A NEW COVENANT

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke My covenant, though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Jeremiah 31:31-34

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Most people have enough knowledge of the Bible to know it is divided into two major sections: the Old Testament and the New Testament. But when we think of the Bible and what happens within the two Testaments, we find ourselves seeing that the two major section of the Bible could have been referred to as Covenants, old and new, for the essence of what happens across the landscape of the two major biblical divisions is centered on the matter of covenants.

Consider the Old Testament or, for the sake of this devotion, the Old Covenant. In it, the people who God delivered from Egypt and lead to the land He had promised to give them, the land of Canaan which was the same land that God had led Abraham to earlier. The people were divided into twelve tribes, each named after the twelve sons of Israel (Jacob) and thus were referred to collectively as the Israelites. They (the Israelites) were God’s people and He was their God thus in order to be a member of God’s team, you had to be an Israelite, later referred to as a Jew. Those who were not Israelites (Jews) were outsiders called Gentiles and these people were not part of the covenant God had with His people (the Old Covenant).

With this as a primer, let’s now look again at today’s scripture passage, a foretelling by the Lord of things yet to come:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke My covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”  Jeremiah 31:31-34

Note here how the Lord talks about the covenant of old and the new covenant that was coming. We’ve already looked at the Old Covenant but what would be the catalyst for the drastic changes God is talking about in the second paragraph of scripture?

Well, today, more than 2,000 years after this scripture came to life in the Book of Jeremiah, we know the answer is none other than Jesus, God’s only Son.

It’s true, right?

As the New Testament opens, we see Jesus center stage in all four of the Gospel books that form the beginning of the second major Bible division. He is born and His entire life afterwards radically changed the spiritual landscape and the relationship between God and His people who now included everyone, Jew and Gentile. After Jesus’ death on Calvary’s cross, the curtain in the temple tore in two during the great earthquake, symbolizing that the barrier between God and man had been broken. Afterwards, everyone could have an opportunity to live with God forever if they would choose to accept His Son Jesus as their Savior.

In other words, anyone could come to the Father but to do so, they had to go through the Son (John 14:6).

How could sinners come to a God who hated sin?

When they received Jesus as their Savior, they also received pardon from their sins because Jesus, through His crucifixion, had already paid the price they deserved. The shed blood of the sacrificial Lamb of God washed clean all who believed in Him and as a result, they became justified or made just-as-if-they-had-never-sinned. Through Jesus, God would forgive His people’s wickedness and remember their sins no more. There would be no other sacrifice needed for the atonement of sins after Jesus.

Three days after His death, Jesus was resurrected in power by God, His Father and ours, but His people were not left without connection to Him once He assumed His place at the right hand of God’s throne. Rather, the Holy Spirit was sent to lead and guide God’s people to the righteousness He expected, the kind of righteousness that defined the life of His Son. Through the Holy Spirit, God placed His law in the minds of His people and wrote His expectations and commands on their hearts. They would all have the chance to be connected to Him through the Spirit, from the least to the greatest, as the Kingdom of Heaven was open to anyone.

This was the New Covenant coming for the Israelites of Jeremiah’s day.

This is the New Covenant that we are under even to this day.

Have you received and accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior today?

If not, don’t wait another moment without securing your place with God forever through His Son who He sent out of love to live and die and ultimately save you and everyone in the world (John 3:16). It’s a commitment you will never regret.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark
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