Question for Joel Osteen?

My question for Joel Osteen and others’ with a similar mentality of the Bible is this.  What did Jesus preach?   Did Jesus just limit his words to positive sound bites and words of encouragement or were there other motivating factors in Jesus’ message?

            I see nothing different between Osteen’s message and what it is that Israel had while under the Law.  In the Old Testament, the Law, Israel’s covenant with God was all blessings and curses.  If Israel applied them selves to where they did as they said they would in the covenant, God said He would bless Israel in return for their faithfulness to the covenant.  Consequently, if Israel failed to do as they said they would (in covenant) the reverse was true in that Israel would suffer negative consequences as a result.  That God dabbled in Israel’s business all the time is a well documented fact in the Old Testament. 

              What we are told in the New Testament about the Law is that for God the Law was unable to motivate people the way God wants people to be motivated.  Motivation has to be internal, real, of the heart and spirit.  Doing the right thing just because of how one is being rewarded or punished, it was this element under the Law that God really grew most disgusted with. 

Anyone can dangle a carrot from a string and get a desired response.  We do this all the time with our pets.  But for God, people are more than animals.  We think, reason, and know right from wrong.  Doing right just for the sake of doing right is what God really wants out of us.  This is God’s goal- that people would genuinely care for each other.  And because the Law was unable to encourage the right response in people, God found place for another.   Had the Law said, “Treat others like how you like to be treated,” there would have been no need for the establishment of a new covenant.

Because Osteen spends most of his time telling people about God’s blessings under the Law, it tends to tell me that Osteen just doesn’t get it.  If he would spend more time teaching people with the message of the cross perhaps then people would actually hear about what it is that God is really aimed at.  Consequently, Osteen’s message is nothing new but everything to do with how things were under the Law:  how one can earn God’s favor.   My message to Osteen is this.  Learn your covenants.  Until you find the back half of the Bible, the New Testament, you will continue to think that accumulating wealth is somehow the only way one can judge as to whether or not God is in one’s life.