These are my notes for our 4/8/2012 church meeting.

Leader: Raymond Harris

Assignment

Many Christians think that because God has given us a new and better covenant, there is no practical purpose for the Old Covenant. Based on God’s word, what do you say?

Thought question: Does the Old Testament still have authority over our lives? As always give scripture. Examples and your understanding.

My Notes

The Old Testament is a teacher for us today. It shows us about GOD’s character, His plans, our adversary, how we got here, practical teachings for life under the sun, and beautiful psalms of praise and worship.

For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.
(Rom. 15:4 NIV) 

In Christ, we are under faith and no longer the tutor of the OT.

²² But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. ²³ But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. ²⁴ Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵ But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
(Gal. 3:22-25 NIV)

The OT no longer has authority over our lives, because Jesus established a new testament (i.e., a will, a covenant) after His death.

⁶ But now [Jesus] has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.

⁷ For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. ⁸ Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— ⁹ not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. ¹⁰ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. ¹¹ None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. ¹² For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”

¹³ In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
(Heb. 8:6-13 NIV) 

Additional explanations are given throughout Heb. 9-10.