Matthew 19:23

Jesus then tells the man to keep the law in order to have eternal life to which the young man replies in his self-righteousness that he’d always done this. You see he was after a new and secret remedy that hadn’t been available to other less special people than himself.

He actually thought that it was possible to keep the Mosaic law, every one of them, without ever breaking even one.

His sense of his own goodness was almost unbreakable, yet he still knew deep inside something was missing.

We see his lack of understanding in verse 18 in his answer to Jesus after Jesus told him to keep the commandments in verse 17.

He answers Jesus with, “Which ones?”

He seems to have no knowledge of the fact that he must keep them all, every one of them, for his whole life. If he breaks one he breaks all.

Jesus goes on to give him just six commandments that were more than enough to show this young man how far short he was of righteousness through attempting to keep the law.

But this fellow replies in verse 20, “All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?”

Do you get the feeling that in his self-righteousness he’s expecting Jesus to say to him, “Well done, in light of this you’ve got eternal life.”

Instead, Jesus rocks him and his self-righteousness to the core by saying in verse 21,

“If you want to be perfect, (which means complete), go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

Within this statement is a not so hidden idea.

If you want eternal life you must be perfect. In other words, there must be a level of completeness where nothing more is needed, every law has been fulfilled to the letter.

Jesus will expand on this a bit later.

 

Today we look in again on Matthew 19: 23 and we’re continuing after the rich young man turns away sorrowfully,

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 

And again, I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

 

There’re some people who try to explain what the Lord, quote, “really meant”, by referring to a gate in Jerusalem called “The Eye of the Needle,” and that a camel had to kneel to pass through it, and that therefore the Lord was saying that a man had to become humble to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

But you see, that misses the point altogether.

Our Lord’s talking about a real camel and a real needle with an eye.

Is it possible for a real camel to go through the eye of a real needle? It’s Impossible.

 

Now here’s where we can easily get into confusion if we don’t understand the background, the context, and the time or the dispensation in which this is all happening.

Jesus tells the young fellow that He must keep the Mosaic law first and then sell everything he has and give it to the poor in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

What our Lord is telling this man and, by extension everyone listening right down to you and me today, is that salvation, eternal life is not a free gift of God as we know today, but it requires a person to work for it.

That’s directly opposite to everything we believe.

How come?

Now we should be fully convinced within ourselves that if the Bible is really God’s Word as we believe, it wouldn’t contradict itself.

If it did what we’d have is nothing but massive confusion and not one word of it could be relied on. We may as well chuck it in the bin and eat, drink and be merry till we die.

So here we see what seems to be the mother of all contradictions. Jesus is telling this young bloke he must work for his eternal life by keeping the Mosaic law and selling all his goods and giving it all to charity. But the same Bible tells us this in Romans 5:18,

Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. 

 

Then in John 3:16 Jesus Himself doesn’t mention selling all your goods or keeping the Law,

 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Then we go to the Book of Romans. In chapter 5 verse 15,

… if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. 

 

Then Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

 

Romans 8:32

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? 

 

Ephesians 2:8-9,

For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. 

 

What’s happening? There’s a definite difference in what Jesus said to this young man and these verses we’ve just read.

The answer is that this whole event is happening in a different dispensation, a different age to the one we’re in today. Jesus is talking to a young Jewish man under the Mosaic Law because that’s the dispensation Jesus was operating under. The Gentiles were nowhere in the story. The New Covenant wouldn’t come into effect until after Jesus had shed His blood on the cross and the Gentile nations wouldn’t be involved in that New Covenant until after the events following the day of Pentecost that was still a way of from this event with the young Jewish ruler.

 

In order to properly get this, we look first to the piece of scripture that we keep emphasising time and again, 2 Timothy 2:15,

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 

 

Rightly dividing the Word of God! How vitally important this is. If we don’t do this confusion comes and we’re no longer sure of what’s right and what’s wrong or what we believe.

 

So, let’s take the time, stand back, and see if we can get some perspective.

