Friday, June 05, 2009

A new Covenant despite our forgetfulness

Continuing on from our last devotion time we find this poem in Hebrews 8.

8For he finds fault with them when he says:

"Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah,
9not like the covenant that I made with their fathers
on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds,
and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
11And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
and each one his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,'
for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
12For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more."

13In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

God could not continue with the original covenant he made with Israel.
Why?
For they did not continue in my covenant,

Therefore God stopped showing concern for them. Not entirely sure what is meant by that. if I take it at face value then God merely stopped being concerned for them...but then how do I explain the repeated times that God continued to heed the call of his people? The OT is filled with times of God coming to the aid of his people, of God disciplining his people and such like. To me that is no longer showing concern. That shows continued involvement with his chosen people. So I'm not quite sure what is meant by that.

BUT it does show how people stopped holding up their end of the covenant. THEREFORE God needed to do something new and different, something that relied not on people and their action and that relied on something more.... and what could be more than people? can't be angels, can't be animals, can't be the physical world...God made all of that.. and people were the crowning jewel of that creation. So what can be more? Only God can be more.

So God made a new covenant based on himself and his own actions through his beloved son.

it once again is a covenant that HE is making with us HIS people.

but it's a covenant that will be different. Not a taught covenant, but a heart covenant.

11And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
and each one his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,'
for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.

a covenant written on hearts and minds.

I will put my laws into their minds,
and write them on their hearts,

A different covenant hmm?
Makes me smile reading this.
God made this new covenant easier didn't he?

I don't have to go to a priest to confess my sins.
I don't have to have a goat, lamb, dove, ox, grain or whatever to confess my sin.
ALL I need is belief in his Son and what he did for me.
All I need is a repentance for and turning from my sin in my heart (which affects my actions).

He made it easier...by having his son do a very hard thing. A thing I would find nie to impossible to do. And Jesus DIED for me. Jesus died as part of a new covenant that God his Father made with us, his people who forgot him and his ways with the first covenant.

I don't know what more to say, I'm just once again awed by the grace of God.

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