Hebrews 8:8-12:
“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 did not remain faithful to My covenant,
and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.
This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel
after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put My laws in their minds
and write them 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.
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more”
“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 did not remain faithful to My covenant,
and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.
This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel
after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put My laws in their minds
and write them 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.
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more”
BarbTalk:
This is an amazing promise. God commanded how people should live. God pointed out that we will always fall short of His requirements, so He set up a way to get rid of the guilt and a way to get forgiveness. He planned for the wrong doing that His people would do in ignorance.
“Sins committed in ignorance” (See Ezekiel 45:19). We skip along, thinking all is okay. Then, one day, we are made aware of something we did that hurt another person. We are horrified. We are so glad that we found out, because we wouldn’t want to hurt anyone randomly and find out about it years later, or at a time when we are unable to make it right. It becomes a driving force within us to apologize and make things right.
God has very high standards. Higher than we can even imagine. God cannot be near sin. He has stated what sin looks like, and He wants no part of it. Yet, He has an overwhelming desire to have a relationship with His creation. He had to make a way for us to get to Him again. He describes this as a new covenant, where we would have His law written on our hearts, and in our minds, and we will personally know Him.
When Jesus arrived so many years later, His life was recorded by those who followed Him. With study, we can see that He fulfilled all that was predicted for this new covenant, and people were and are able to know Him. God sent Himself. God sent Himself so we could know Him. This is amazing to me and I this knowledge propels my life.
“For God so loved the world.” That’s what Jesus said.
In Hebrews chapter 8, the writer quotes Jeremiah 31:31-34, stating that God was aware that, even though He spelled out what He required, we were unable to accomplish any of what was expected. People “did not remain faithful to His covenant.” He loved the World so much that He sent Jesus, His only Son, so that when we understood that He was the embodiment of the new covenant, and believe that He has given the ultimate sacrifice for our wrongdoing, we receive a fresh relationship with Him, as a gift, which goes on for eternity. Mind blowing!
As I listened to Chris Tomlin this morning, singing the song he wrote, Indescribable, I was encouraged by all the people who sang along with him. They found it an honor to sing about the God who changed their life. All knew that they had no life before they met God. The joy they feel and the peace they have is obvious.
We as a people admire others who live according to their passion. If that passion is God or Christ, a lot of people will feel uncomfortable. We are labeled weirdos or fanatics. I love rocky road ice cream and am happy to tell you all about it. That’s not offensive at all, and some might think I’m a weirdo, and that’s okay. So when I tell you all about Jesus, why do you get offended or want to run?
The Message Paraphrase states 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 this way:
“In the Messiah, in Christ, God leads us from place to place in one perpetual victory parade. Through us, He brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with life. But those on the way to destruction treat us more like the stench from a rotting corpse.”
That pretty much sums it up. I don’t want you to be on the way to destruction. Consider a relationship with God in Christ. Forgiveness is a free gift once we recognize that we have been ignorant, and God has made a way to Himself by sending Jesus to us, to open the doors of Paradise. We are able to approach God in His Name. If we try on our own, we will have a stench of a rotting corpse to God and He will reject us. Only with the sweet fragrance of Christ may we approach Him confidently. As I stated in an earlier blog, our good works are considered by God as filthy rags, so holding out our ‘good works’ only gets us in more trouble.
He will accept you as you accept His way of doing things. Consider it today. God loves you. He will pursue you. He won’t give up until you are His. He does this because His love is beyond understanding and so is His grace.
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