 

Most of us know that the Bible is divided into two sections, the Old and the New Testaments, with 39 of the 66 books in the section we call the Old Testament and 29 in the New.

These terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” gradually evolved as the Hebrew bible known as the Tanakh and the Gospels, Matthew, Mark Luke and John, The book of Acts, and the Epistles, formed one whole book.

It was a convenient and simple way of categorising the whole Word of God, particularly where publishing it all as one book was concerned.

The term “Old Testament” refers to the covenant established before Christ’s coming while the term “New Testament” refers to the covenant fulfilled through Jesus Christ and His shed blood.

 

Then we had the division of the book into chapters and verses:

The Hebrew Old Testament was divided into verses by Jewish rabbi Nathan in 1448, and Robert Estienne (known as Stephanus), divided the New Testament into numbered verses in 1555.

So, what we see in all this is that although these division are incredibly helpful for all who study the Word of God, they weren’t inspired. That is, they weren’t God inspired as 2nd Timothy 3:16 tells us that,

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, Or God breathed as some translations have it.

So how does this sectionalising of the Word affect it?

Well, it actually affects it a lot and we need to be aware of it if we’re to rightly divide this wonderful Word of God so that it turns on the light of our understanding so that we can see it correctly according to God’s purpose.

 

To many people the Old Testament or The Old Covenant has to do with Israel and the Jews while the New Covenant has to do with Jesus and the Christian church.

Often, the difference is seen as if we had two educational textbooks, one old and one new. The old one is now outdated so the new, revised one is now the “go to” textbook.

So, when it comes to scripture, we tend to separate the Old from the New as if the New one is the one that matters today and the old one is now gone, no longer valid.

 

But what exactly is the Old Covenant and what is the New Covenant and are there things that’re the same in both and are they in some way connected?

Are the ancient Laws and sacrifices of the Old Covenant connected with the life and the death of Jesus?

More importantly how does this division affect us? Are we somehow connected to the Old Covenant?

When we open our Bible, we see the table of contents that lists all the books under the heading Old Testament and then all the books under the heading New Testament, but is this our only way of dividing the book?

There’s a page that appears before Genesis that states “Old Testament” and another page after the book of Malachi and before the Gospel of Matthew which says, “New Testament” but we should keep in mind that these tables of contents and page headings are for publishing purposes only and they have very little if anything to do with the actual text.

 

As Christians we should understand that these uninspired headings, as useful as they are, just don’t give us the divisions in scripture that we desperately need to understand correctly and to rightly divide that scripture.

Just to believe that The Old Covenant was written before Christ and the New Covenant was written after Christ is woefully short of what we need.

We need to set aside these Old Covenant, New Covenant headings and find out what the text actually says.

Now it’s true that the 39 books that fall under the heading of The Old Testament were written before Christ’s birth and His earthly ministry and the 29 books of the New testament were written after Christ came but there’s so much more related to timing when we look at the Old and the New Covenants and when God gave them and who He gave them to.

 

The fact is that the Old Testament or the Old Covenant doesn’t begin in Genesis 1, and the New Testament or the New Covenant doesn’t begin in Matthew 1.

Genesis chapter one, which says, “In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth” is not the beginning of a covenant that God made with Israel.

 

Now let’s look at the New Testament and the Book of Hebrews in chapter 9 and we should read that from Hebrews 9:15-20.

And for this reason, He is the Mediator of the new covenant (that’s Jesus Christ Who he’s talking about), by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. 

For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. 

For a testament is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives.

 

You see we all know that when you write a last will and testament it’s not in force till you die! You state it as your will before you die then after you die your will is accomplished or testated. It takes your death to enforce it.

We read on, verse 18,

Therefore, not even the first covenant was dedicated without blood. 

For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “THIS IS THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT WHICH GOD HAS COMMANDED YOU.” 

 

Do you see what we’re getting at?

This is saying that Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant and that paid for the transgressions of the Old Covenant.

