Are we under the New Covenant? In a way it seems like an odd question, but it’s a question I’m asked frequently, so let’s examine it.

A lot of times, in studying a part of the Bible, I look around and I think I have seen everything there; but I haven’t. And a lot of times it is necessary for us to go back through these things verse by verse, place by place, and ask ourselves, What is there here that, for one reason or another, I have not paid attention to? A lot of times our presuppositions, our preferences, influence what we see and what we do not see when we look at a passage of Scripture. This has been demonstrated again and again by psychological studies: Human beings see what they expect to see. You can play a scene in front of a handful of people and you’ll find almost as many different explanations of that scene as there are people who looked at it; because all of us bring ourselves, with all that we are, to everything we come to.

Consequently, if we go back today to take a look at some of the scriptures that have to do with this question, we might walk through it thinking Well, what have I missed? What is it that I may have laid aside because it didn’t fit some preconceived notion that I may have? And to do that, let’s turn back to Matthew the 26^th chapter, to his account of the Lord’s Supper; because there is the very first place in all of the New Testament that the word covenant is used.