The New Covenant Radically Different from the Old

Years before I'd ever given the subject of "covenants" any serious thought, Judy and I went to the West Indies with all good intentions of being "New Testament Church Planters". In my mind if one established churches after the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, one was establishing New Testament (Covenant) churches!! I was to learn years later how wrong I was!

In recent years I've come to realize that 90% of what we taught believers in Dominica to do was patterned NOT after the New Covenant but rather after the Old!!

Under the Old Covenant (established by God with Israel at Sinai) all of life was divided into two categories: (1) Holy things and (2) Common things.....
-there was a Holy building (the tabernacle or temple) where Israelites were to offer all their sacrifices and offerings and common buildings (their homes and all other buildings),
- there was a Holy ministry with special credentials (the sons of Levi between the ages of 20 and 50) and the common people,
-there was a Holy priesthood with special credentials (the sons of Aaron) and the common people,
- there were Holy clothes (worn by the priests and Levites in the tabernacle/temple) and common clothes worn by common people and by the Levites and priests when not serving in the tabernacle/temple,
- there were Holy foods eaten only by the priests and their families and common foods eaten by the common people,
- there were clean animals which Israelites could eat and unclean animals which only Gentiles could eat,
- there were Holy days (sabbaths, feats and new moons etc) consecrated in special ways and common days,
- there were Holy tithes required to be given/used in special ways (i.e. for the support of the Holy priests and ministers) and common uses of resources with which the Lord blessed the people,
- there were Holy offerings for the building and maintenance of the Holy building and common uses of the people's resources for their own needs,
- there was one instance in all the O.T. where the Word of God was read from a pulpit of wood (when the people returning from captivity did not have the Word of God in their own hands Nehemiah 8:4) and other times when the common people had the scriptures and were to read and talk of them with their children throughout the day,
- there was a school of the prophets where young men were trained in prophetic ministry and there were prophets whom God personally called and equipped apart from any school.

Can you begin to see how the majority of things we taught the Dominican believers to do were patterned after the Old Covenant and not the New? We taught them the OC dichotomy between the Holy and the Common, between the sacred and the secular! But the beauty of NC life and ministry is that, for the child of God, the common is made holy! There are no longer to be any such divisions in our lives or ministries!

- We taught the saints in Dominica to meet in a special building (we called it "the church"!) But according to the New Covenant, saved people themselves are the church and such people in the early centuries met most often in their own homes! (Acts 2:2,46; 5:4; 8:3; 12:12; 16:40; 20:20; 28:30; Romans 16:5; I Cor.16:19; Col.4:15; Philemon1:2)

- We taught them that the church must be lead by a special credentialled class of ministers called the "clergy" who were distinguished from the common people, the "laity" by special titles, by special clothes, by special documents/certificates/letters, by special responsibilities and by a special means of support! But such a distinction is absolutely foreign to New Covenant scriptures. All New Covenant believers ARE God's kleros (clergy, inheritance, heritage appointed lot I Peter 5:3), all are gifted and to be equipped for ministry (I Peter 4:10,11; Ephesians 4:11,12), and all are ordained to bear fruit that remains (John 15:16)!

- We taught them that "clergy men" must wear special clothes when ministering "in church" and that the laity should wear special clothes (not their common clothes) when they "went to church"! But such a teaching is absolutely foreign to the new Covenant scriptures!

-We taught them, that there were special Holy days for "going to church" and ordinary days for doing their own business! But the New Covenant scriptures make no such distinction between "the sacred" and "the secular"! Rather, the New Covenant scriptures teach us that NC saints are called to live holy lives 24/7 (I Peter 1:14,15)!!

- We taught them that there were Holy foods (little pieces of bread or crackers and little cups of grape juice) which were to be eaten and drunk only on special holy days, in the Holy building when they were administered to them, by the Holy ministers) and that these Holy foods were clearly distinct from the ordinary food which they ate in their own homes! But the New Covenant scriptures never separate remembering the Lord from the eating of daily meals in ordinary dwellings (Acts 2:42,46; 20:7-11; 28:35)!

- We taught them the necessity of bringing their "tithes and offerings" for the support of the Holy ministers and the maintenance of the Holy building but that the rest of their resources could be used for their own ordinary needs! But the New Covenant scriptures teach that we are stewards of all that has been entrusted to us and we must give account of our stewardship of 100% for the total is the Lord's (II Cor.8 and 9)!

-We established a Bible school for the training of young people who wanted to go "into the ministry" but that those who wanted to train for other occupations should seek out other ordinary schools. New Covenant believers were equipped and discipled by older saints in the course of ordinary daily life among the saints.

- But more than anything else, we taught them two or three times every week that "pulpit ministry" or "the sermon" was the central and most important component of "doing church" when the saints gathered together! But such ministry is absolutely foreign to the New Covenant scriptures! In fact, I have yet to find even one instance in the New Covenant scriptures of divine truth being communicated to saved people by means of a "sermon" or monologue lecture! We have been falsely conditioned to think of a "homily" as a monologue sermon delivered by a pastor from a pulpit to a congregation and that "homiletics" is the art of sermon preparation and delivery, but such could not be further from the truth! If we simply go to the Bible, we learn that the Greek word HOMILEO always designates a conversation among a number of people! (Luke 24:14,15; Acts 20:11 and 24:26)