Now, it clearly says that the Old Covenant was given to Moses!

But hold on! Moses is not in the book of Genesis anywhere. He’s not even born at the time of Genesis.

He doesn’t appear on the scene until Exodus chapter 2 so we must be talking about a period of time that even though it’s within what we call the Old Testament that supposedly started with Genesis 1:1, it’s a different time altogether.

Moses doesn’t even come on the scene for at the very least 2500 years after Genesis 1:1 but if we’re just looking at bible headings, or for that matter church tradition, it would have us believe this whole period is the Old Covenant period. Clearly it isn’t.

 

Also, what this passage in Hebrews is telling us is that the New Covenant and the Old Covenant are absolutely and inseparably linked because Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant which paid the transgressions of the Old.

Thayer’s concordance gives the meaning of a mediator as one who intervenes between two, either in order to make or restore peace and friendship, or form a compact, or for ratifying a covenant.

In His death Jesus mediated a New Covenant making the First Covenant old and obsolete.

 

Jesus was born under the Law, the Mosaic Law.

God had made a covenant with Israel. That covenant was established upon promises that God made with Abraham, Issac and Jacob, and notice, not with the gentiles, and that covenant was in force when Jesus came and lived and died.

It’s so important to get this timing right.

 

Hebrews, as we’ve just seen, tells us that in Jesus’ death He was the mediator of a New Covenant, making the first one old, so that through Christ’s death we have a new covenant based on better promises and that covenant is still in force today.

 

So, for the first 2500 years or so of our Bible we have no covenant at all.

Then along comes Abraham.

God gives promises to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3,

Now the LORD had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. 

I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. 

I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” 

 

Then another 430 years go past before God gives a covenant to Moses, The law.

Then, about 1500 years after that, we have Jesus’s birth and His death on the cross.

And, what’ve we just learned about the New Covenant? It can’t be a force until after the death of the testator, Jesus.

 

So, to summarise what we’re driving at, there’s no way that the Old Covenant started in Genesis 1:1 as the headings say it does, it didn’t start for around 2500 years after that.

Neither could the New Covenant start at Matthew chapter 1, like the headings suggest.

It couldn’t have because Jesus hadn’t died in Matthew chapter 1 which was the only way the New Covenant could come into existence.

It wasn’t till Matthew chapters 27 and 28 that the New covenant became a reality, Same as Mark. It wasn’t till Mark 15 and 16 or Luke chapter 23 or John chapters 20 to 21, after Jesus’s death.

So clearly and obviously anything prior to those chapters is not the New Testament, the New Covenant.

God was not operating in the New Covenant before then. Even in those chapters after Jesus’ death and His resurrection the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Himself, (the resurrected Jesus), had to explain it all to those living at the time because they didn’t know!

 

So, you see why this leads to problems and confusion in the church when we’re trying to find out God’s will and His instructions for us today and we’re saying, “Well the old covenants for Israel, not us. We’re quote, “New Testament” Christians. So, we turn to the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 1 and we’re unaware that there’s 27 chapters that’s not New Testament, but Old Testament.

 

Now just as we’re doing as we ‘re going through the Gospel of Matthew, we can see what Jesus was doing in those first 27 chapters and it’s important we know that.

He was fulfilling prophecy; he was teaching about the coming Kingdom of Heaven and He was proving by His words and His miracles that He was the Messiah who had been long prophesied to rule over Israel and the world as King.

He was also setting the foundations for a new dispensation or age that would come on the world some 20 years after His death and resurrection, the age of Grace, or the age of the church.

However, when it comes to covenants, the New covenant was not established in Matthew 1 and the Old covenant was not established in Genesis 1.

So, we’re talking here about studying the text of scripture to find out what it actually says, rather than follow the traditions of man, or church teachings that follow those traditions, or the Bible headings. Additionally, we can’t expect to apply our favourite traditions to the text to try and make it fit those traditions.

