2015-09-11
Good Morning Dear Ones,
The Covenant of the Law coupled with the Shema is what set the Hebrews apart from all their neighboring countries. Remember that the Shema is DT 6: 4-5, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.” As you know already, the Covenant of the Law allowed Israel to know what pleases God and what does not. However, it lacked the power to do more than point toward Jesus Christ and certainly was unable to bring salvation, justification, and eternal forgiveness of sin. That is why God decided to replace it with a greater covenant, the Covenant of Grace. Even with the Covenant of the Law, the Israelites didn’t really understand God’s great desire that they always obey Him. Even after seeing 430 years of slavery in Egypt, the protection God offered them with the ten plagues and the Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, and 40 years of sustenance in the desert, they still didn’t understand. DT 29: 4, “But to this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear.” DT 8: 3, “He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
Under the circumstances, God calls us to a greater covenant, the Covenant of Grace. The human heart left on its own is far from perfect. JER 17: 9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond a cure. Who can understand it?” The question here can only be answered by God. We can see this in COL 2: 11-12, “In Him you were also circumcised to the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men, but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with Him through your faith in baptism and raised with Him through your faith in the power of God, Who raised Him from the dead.” As far back as Ezekiel, God declared His intentions to give mankind a new heart, “not a heart of stone, but a heart of flesh.” He promises to put His Spirit in us and move us to follow His decrees [EZK 36: 26-27]. This has a huge impact on our lives! The NT records the keeping of this promise in 2 COR 5: 17 and COL 3: 9-10, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone and the new has come!...Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge on the image of it’s Creator.” God’s hand and His loving heart is all over the keeping of this promise. God not only wants us to obey every word from His mouth, but He wants us to know Himself better. We must remember that He has given us His Son, Jesus Christ, as a Paradigm to follow as we live.
Please read DT 28: 1-14 for a listing of all the blessings God promises His chosen people for obeying His commands. They cover everything from the crops they produce, the times they will be blessed (when you come and you go), their experience in the Promised Land, their prosperity, the work of their hands, their leadership, their position as lenders (not borrowers), and all aspects of their lives. DT 28: 14, “Do not turn aside from any commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following any other gods and serving them.” We must remember idolatry of any kind is the sin God detests the most.
There are also curses for disobedience. So please read the remainder of DT 28. Some of these are: being cursed in the city and the country (16); their enemies will defeat them (25-29); their wives ravaged by others (30-31); their sons given to another nation (32); exile of citizens and their king to another nation (36); they will sow much seed with little harvest (38); their children will be taken captive (41); they will be destroyed (45); hunger, thirst, nakedness, and poverty (48); an enemy nation overtaking them-“swooping down like an eagle” (49); cannibalism of offspring due to suffering (53); plagues, prolonged illnesses, and severe disasters (59); dyaspora (64); unsuccessful sale of citizens back into slavery in Egypt (68). These curses are unthinkable and provide sufficient motivation for keeping God’s commands and avoiding idolatry in ancient Israel. And yet, the lesson of history was not well learned some of these curses coming to the Jews in the course of our history. Over the last 3000 years, no other group has endured the extent of persecution the Jews have. It ranges from efforts to assimilate them which went on from the Assyrian (722 BC) and Babylonian (586 BC) Captivities, the Selucid “Hellenization” under Antiochus IV Epiphanes (168 BC), the Roman occupation (70 AD); the Spanish Inquisition by Torquemada (1492), and most notably, the Holocaust (1938-1945). God’s will for the Jews can be seen in the restoration of Israel as our homeland (May 14, 1948) and in the disappearance of her enemies throughout history. We all have crucial lessons to learn from the history of the Israelites, so if you are unfamiliar with any of these periods in their history, please read about them. (The history of the Selucid attempt to Hellenize the Jews is found in Maccabees I in the Apocrypha).
PRAYER: O Lord, there is nothing more pleasing to You than hearing us rehearse our history with you. Of course, we should do this in prayer as individuals, but we should also do it with an eye to past historical events. Your hope for us as a congregation and a nation is that we will obey Your commands and get to know You better. By learning Your many names, we can understand Your many good attributes and deeds done for us. Your love is seen in You first allowing mankind to know what pleases You and what doesn’t, beginning with EX 24: 7-11-the giving of the Covenant of the Law. You knew at the time that it was a divine outgrowth of the Covenant of Abraham [GN 12: 1-3]. You wanted our hearts to be circumcised with Biblical truth, obedience to You, and with the capacity to love as the Lord Jesus does. This would not be so easy for You, for it would be necessary for You to sacrifice Your only Son’s physical life for it [JN 3: 16; RO 3: 24-25]. His death on the cross would be the shedding of His blood to institute the new covenant, the Covenant of Grace. His body broken for us would signify the love of One willing to give His life for those who love Him, His friends [1 COR 11: 23-25]. Your protection and love of Your chosen people is displayed all over the Bible. To all the Jews, You added believing Gentiles to Your chosen people, while weeding out those who serially refuse Your Son as Messiah [RO 11: 17]. In His resurrection, You made Jesus the “First among many brothers” [RO 8: 29]. This gave all who believe the hope of the resurrection. We express our deepest thanks and praise eternally for the giving of Your Spirit on Pentecost, a blessing to us all, in the holy/mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: We are called to the Covenant of Grace, that same covenant that was prophesied in JER 31: 31-34. It is the covenant that was instituted by Christ’s Atonement and further commits us to “obeying every word of God.” Through this covenant, we are justified (RO 4: 3), eternally forgiven (1 JN 1:9), and enjoy salvation. I am led by the Holy Spirit to write about personal covenant renewal. “Personal Covenant Renewal” is the name of the next segment of the “Our Covenant” messages, which begins next week. In the over fifty years that I have been studying the Scriptures, I have seen God’s promises come alive in my own life. Getting to know Him better has not just been done by studying either. There were some events and opportunities along the way which jump-started my maturation in the faith and helped me over some pretty rough spots. One such experience was back in the winter of ’97 when I went on my Via de Cristo weekend. This is a four-day retreat in which one’s emotions swing from tears to laughter to being deeply touched by the love/power the Lord shows. It is a very positive experience and is full of surprises of the best kind. If any of you gets the opportunity to go on such a retreat, I urge you to take it. I had a severe disappointment just before that weekend and went to my pastor about it. I was blue enough to suggest that maybe I shouldn’t go on this weekend. My pastor, who had experienced Via de Cristo himself, urged me to go anyway. He was right. The love of God was all over it, and I emerged with great covenant renewal as a result of taking his advice. As long as I live I will always know the love our God has for me and for each of us. I stand in prayer that each of you reading this devotion will get to know God better and learn to obey His commands, “every word from His mouth.” Praise and thanks be to our Lord forever!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2015. All Rights Reserved.
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