Episode 2 : How are we to look at or use the Old Testament as we are now under the New Covenant and New Testament?

KBP Podcast with Pastor Cyril Yerifor

That is a very brilliant, and interesting, question. Let me start by saying that part of our confusion by the phrase [sic] ‘New Testament’ and ‘Old Testament’ is how the scriptures have been presented to us; the English Bible has been divided into two. So we have the Old Testament scriptures and we have the New Testament scriptures. The Old Testament scriptures are from Genesis to Malachi; and the New Testament scriptures, from Matthew to Revelation.

And so, sometimes, in discussing the Old Covenant and New Covenant, or the Old Testament and the New Testament, we need to be very clear, we need to lay some groundwork. Now what you and I call the Old Testament really is another, is [sic] a phrase that is used to describe, or is an alternative, for the Old Covenant. You can say Old Testament or Old Covenant, or you can say New Testament or New Covenant.

And what we refer to as the Old Covenant is actually the covenant that God [?] with the children of Israel at Mount Sinai about three months after they left Egypt. Three months after God had used Moses to deliver them from Egypt as slaves, they got to Mount Sinai and God [?] this covenant with them. Bible scholars call it the Mosaic Covenant. Some others call it the Israelites’ Covenant. Basically, it was a covenant between God and the children of Israel, the nation of Israel, mediated by Moses.

It is this covenant, it is this covenant, that the prophecy of scripture in Jeremiah 31 says will become old - this covenant. In Jeremiah 31, I read from verse 31, “‘Behold the days are coming’, says the Lord, ‘I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their father, in the day that I took them by hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them’, says the Lord”. So you can see that, the covenant that he is talking about is the covenant that God made with the children of Israel in Sinai after they left Egypt. “‘But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ says the Lord, ‘I shall put My law in their minds, and will write it on their heart, and I shall be their God, and they shall be My people’”.

And so, what we see here, is a prophetic utterance, promising a new covenant, and what it tells us is that the day that covenant is enacted, or instituted, or [?], or the day that covenant comes into force, and the day that the covenant that Lord made with the people of Israel becomes old. So that is the covenant that is old. So the covenant that God had with the nation of Israel, is what you call the Old Covenant, because right now, the New Covenant is in force. And that’s the covenant, that God has now made available for the entire human race, through the blood of Jesus Christ.

But it is important to note that these two covenants, what you call the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, have their origins in the Abrahamic Covenant, and the Abrahamic Covenant has not become old; it is the Mosaic Covenant that is obsolete, not the Abrahamic Covenant, not the [?] Covenant, not the Davidic Covenant. Because these are other covenants in scripture, that we need to be aware of. So the question is, how do we, who are living in these times of the New Covenant - Oh God, you want to start afresh?

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