, the marriage begins at the exchange of vows, when both parties put themselves to work getting preparations for the wedding in order, and the blessings of marriage do not come until the consummation. The peoples have not been gathered into Israel, and the land promised back to us is not yet like the Garden of Eden. We have not received the blessing given to Adam yet at the Garden.
Instead, our Bridegroom is preparing our wedding supper. In Hebraic understanding a Ketubah is the formal declaration of marriage and includes the vows and oaths of both parties. At Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments were the Ketubah of the first marriage, being prepared by Moses and Yeshua. Yeshua said as he left earth that he was preparing a place for us. That place is the Kingdom of God, Israel, which, one day, will be restored to the Garden of Eden. Just as Moses ascended Mount Sinai a second time to rewrite the marriage ketubah, Yeshua has ascended to Heaven to prepare ours for the completion and consummation of the New Covenant.
Matthew 9:15
Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.”
The New Covenant is being recorded in the Heavens. When “the Second Moses” comes down, do we want Him seeing us prepared, fasting and in the wedding clothes or do we want to be caught in the act of idolatry and sexual immorality like our Hebrew predecessors?
In the next study, we examine ridding ourselves of the immorality we have inherited from Egypt and being the priest Yeshua calls us to be for our hearts and households.
The Gate to Your Soul: Your Eyes
In the next section, I am going to begin unpacking how in the view of the Spirit, anything that you imagine doing, you have done, and are guilty of. Yeshua said that it’s not good enough that you don’t physically go through with the act of not committing adultery. You cannot hope to enter heaven if you run around around objectifying and degrading others in your mind. It’s no longer good enough that we simply “don’t touch the fruit.” Now the command is applied to the mind and soul too ensuring that our hearts and minds align with our actions.