Hi Steve,
Just a few words to let you know that I am meditating and praying on my answer. I love the prophecies of Isaiah. The 53rd chapter always brings a spirit of worship and praise upon my heart.
In my Christian life, I have found that I must first enter the presence of the Lord and abide in the Spirit if I want to really understand the Word. A mere intellectual approach to the Word produces error and death. The greatest diffiuclty I have encountered in understanding the Word is a failure to enter into the presence of God before attempting to read the Scriptures. Once we enter the Spirit of God, he takes us away in the Spirit and shows us spiritual knowledge that the sensual mind cannot understand or grasp on its own. There are two types of knowledge in this world, spiritual knowledge from God and sense knowledge from our flesh and from the world. One type feeds the mind and flesh, the other the heart. Sense knowledge makes the man of the heart tired and exhausted, spiritual knowledge gives him energy and vigor. One edifies, the other just puffs us up.
The old covenant was sense knowledge mix with spiritual and used as a symbol to bring us to the real spiritual knowledge in Christ. The new covenant is the essence of spiritual knowledge, Christ himself; it is a recreated spirit in man, the indwelling Holy Spirit and the laws of God written on our hearts and minds. This is the New and Living Way that Christ bought with his blood.
The Old Testament is God's promises, the New is God with us and in us delivering his promises--it is the Kingdom of God recapturing our lost spiritual dominion that Satan had stolen. Man can once more walk in true knowledge thru the Spirit of God rather than in the carnal sense knowledge of the kingdom of Satan.
In the Old, they read his holy words thru the mouths of the holy prophets and hoped; in the new, he speaks to us directly and enters our very minds and hearts, recreates our spirits, and we behold and grasp what was once only a hope. Abraham saw his day from afar and rejoiced, we now possess what Abraham saw from afar, live with him and in him in righteouness, peace and joy.
This is not my answer but only a biased and emotional presentation of what I feel and believe.<g> I'm working on a careful Scriptural and spiritual answer to your excellent and spiritual questions. It may take me a couple of days. We have embarked on an important journey. I pray that we will both be edified by the things we see on this journey as we walk thru God's Word towards his will.
In the love of Christ
Emile |
