"..Jesus has been given priestly work which is superior to theirs,..the covenant which he arranged between God and his people is a better one, because it is based on promises of better things. If there had been nothing wrong with the first covenant, there would have been no need for a second one..By speaking of a new covenant, God has made the first one old; and anything that becomes old and worn out will soon disappear." (Hebrews 8:6-13 GNB)

paradigm, paradigm shift - From the Greek word paradhma (paradigma),... a paradigm is simply the predominant worldview in the realm of human thought..A paradigm shift occurs when cultures transform their way of thinking from one thought system to another. For instance, prior to Copernicus and Galileo (ca. 1600), most people believed that astral bodies revolved around the earth (geocentrism); but after the Copernican Revolution (ca. 1600), it became obvious that the earth revolved around the sun (heliocentrism) -- thus, a major paradigm shift occurred from geocentrism to heliocentrism..Simply put, then, a paradigm shift is a pivotal change in humanity's way of thinking regarding a particular worldview.

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In part 5 (click here to read it), we looked at the wonderful benefits of the new covenant. Here we explore how the new covenant was always God's ultimate objective; the one to end all covenants.

The old covenant was always a placeholder for the new. A shadow of the new(ultimate) covenant to come.

1. "Only the high priest entered the smaller, inside tent, and then only once a year, offering a blood sacrifice for his own sins and the people's accumulated sins. This was the Holy Spirit's way of showing with a visible parable that as long as the large tent stands, people can't just walk in on God. Under this system, the gifts and sacrifices can't really get to the heart of the matter, can't assuage the conscience of the people, but are limited to matters of ritual and behavior. It's essentially a temporary arrangement until a complete overhaul could be made. But when the Messiah arrived, high priest of the superior things of this new covenant, he bypassed the old tent and its trappings in this created world and went straight into heaven's "tent"--the true Holy Place--once and for all. He also bypassed the sacrifices consisting of goat and calf blood, instead using his own blood as the price to set us free once and for all. If that animal blood and the other rituals of purification were effective in cleaning up certain matters of our religion and behavior, think how much more the blood of Christ cleans up our whole lives, inside and out. Through the Spirit, Christ offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, freeing us from all those dead-end efforts to make ourselves respectable, so that we can live all out for God." (Hebrews 9:7-15 MSG)

2. "You were dead, because you were sinful and were not God's people. But God let Christ make you alive, when he forgave all our sins. God wiped out the charges that were against us for disobeying the Law of Moses. He took them away and nailed them to the cross. There Christ defeated all powers and forces. He let the whole world see them being led away as prisoners when he celebrated his victory. Don't let anyone tell you what you must eat or drink. Don't let them say that you must celebrate the New Moon festival, the Sabbath, or any other festival. These things are only a shadow of what was to come. But Christ is real! Don't be cheated by people who make a show of acting humble and who worship angels. They brag about seeing visions. But it is all nonsense, because their minds are filled with selfish desires. They are no longer part of Christ, who is the head of the whole body. Christ gives the body its strength, and he uses its joints and muscles to hold it together, as it grows by the power of God. You died with Christ. Now the forces of the universe don't have any power over you. Why do you live as if you had to obey such rules as, "Don't handle this. Don't taste that. Don't touch this."? After these things are used, they are no longer good for anything. So why be bothered with the rules that humans have made up? Obeying these rules may seem to be the smart thing to do. They appear to make you love God more and to be very humble and to have control over your body. But they don't really have any power over our desires." (Colossians 2:13-23 CEV)

The Lord's Supper

A finger that points to the new covenant

The Blood, for sins and redemption

The body, of which we are a part

Water baptism

A finger that points to what happened at the new birth

The old man baptised into the spirit of Christ

Came up joined to Christ as one spirit

We should never forget to follow the finger

All the way to what it's pointing at

If we get transfixed on the finger that’s pointing

We could miss the point altogether

The new covenant of living through the power of His spirit was always God's eternal purpose, but it could not be implemented without the life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ. It was the covenant to end all covenants.

1. "How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son. Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people--free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ," (Ephesians 1:3-9 MSG)

2. "God, who created everything, wanted me to help everyone understand the mysterious plan that had always been hidden in his mind. Then God would use the church to show the powers and authorities in the spiritual world that he has many different kinds of wisdom. God did this according to his eternal plan. And he was able to do what he had planned because of all that Christ Jesus our Lord had done." (Ephesians 3:9-11 CEV)

3. "Jesus said, "I am the Bread of Life. The person who aligns with me hungers no more and thirsts no more, ever." (John 6:35 MSG)

4. "Beware lest anyone rob you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And you are complete in Him, who is the Head of all principality and power," (Colossians 2:8-10 MKJV)

New wine promised

New wine delivered

New wine to seal

A new covenant

The wine we drink

When we say I do

To the covenant

To end all covenants

Old wine skins

Can’t hold this wine

Lest the skin be ripped

The wine be spilled

Its benefits be lost

What a shame to loose out

On what He died to pay for

This new wine

It’s the finished product

It never runs dry

Backed by the maker's guarantee

One drink is all it takes

To keep thirst at bay

So why I pray thee

Do we beg?

For new wine again

The old covenant lacked the power to enable us live God's kind of (righteous) life but the new covenant in Christ, did. The old covenant showed us our helplessness to drive us to the seek life in Christ.

1. "But Israel, who followed after a law of righteousness did not arrive at a law of righteousness." (Romans 9:31 MKJV)

2. "..For if a law had been given which could have given life, indeed righteousness would have been out of Law." (Galatians 3:21 MKJV)

3. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh.." (Romans 8:3 MKJV)

4. "So indeed the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. Then has that which is good become death to me? Let it not be! But sin, that it might appear to be sin, working death in me by that which is good; in order that sin might become exceedingly sinful by the commandment." (Romans 7:12-13 MKJV)

5. "So that the Law has become a trainer of us until Christ, that we might be justified by faith." (Galatians 3:24 MKJV)

6. "With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God!" (Romans 8:1-5 MSG)

Selah

(To be continued..)

click here to read part 7

To view others instalments in the series, click here