Covenants – 3/20/2021

21 Mar Covenants – 3/20/2021

We live under a covenant established with us by God. Today’s Old Testament reading brings to mind the covenants He gave us through His history, spoken and given to a single person but impacting all of His people.

To begin with, what’s a covenant? It is not God making a deal with us, like Monty Hall, remember him? God’s covenant words to us always include a statement of who He is, and include words about who we will be in the face of that statement. Consider the covenant He makes with us in Exodus 20: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” He having first done that for His people Israel, He goes on to tell them – us – what He expects of us. We call them the 10 Commandments; He simply called them His Words.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 speaks of those ancient Words one day written upon the hearts of His people as well as within the words of scripture, known and understood to be His work within us. As we know that, “…I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

So we have the 10 upon our hearts. And the cause of His remembering our sin – which continues – no more? The sacrifice of His Son upon the cross, so that, as the communion liturgy says, “…this cup in the New Covenant in My blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

God’s words to Jeremiah look forward to the covenant under which we are so blessed to live, that the blood of Christ is shed for all, that’s His part, and with only this as our part: we believe. May the Lord bless your worship this day!