DAY 320 - The Cup of the New Covenant

Hebrews 10:12-17, 19-24a (NIV ) ¹² But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, ¹³ and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. ¹⁴ For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. ¹⁵ The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: ¹⁶ “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” ¹⁷ Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” ¹⁹ Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰ by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, ²¹ and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²² let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. ²³ Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. ²⁴ And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds,

Does is sound strange to you to say that the people who crucified Christ were simply trying to live up to the demands of God? Could it be that, deep within, Christianity has been the same challenge for us - an effort to live up to the demands of God? If that is what our religion has been, I would like for us to look again at the Cross. The words of Jeremiah are given not once but twice in the book of Hebrews, first in the 8^th chapter and again here in the tenth chapter: This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds. That is the new covenant that God has made with us through Jesus Christ. As long as we are trying to live up to the demands of God, we are still basically at odds with God; there is still enmity between us. And that is not what God wants.

In the new covenant we do not have to live up to the demands of God, as if His laws were somehow external to our life and contrary to what we really want. No, the good news of the new covenant is that God’s laws are written on our minds and hearts. That means that we are so much at oneness with God that what God wants for our life and what we want for our life is normally one and the same. Of course we do not perfectly want the same thing as God wants. The writer to the Hebrews also reminds us to help one another to show love and to do good.

But, normally and naturally, when the laws of God are written on our hearts we can know that what God wants for our life and what we want for our life is one and the same thing. This is the new covenant, made possible for us only by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I want more than anything else for us that we move out of religion that is just external demand, and to move into the new covenant, to know the confidence of which Hebrews speaks, that what God wants and what we want is one and the same thing.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope January 6, 1974

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)