When the impact of the radical differences between OC and NC life and ministry dawned upon my heart and mind, I was astounded to realize that while I had believed we were establishing NC assemblies we had actually been gathering the Lord's NC people under the bondage of OC teachings and practices whereas He desired that they live in the liberty of New Covenant ministry! (See the contrasts as they are shown in Galatians 4:21-5:2 and in II Corinthians 3)

Only in the last 9 years have we personally enjoyed living and ministering in the context of New Covenant relationships where all believers are appreciated at priests, ministers and God`s ordained clergy, where we realize that all of life is to be lived in holiness, where we practically realize that as believers we ARE the church where ever we go, that all Christians are called to full time ministry and that, for us, there is no distinction between things "sacred" and things "secular"! We enjoy simply meeting with other believers in each others' homes, remembering the Lord as we eat our meals and ministering one to another as the Lord desires saints to do whenever they assemble together i.e. "provoking or stirring one another up to love and good works and exhorting one another" (Hebrews 10:24,25).

We encourage all believers to remain no longer under the bondage of Old Covenant principles where the "holy" is separate from the "common" and the "sacred" is separate from the "secular" in the lives of God's people, but to live in the glorious realization that for us the common has been made holy by the One who established His New Covenant with us (Hebrews 8:10-13)!

Difficult Changes - Deep Peace

Prior to our departure, in November of 1978, from the island of Dominica, West Indies – there were two other men who made deep and lasting impressions on me. Peter Simms and Ken Taylor were both fellow Canadians who had been commended by their respective home assemblies to preach the Gospel in Dominica. The assemblies with which they worked preferred not to take any designation which would distinguish them from others but chose to simply designate themselves as “Christians”, “brethren”, “believers” or “disciples’, names which could be applied to all who belong to the Lord Jesus.
Two of the projects which I undertook in Dominica which I’d never tackled at home were raising chickens and doing my own auto repairs! As I had not been raised on a farm, I knew nothing about cleaning chickens! It was Pete who taught me how to butcher and clean the chickens we raised. And when the transmission in our Ford Cortina malfunctioned, it was Pete who loaned me tools and helped me to remove, dismantle and reassemble it. (We never did find out what was wrong with it, but it worked just fine after it was back in the car!) Also we often met Ken and Doris Taylor and Peter and Marlene Simms and their families at the beach on Saturday afternoons. In the early months of 1978, after my thinking about church practices had been radically challenged by my study of the Book of Acts…I had lots of questions for them about their understanding of the church and the practices of the Lord’s people as they gather together.
Judy and I had attended one of their Sunday morning meetings in the summer of 1977 and had been astounded at the differences between their meetings and our own in the church which I pastored. In our meetings, I chose the hymns, I did most of the praying, I lead the service and I did the preaching. But in their meetings there was no “clergyman” like myself, there was no “order of service”, there was no appointed preacher and no visible leader. Rather all the brothers in the meeting had liberty to lead in the singing of hymns, reading of scripture or praying. In our meetings all the people sat in pews so that they faced me, the man in the pulpit, and could only see the back of the heads of folks in front of them. But in that little gathering of saints, we saw brothers and sisters sitting around a table on which a loaf of bread and a cup of wine had been placed. Thus each one could see and look all the rest in the face. In our meetings, we had “communion”, a little ritual of 5 or 10 minutes which was tacked on at the end of the Sunday morning service once a month. But there, the entire meeting each Sunday morning was given over to remembering the Lord in “the breaking of bread”.
So, in the following months, as I questioned Pete and Ken about their understanding of the church and its practices, they challenged me to compare any practice (theirs or our own) to the scriptures and to allow the scriptures and not religious traditions to be the standard. In the early months of 1978, it became increasingly difficult for me to stand in the pulpit of our church to preach. I now knew that the scriptural pattern was for a plurality of scripturally qualified elders to lead each church rather than a lone pastor (Acts 14:23) and that when the church assembled together, God’s “order of service” called for believers to “provoke or stir up one another to love and good works” and to “exhort one another”. (Hebrews 10:24,25) I began to see myself as a positive hindrance to what the Lord wanted to do through all of His gathered people! When I was appointed to speak, the effect of that appointment was a virtual muzzling of all the other saints whom God intended should be involved in “one anothering” ministry!
In Pete and Ken and in the assemblies in which they ministered I could see a much closer following of the scriptures than I had ever practiced or witnessed in churches with which I had been associated. So a battle raged for some months in my heart! Would I continue with familiar traditions, a secure position and an honored office in the church, OR would I dare to obey the Word of God, break with those familiar traditions and relinquish my position and office as “pastor”? I had no peace in my heart.
But finally one night as I wrestled again with the issues involved, the Lord broke through my stubbornness and unwillingness to trust Him with all the unknowns. Tears rushed down my cheeks and my shoulders shook with sobs but my heart was finally at peace. A letter of resignation from the mission board would be written, my ordination certificate would be destroyed and my “Reverend” title assumed at my ordination would be set aside. I’d come to see that such a designation was reserved in scripture for God alone and I, a mere man, had no right to such a title! “Holy and reverend is His name.” Psalm 111:9
Thus in November of 1978 we left all that we had previously known of “the ministry” and returned to Canada to seek a gathering of saints who put into practice what we had just begun to see in principle in the scriptures. Pete and Ken kindly wrote a letter of introduction for us and as result, we were kindly and warmly welcomed by assemblies in Ontario which knew them. We returned with very little idea of what we would do or how we would make ends meet. But we were confident that God was faithful and would guide as we followed what He had shown us. (to be continued)