2015-06-05
Good Morning Dear Ones,
For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at how God provided relief from the shortcomings of the Covenant of the Law with the Covenant of Grace. The fact that He was going to do that was suggested as far back as GN 3: 21, when God made clothing out of animal skins for Adam and Eve just before casting them out of the Garden of Eden. While this suggestion is not immediately apparent, we learned that blood had to be shed for these animal skins to be available, and that there is forgiveness when blood is shed due to the life that is in the blood [LV 17: 11 and HE 9: 22]. Just how this forgiveness would come wasn’t known at the time of their expulsion, but God is a Promise-keeper, as we have seen time and time again throughout the Scriptures [PS 9: 9-10; PS 138: 8]. The promise of eternal forgiveness is foreshadowed in the forgiveness given for one year of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Actual eternal forgiveness came with the death on the cross of God’s only Son, Jesus, and a combination of genuine repentance with faith in the Lord Jesus [LV 16; LV 23: 26-32; JN 3: 16; RO 3: 23-25]. What a great difference there is for us when we no longer live according to the Law alone, but live according to the Holy Spirit! RO 7: 6, “But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”
God is sensitive to the needs of His people. He hears our prayers and answers them [PS 116: 1]. EX 2: 23-25 is when the Jews as slaves in Egypt cried out in their misery. “…Their cry for help because of slavery went up to God. God heard them groaning and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.” We all know the story of the Passover when the Jews escaped their sorry circumstances [EX 12: 1-42]. Again God kept a promise when He told Moses He would live among His people and lead them on their journey after the Passover. He was with Moses in the sign of the burning bush, at the time Moses told the Pharaoh to let the people go, and again, when the Jews cried out for meat in the desert to go with the manna [EX 3: 12; 4: 11; 16: 7 & 10]. There were plenty of times when the people knew God was keeping His promise to be with them in leadership [EX 13: 21-22]. God spoke, through Moses, to the priests at the beginning of their ministry, in LV 9: 6, 23, “Then Moses said, ‘This is what the Lord has commanded you to do, so that the glory of the Lord may appear to you.’…Moses and Aaron then went into the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people, and the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people.” God made known what He deemed clean and unclean food, at the LV 11: 1 institution of the kosher (kasrut) regime, which saved their lives from diseases. Once again, God appeared at the entrance to the Tabernacle when Korah had gathered all his followers in opposition to Moses. God’s dazzling [shekinah] glory was apparent to all the assembly, and He instructed the people to separate themselves from this group. We know that later Korah and his followers in this rebellion were swallowed up in a chasm that opened up in the ground [NU 16: 19-21, 29-30].
God has made Messianic promises that we can believe He will keep. 2 SAM 7: 12-13 is the promise He made to David that a Descendant of David’s will rule over all forever. GA 3: 16 reflects the promise to Abraham and his Seed, which is really the same promise given to David. “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your Seed,’ meaning one person, Who is Christ.” I’ve often said that when something is important, God repeats it over and over again in the Bible. IS 9: 6 is yet another repetition of the prophecy of Christ’s eventual Kingship over all. “Unto us a Child is born, and to us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders, and He shall be called ‘Wonderful,’ ‘Counselor,’ ‘Mighty God,’ ‘Everlasting Father,’ ‘Prince of Peace.’” The promises of JER 31: 31-34 are further confirmation of the Covenant of Grace, which was to come. “’The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke My covenant, thought I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘This is the covenant I will make with the house 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 a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying ‘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 sin no more.’” The description of heaven from IS 11: 1-9, gives us a picture of God’s heart and His plan for us that shows us what real peace is. This is what is called “shalom,” שׁלוֹם, in Hebrew, is all about.
PRAYER: O Lord, we come before Your mighty throne to say “thank You” and offer You praise for being the Promise-keeper that You are. We are so very blessed by the hope You give us of the resurrection in which Your Son, Jesus, is “the First among many brothers” [RO 8: 29]. You are indeed our God, and we are Your people. Each of us has a past in our lives when we didn’t have faith in the Lord. Whether we remained in the same denomination or converted to another within Christianity, we can often remember what it was like not to have that faith. For the sake of comparison, it is night and day! With the light of Christ in our lives, there is peace between You and us [2 COR 5: 17; COL 3: 10]. RO 5: 10-11, “For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of the Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life! No only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom we have now received reconciliation.” Yes, this means, we are Your friends, adopted as children in Your own family and no longer Your enemies in unbelief. You bless us every day with Your concern, wisdom, and intervention. We are grateful for Your presence in our lives. PS 33: 22, “Yes, Lord, let Your constant love surround us, for our hopes are in You alone.” Knowing You better is important to us, and we will study Your word and pray for You help, as we witness to the depth of our faith. 2 COR 4: 6, “For God Who said, ‘Let light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.’” We ask You to make Your will for our lives clear to us and to help us be obedient to it. We love You for never abandoning us and never leaving us to the negative consequences of serial sinning. We thank You for sending Your Son to die on the cross for us, so that we may have the opportunity, through genuine repentance and faith in Him, to have everlasting life. In the holy/mighty name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: There are many more prophecies of fulfillment of God’s Messianic promises. We will look at more of them next week. Just as God’s messages to the prophets about the restoration of Israel came true, so will these Messianic prophecies of Christ’s eventual Kingship over His Kingdom come true. I believe this with all my heart and find great comfort in it. It supplies tremendous motivation for living according to God’s will, studying His word, frequent prayerful communication with Him, and for placing our beloved Savior at the center of one’s life. We are encouraged to love as He loved, to forgive as He forgives. We can mediate over the importance of Christ opening the heavenly Holy of Holies to all who believe in Him [HE 9: 11-12]. One of God’s promises that we can believe He keeps is found in EX 33: 14, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” His will for us is made clear in 1 COR 16: 13-14, “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.” Sometimes these directives are not easy to follow, but we can always turn to God in prayer, asking Him for the strength and wisdom to be obedient to Him. He hears our prayers and knows the content of our hearts [HE 4: 13]. A Jewish lady, Anita Dittman, was born in Germany and was a young woman during the Holocaust. She came to faith in Jesus Christ, becoming a Messianic Jew, and she prayed at every step of her efforts to escape the Nazis. God heard her pleas and answered them all along her arduous journey. She ended up in America, and she wrote “Escaping Hitler’s Hell.” This book is her witness to her faith in God, Who never let her down. She even found her mother, Hilda, alive after walking a very long distance with a horrible, infected foot wound. God supplied people to help her along the way. God loves and never abandons those who love Him. Praise and thanks be to God!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2015. All Rights Reserved.
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