Fulfillments & Interpretations of Biblical Prophesies - The Mosaic Covenant - Redemptive/Historical Interpretation

The Mosaic Covenant:

Redemptive/Historical Fulfillment and Interpretation

• Promises—the grammatical/historical fulfillment of this promise was made at the entrance into the physical land Josh. 21:43-45, but its ultimate fulfillment, and the interpretation we are lead to by the New Testament is the New Heavens and the New Earth (see the redemptive/historical fulfillment of promise under the Abrahamic Covenant).
• Recipients—Ex. 19:3; 20:2, 22; and 33:1 indicate the house of Jacob and the people of Israel (the ones brought out of Egypt) and their offspring as the beneficiaries of the promise of land in the Mosaic covenant…this is true, but the underlying motivation of this covenant (as with all administrations of the Old Covenant) is to shadow the substance of the New Covenant.  This is done by, in later revelation (namely Galatians 6:16 and Eph. 2:11-22), God disclosing His plan to make a people of which every member is one of His sons or daughters.  Unlike the Old Covenant, the New Covenant people, the true Israel of God and house of Jacob and Judah, will obey the covenant stipulations, not themselves as was demanded of a physical people for continuing residence in the physical land, but by the imputation of covenant obedience of Another—Jesus Christ.  All those counted as the Israel of God truly, are those who have been (from every age I might add) counted “in Christ”, as Paul would so profoundly put it (Col. 1).
• Sign
• The redemptive/historical sign for the Mosaic Covenant is the same as for the Abrahamic Covenant.  Because those two covenants (as well as the rest in the Old Testament) are administrations of the same Old Covenant, the New Covenant to which they point is the same, having the same sign (Deut. 10:12-16; Jer. 4:4; Col. 2:11).
• Though the Sabbath is not the sign given for the New Covenant, it was the sign for the Mosaic Covenant, and its origin was not found in Moses, but in the creation, which gives it special significance to all God’s creatures, even those in the New Covenant.  Thus it has a redemptive/historical fulfillment in Christ.  Christ, Lord of the Sabbath, who was prefigured by it in its ministration throughout the Old Covenant, fulfills the Sabbath as the ultimate rest for those who believe (Matt. 11:28-30).
• Commands—No one can meet any requirements necessary for God’s saving favor to rest on them.  It is only by grace you are saved, through faith, and not of yourselves (Eph. 2:8-9).  Jesus’ holiness demands perfect obedience (Matt. 5:48); the culmination of the Beatitudes highlights the futility of pursuing righteousness through one’s own lawfulness.  But, just as Christ fulfills the simple signs and pictures of the Old Covenant, He also fulfills the righteous demands of all the Law as presented in the Old Covenant—from Gods’ command to Adam not to eat of the tree, to His command to Solomon, through his servant David, to keep His statutes (1 Kings 2:3-4).

Curses—anyone in the Old Covenant that had not been physically circumcised would be cut off from his people (Gen. 17:14).  In the New Covenant, Christ fulfilled the malediction of the Old Covenant, like the bronze serpent Moses lifted in the wilderness (Num. 21:8-9; John 3:14), He was lifted up, cut off and forsaken on the cross in the place of His people (Gal. 3:13; 2 Cor. 5:21).