 

So, with the difference between the covenants defined let’s look at a few other vital things.

When we begin to study the Word of God closely, we discover what appears to be contradictions and differences and if we don’t look at them through the correct lens we get confused.

 

We know that the Bible is God’s Word, we’ve already determined that and proved it for ourselves, so we know that no matter what seems to be the case, there’re no contradictions or errors, so how do we make sense of it.

How can we read and study the bible and navigate correctly through the difficult bits?

 

Hebrews 1:1-2 gives us an important key. Let’s read,

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.

See, there’s different ways that God spoke to different people at different times.

The Bible didn’t just drop out of heaven in one completed book, one entire revelation.

It was revealed to man little by little throughout many centuries. it was a progress, a progressive revelation. We don’t get that as much today as we should because we’re in the unique position of having the entire, completed Bible, the Whole Word of God.

We’ve got the lot from the creation of the world in the beginning to end of the world.

 

As Christians we often make the mistake of seeing the Bible as a story and we tend to hear it as if every line is talking about us, here, today, and that simply isn’t the case.

It’s a collection of 66 books that speak to different people throughout history with the first and most important theme being God’s purpose and how He’s going to manage heaven and earth through Jesus Christ.

Keeping this understanding that we just saw in Hebrews, that God at different times throughout history, spoke in different ways, by using different means and different people.

He also spoke in different relationships. For example, he spoke in peace and in anger.

He spoke to the fathers, that’s ancient Israel, by the prophets so the Bible’s not just a record of what Jesus said!

There’re many other things before Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

 

We see from this passage, Hebrews 1:1-2, that in these last days God has spoken to us by His Son, Jesus.

The last days of course being the two thousand year period between Christ’s resurrection and ascension back to heaven up until today. As we’ll see later no person ever knew, other than God, that these quote, “Last Days”, would last for two thousand years.

So, we see in this verse this progressive, little by little, revelation that God spoke over time to different people in different ways.

We’ve had the prophets speaking and then Jesus Christ so who do we listen to?

Well, we listen to both! But what are they saying?

Was Jesus saying things in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that wasn’t known by the prophets? Yes, He was!

Were there things written by the prophets that weren’t known by the fathers? Yes!

So, we need to understand the context of the part of the Bible that we’re studying.

Not everyone in the Bible knew everything that God would reveal. And when we today, The Body of Christ, study the Bible we should realise that it’s something only we can do because before that there simply was no such thing as the “whole bible”.

Hebrews 1:1-2 tells us the importance of discerning the times in which God spoke. These’re the dispensations that we’ve talked about before.

Everyone who picks up a bible is taking a dispensational view of it just by the divisions between the Old and the New Testaments. Just that fact alone means we must rightly divide it.

Just knowing that means we must know what we’ve already stated that the Old Testament does not begin in Genesis 1:1 and the New Testament which comes through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, according to Hebrews 9, does not begin in Matthew 1:1.

 

Not everyone knew what God would reveal.

Look at 1 Peter 1:10-11 which says,

Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. 

See, Peter’s saying that the prophets were looking for answers that they didn’t have. He says that we now, when he was writing this, have some of those answers. So, Peter can explain things that the prophets simply couldn’t. What the prophets were saying was divinely inspired, but they didn’t understand the impact of what they were saying.

 

John the Baptist in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John seems at first to be the beginning of the published New Testament because He’s the one who starts the story of Jesus’s earthly ministry.

Even though John the Baptist was Jesus’s cousin, he didn’t know Him. They’d probably never met face to face, but when the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus as a dove when John baptised Him in water John knew Him as this very special man, the Son of God, The Lamb of God.

John 1:29,

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 

Then in John 1:32-34 says,

And John bore witness, saying, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him. 

I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water (that’s God the father) said to me, ‘Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 

And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.” 

So, bear with me here.

Although John was Jesus’s cousin, he did NOT know He was the Son of God until His water baptism.

