Glad tidings of Good Things Part 1 – November 8, 2010

IMPACT SCHOOL OF MINISTRY NLRC PETALING JAYA

GLAD TIDINGS OF GOOD THINGS

Notes for Monday evening November 8, 2010

THE PREACHER AND HIS MESSAGE. Romans 10v14&15

 

1. It is good news.  Announcing good things from God.
2. The New Testament ‘good things’ excel those of the Old Testament.
3. The ‘things’ must never be separated from HIM. Romans 10v14.  Beware of abstracting the ‘good things’ from the Person of Christ in whom all are to be found.  Do not become an expert in a Christian ‘thing.’  Do not psychologize the gospel or make it into a neatly packaged system.  It is HE. Justification, sanctification and all the other wonderful words are never to be taught nor thought of in disassociation from the Lord Jesus Himself in Whom they are all to be found.  All are efforts to express and define what HE is made unto us.
4. He sends His messengers to a world full of human beings whose minds are completely darkened.  Romans 1v18-32 we are all to be His ‘evangelists.’ This can be done over a cup of coffee.
5. This word was linked in those days with good news brought from afar, of victory won and of salvation come.
6. Take the theme of the mind and words that link with it through the whole of Romans and see how the good things of God come in relation to our minds.  From debased in chapter one to renewed in chapter twelve.

 

GOD’S GOOD THINGS.

They are not all the same.  A simple way of looking at them is that.

 

1. After the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden right through Genesis He gave them by promise.  Good things to come.  These were spoken most clearly to Abraham and they were to all the nations.  God revealed Himself by many names to Abraham, El Shaddai and so on.
2. God blessed one nation especially by giving them the ‘good things’ we know as the Old Testament.  The time of the Old Testament stretched from Exodus through to the coming, death and resurrection of Jesus.  When God tore the veil in the temple from top to bottom this act signified that the Old Testament had ended and the New was now beginning because Jesus the ‘New’ Man had come.  Jesus had finished the work, fulfilled the Old Testament and now those believing in Him could enjoy the new arrangements from God.
3. The New Covenant began fully on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out from the Father in Heaven.  The good things available under the New exceed all that was known under the Old.

 

SHADOW John 1v17

Shadows are better than darkness but they are not the full light!

The Old Testament arrangements came from God and were filled with good things but were only shadows of the real.  Moses in his own life was conformed to this.

1. There were so many good things in the Old Testament days.  God gave    His law on two tablets of stone.  He gave regulations for the life of His people.  He gave them a system of worship in the tabernacle.  A multitude of blessings.  It was such a privilege to be a Jew.  Other nations dwelt in darkness but there was light in Israel!
2. Moses the Mediator of the Old Testament brought good news from God.
3. He came from Mount Sinai.  God appeared to him in the burning bush and he brought the people back to that mountain and climbed it again. He was a ‘mountain man’ who met God from time to time.
4. The burning bush was a theophany where God was showing Himself to be the One Whose promises are never extinguished.  He is the “I AM THAT I AM.”  In Hebrew a play on the verb ‘to be.’  Now He was going to work some of His good things.
5. Moses brought physical deliverance from the bondage of Egypt but was not able to deliver them from their heart bondage to sin.
6. He brought the law of God written on tablets of stone but was not able to give the power to obey that law.  It was sweet to the taste of some; truly a good thing but had no intrinsic power to save.
7. Moses failed and the people of Israel failed. The priesthood was made up of men who failed.  The offerings of blood, the incense they offered, everything was but the edges of God’s ways.  Shadows and not the true.
8. In the regulations of worship the music functioned to help people ‘enter God’s gates,’ they were outside and could not enter in and stay there.
9. All of these good things came to one nation only, the Jews.
10. The word Jew is linked with the word Hebrew that means to passover.
11. Abraham passed over the Euphrates into the land of promise.  The Children of Israel passed over the Red Sea from Egypt bondage to the Promised Land but they did not passover out of their sin and disobedience into purity of heart and life.
12. Throughout their history there has always been a faithful remnant in Israel who have been people of faith who thrilled at the covenant given to them and the God Who revealed Himself to them, but the remnant was not enough, there had to be substance.  That substance came in Jesus.

 

SUBSTANCE John 1v 17&18.  Hebrews 3v 1-6

1. Jesus did not come from a mountain, or from a burning bush but He came from the bosom of the Father.
2. He lived and lives there.
3. All New Testament Ministers are sent from the Father’s bosom.  They hear the Father’s heart beat there, to hear His heart is the secret of all Christian ministries; whether pastor, teacher or whatever. The Father heart of care, pity, love and mercy.
4. Jesus was the Son Who revealed the Father.  Him, not things about Him.  He was the Son WITH the Father.  Together in all that took place. John 1v18.  The essence of the New Covenant ministry is to reveal the Father.
5. The New Covenant is the covenant of sons with their Father in His ministry both in this life and that to come.
6. Moses a servant, outside the veil, the son dwells in the house.  Holy brothers share the heavenly vocation, not the earthly Old Testament one.
7. Although God called the Jews “My son” they failed to be that to him, they lived in servitude
8. The New Covenant is the one through which we can passover into the life of sons with the Father through our Older brother Jesus.
9. We become sons who inherit.  Inheritance does not belong to servants but sons.  Abraham did not want to inherit the real estate of the Promised Land but looked for the city that was heavenly and built by God.  All true sons are like that.
10. Sons inherit the riches of their Father.  Jesus ascended and received His inheritance, it included a crown and the reins of history.  He inherited the right to make all things new in the future.
11. In Him we begin to inherit that newness.  The blessedness of the poor in spirit who inherit the earth.
12. Being a son means we inherit authority.  Go into all the world!  He did not give that authority to anyone else!
13. God is rich in mercy, pitiful, loving, just, tender and so much more; we are to begin to receive our inheritance now and live in the good of these things.
14. Grace and truth comes through the New Covenant Minister Jesus and also his ministers.  Not shadows but the reality (true meaning of the word truth) is the realm of the New Testament priests.
15. As sons we share in the family mission, the family work.  Father and sons!

 

SIGHT when the Best of all good things shall fully come.

1. What we know now is but the foretaste, we wait for the fullness that is come.
2. We shall see all things made new, the new heaven and the new earth.
3. The resurrection is yet to come.  We are assured it will take place because Jesus has been raised.  He, the resurrection shall come in glory and when He does the general resurrection shall take place.
4. New bodies will be given to us, like His, they will display all that is within them.  Our present body acts as a veil, (thankfully) but then there shall be the full revelation of what He has done in us.
5. We are moving towards this fullness, we long for it.  When all things shall be righted.  We have glimpses through the veil now but then there shall be sight.