Friday, March 16, 2012

Continuing the quote from "The Two Covenants"

Now its just here that we need to share the rest of which we were going to hold for another day. Now taking from what was written by Andrew Murray in his little book titled "The Two Covenants" its found in chapter 12, is the rest of the story.

"If we would be delivered from all this, learn ever to read the Book of the New Covenant in the New Covenant Spirit. One of the very first articles of the New Covenant has reference to this matter. When God says, "I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts", He engages that the words of His Holy Book shall no longer be mere outward teaching, but that what they command shall be our very disposition and delight, wrought in us as a birth and a life by the Holy Spirit. Every word of the New Covenant then becomes a Divine assurance of what may be obtained by the Holy Spirit's working. The soul learns to see that the letter kills, that the flesh profiteth nothing. The study, and knowledge of, the delight in, Bible words and thoughts, cannot profit, except as the Holy Spirit is waited on to make them life. The acceptance of Holy Scripture in the letter, the reception of it in the human understanding, is seen to be as fruitless as it was Israel's at Sinai. But as the Word of God, spoken by the Living God through the Spirit into the heart that waits on Him, it is found to be quick and powerful. It then is a word that works effectually in them that believe, giving within the heart the actual possession of the very Grace and Truth of which the Word is spoken.

The New Covenant is a ministration of the Holy Spirit. All its teaching is meant to be a teaching by the Holy Spirit. The two most remarkable chapters in the Bible on the preaching of the Gospel are those in which Paul expounds the secret of this teaching (1 Cor. ii; 2 Cor. iii). Every minister ought to see whether he can pass his examination in them. They tell us that in the New Covenant the Holy Spirit is everything. It is the Holy Spirit entering the heart, writing, revealing, impressing upon it God's law and truth, that alone works true obedience. No excellency of speech or human wisdom can in the least profit God must reveal by His Holy Spirit to preacher and hearer the things He has prepared for us. What is true of the preacher is equally true of the hearer. One of the great reasons that so many Christians never come out of the Old Covenant, never even know that they are in it, and have to come out of it, is that there is so much head knowledge, without the power of the Spirit in the heart being waited for. It is only when preachers and hearers and readers believe that the Book of the New Covenant needs the Spirit of the New Covenant, to explain and apply it, that the Word of God can do its work.

We need to learn the double lesson. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder. The Bible is the Book of the New Covenant. And the Holy Spirit is the only minister of what belongs to the Covenant. Expect not to understand or profit by your own opinion or Bible knowledge without seeking continually the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Beware lest our earnest Bible study, our excellent books, or our beloved teachers take the place of the Holy Spirit! Pray daily, and perseveringly, and believing for His teaching. He will write the Word in our heart.

The Bible is the Book of the New Covenant. We're to Ask the Holy Spirit specially to reveal to us the New Covenant in it. It is inconceivable what loss the Church of our day is suffering because so few believers who truly live as its heirs, in the true knowledge and enjoyment of its promises. We're to Ask God, in humble faith, to give us in all our Bible reading, the spirit of wisdom and revelation, enlightened the spiritual eyes and ears of our heart, to know what the promises are which the Covenant reveals; and what the Divine security is in Jesus, the Surety of the Covenant, that every promise will be fulfilled in us in Divine power; and what the intimate fellowship to which it admits us with the God of the Covenant. The ministration of the Spirit, humbly waited for and listened to, will make the Book of the Covenant shine with new light, even the light of God's countenance and a full salvation.

All this applies specially to the knowledge of what actually the New Covenant is meant to work. Amid all we hear, and read, and understand of the different promises of the New Covenant, it is quite possible that we never yet have had that heavenly vision of it as a whole, that with its overmastering power compels acceptance. Just hear once again what it really is. True obedience and fellowship with God, for which man was created, which sin broke off, which the law demanded, but could not work, which God's own Son came from heaven to restore in our lives, is now brought within our reach and offered us. Our Father tells us in the Book of the New Covenant that He now expects us to live in full and unbroken obedience and communion with Him. He tells us that by the mighty power of His Son and Spirit He Himself will work this in us: everything has been arranged for it. He tells us that such a life of unbroken obedience is possible because Christ, as the Mediator, Testator and Benefactor will live in us and enable us each moment to live in Him. He tells us that all He wants is simply the surrender of faith, the yielding ourselves to Him to do His work. Oh! let us look, and see this Holy Divine Heavenly Life, with all its powers and blessings, coming from God in heaven, in the Son and His Spirit. Let us believe that the Holy Spirit can give us a vision of it, as a prepared Gift, to be bestowed in living power, and take possession of us. Let us look upward and look inward, in the faith of the Son and the Spirit, and God Will's to show us that every word written in the Book of the Covenant is not only true, but that it can be made spirit and truth within us, and in our daily life, This can indeed be."

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