But now look at Matthew 11 verses 2 and 3 where we see John the Baptist in prison, but he sends his disciples, his students, to Jesus, and that’s after Jesus had started His ministry.

He sent them to ask Jesus if He’s the One.

Let’s see that,

Matthew 11:2,

And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?” 

But hold on! We just read that John already recognised Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And he knew Jesus was the Son of God who would baptise with the Holy Spirit!

We’ll, yes, he did. But there’s a difference between the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the Son of God who would baptise with the Holy Spirit and the Messiah who would come conquering the nations.

The prophets spoke of both. They spoke of two people.

Now we today know that those two people are One and the same person.

One was the suffering Servant Who would sacrifice Himself for the world. That was the One who John recognised from the verse in John we’ve just seen.

But then John sees all these wonderful works, the miracles.

So, John’s confused. He knows Him as the lamb of God but know He wonders, “Is this the Messiah? Could this possibly be the King?” He sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you that Messiah, the one who’s going to save Israel politically and rule the entire world?”

You see what I’m trying to say? John didn’t know everything we know.

We know He was the Suffering Servant, and we also know He’s the Messiah, the King who’s going to one day rule over the whole world.

These are the foundations of Christianity.

Jesus came and fulfilled all the prophesies and He’s coming again and yet John the Baptist did NOT know that.

He was living in the moment. Everything now relating to Jesus is future to him. He didn’t have the whole book like we do.

These men of God just did not know the progressive revelation of all things.

 

Let’s look at the disciples themselves. They were ignorant about the cross of Christ.

The cross, which is the symbol, the crux, the core of Christianity, that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead to give us eternal life.

Let’s look at Mark 4:34,

But without a parable He did not speak to them. And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples.

So, as we know from our study Jesus spoke in parables, in a nutshell, to confuse people. But then He turns to his disciples and explains and clarifies the parables to them privately.

Now look at Mark 6:7-9,

And He called the twelve to Himself, and began to send them out two by two, and gave them power over unclean spirits. He commanded them to take nothing for the journey except a staff, no bag, no bread, no copper in their money belts, but to wear sandals, and not to put on two tunics.

All things would be provided to them.

Now go down to Mark 6:12,

So, they went out and preached that people should repent.

They’re going out, two by two, preaching repentance, repentance by water baptism and we know from Matthew 10 verses 6 and 7 that they’re sent only to Israel, they’re specifically commanded this, and they’re to go nowhere near the Samaritans, and they’re to preach that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

 

So, now we go down to Mark chapter 9, three chapters into their ministry. Jesus had privately told them all things and they’d gone out preaching, so we know that they knew some things by now.

However, let’s look at Mark 9 verse 9. The disciples had just been involved in the incredible experience of the transfiguration where they see Jesus glorified with Moses and Elijah and they’d heard God the Father pronounce from a cloud of glory, “This is my beloved Son, Hear Him.”

Now in Mark 9:9,

Now as they came down from the mountain, He (Jesus) commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen, till the Son of Man had risen from the dead. 

But look at verse 10,

So, they kept this word to themselves, questioning what the rising from the dead meant. 

So here they are with their private sessions where Jesus tells them what all the parables mean and they’ve even gone out preaching, but when it comes to this rising from the dead they’re completely stumped!

 

Now we today, we understand the resurrection. If we don’t we need to seriously question our salvation.

We know that by His resurrection He proved He was the sinless Son of God. It’s only because of that resurrection that you and I can be granted eternal life through the Gospel of the Grace of God. It’s the only way we can claim salvation by Grace so it’s crucially important, the very foundation of salvation.

But the disciples knew nothing about it!

In Mark chapter 9, we’re halfway through that Gospel and Jesus hadn’t yet died and been resurrected, but the point is that the disciples had no clue about it!

This is what it means to know and understand the bible in context and within the dispensation in which each section’s written.

We’ll continue on with this in the next episode friends because it’s so vitally important to see this if we’re to ever understand the wonderful Word of God.