Lessons the series teaches.
First, The Difference in God's Beneficence and Covenant.
Meaning: while God provides daily needs for all people, he restricts his Spiritual Grace to those in covenant with him through Christ, as he taught in Matthew 5:1-12 and Paul in I Corinthians 2:1-16. The spiritual rebel can serve God's Sovereignty, as God told Pharaoh in Exodus 9:13-16. The spiritual servant alone serves God's Purpose on earth, and only biblical Judaism and Christianity have accomplished that. And Christianity finalized what Moses initiated. The revulsion of world religionists against this truth doesn't change the FACT. Their rejection of it doesn't alter God's TRUTH. Nor does it prevent Christianity alone being God's sole revelation of himself offering completed forgiveness of sin. While the very best Biblical Judaism offered was yearly abeyance of sin Leviticus 16:1-34, with the understanding that annual repetition rendered the forgiveness incomplete Hebrews 10:1-4. Matthew 27:51 explained that Christ's death symbolized the abolition of incomplete forgiveness by slicing the curtain between the Holy Place and Holy of Holies. Sinners could enter God's Presence by the Savior's sacrifice. Which his bodily resurrection verified and his ascension into heaven forever PRESERVED as an ETERNAL reminder that he, chosen to die before the world began, I Peter 1:18-21, occupies his Throne next to the Father's as our Eternal High Priest, Hebrews 4:14-16. Christians, never discount, and always accentuate, the delight we alone enjoy: the complete forgiveness of sin verified by Christ's bodily resurrection from the grave. Because he Lives, we are not only perfectly forgiven, but guaranteed a body like his Glorified Body of Revelation 1:12-18. That's the jubilation of all believers in Christ and the despair of all heathen religions, and even of biblical Judaism. The heathen had no historically verifiable person RISING from the dead and Judaism had only the inkling of it in the Passover Lamb I Corinthians 5:7. While renewed yearly by generations of Hebrews, never understood insightfully as a symbol of Someone better. And never fully appreciated by Christians until we see WHY Jesus added the BREAD to the CUP. The bread represents the post-forgiveness purpose of God's people. He has a use in ministry now and eternal joy in our new bodies. No wonder Christians that the apostle Paul could glory in II Corinthians 4:16-5:10. No wonder that, despite our humanity that weakens us as we waste away, we can exalt with Paul II Corinthians 4:8-9: We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. Finale, Part A
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