November 7

Ezekiel 16:42-17:24; Hebrews 8:1-13; Psalm 106:13-31; Proverbs 27:7-9

One of the things I love about Scripture is that it is so full of hope. It may be a little harder to see that as we are reading through all this doom and gloom in the prophets, but the Lord is faithful to show us his true heart in every single passage of Scripture. And what is this heart? An eternal desire for redemption and restoration to right relationship with him. He just wants to be with his people. To be in a beautiful covenant relationship with those he loves. Isn’t that what we are all looking for to? Enduring, deep, covenant relationships?

Here’s how I saw that in our reading today. It took me until I got to Hebrews to start making some connections. Hebrews 8:7 says, “For if there had been nothing wrong with the first covenant, no place would have been sought for another.” And then, in verses 8-12, the writer of Hebrews goes on to quote some verses we read for ourselves not too long ago in Jeremiah 31. “'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'” (Heb. 8:8). 

I think we can all agree that something wasn’t working quite right with the covenant between God and Israel in the Old Testament. We’ve been reading about their struggles for many months now, as Esther pointed out in her recent post, and it doesn’t seem like this pattern of rebellion is going to change. No matter how much truth they get preached at them by the prophets, the people don’t seem to change. They need some kind of complete overhaul. 

Again, today in Ezekiel, we read about this promised new covenant. “Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you….Then I will make atonement for you and for all you have done” (Ez. 16:60, 63).  Jesus is coming! 

Over and over we see Israel’s rebellion and turning away, yet over and over we see forgiveness and restoration from the Lord. And now, in Hebrews, we have seen how this new covenant through the blood of Jesus has made the first covenant through the blood of lambs obsolete. Jesus made a way for us to stay in right relationship with God. We don’t have to rebel and turn away and go through the same cycles they did. We are actually free from our sin. It doesn’t hold us.

Sometimes I think the people around us who seem to be bogged down by sin and shame and can’t ever quite break from those cycles don’t need more truth preached at them. They need a complete overhaul. They need to truly experience the life-changing power of the blood of Jesus in their lives. His death and resurrection change everything. Sin and death have been defeated. 

We all live under the blessings of this new covenant. Let us walk in the freedom and power found in true and right relationship with our God.

- Mary Matthias

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