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February 22
53 days ...Thank you, James, for helping me put the Bible in a year podcasts out each morning. I still think the music you wrote and played for introducing the comments is just right.
The Bible reading today is in Leviticus chapters 26,27...the last two chapters of this book.
These two chapters deal with the blessings and the curses of the relationship between Israel and God per the covenant that God made with Moses at Mt Sinai...
God was going to use His people to spread the good news of His glory throughout the world. And He would do it in His sovereign creative and often demonstrative ways.
Remember, God promised to be their God. And God promised to make them His “faith-filled” people. And God would keep His promises!
And by the way...that is our testimony today of the gospel....”God always keeps His promises.”
So now, in these last two chapters, we get a fuller glimpse of just how God was going to get the message of His glory to the world. He would “bless” His obedient covenant people...not perfect people...but repentant people... every day.
And He would bless them so greatly...so powerfully...so mercifully...so publicly...That the people who lived around them and sojourned in the same wilderness with them...would see...would marvel...would wonder...would pass on to others what they were amazed at...and would come to a place where they would be receptive to the Israelite’s message of the one true God.
But what is the second way that God would use His people to get the message of His glory to the world? God would look upon His unrepentant, rebellious people and “curse” them...curse their plans, curse their families, curse their crops, curse them with fear and panic,...curse them with wasting diseases that would take their eyesight and cause their hearts to fail...curse them with enemies that would show no mercy.
And finally the greatest curse of all: God’s decree that He would set His face against them.
The same people who lived near the Israelites and saw the great and mighty blessings that He was capable of giving His people...Would be the same people that would witness the mighty terrible hand of God that cursed the unfaithfulness of His own people.
“What would this devine, this God do to those outside the congregation of His chosen ones...
What must my family and I do to worship this one true God?
So Even this Mosaic “Conditional” Covenant would be used by God to make a faith-filled people for Himself...And use the blessings and the curses of the covenant to get the message of His glory to the world.
Now, in case this Mt. Sinai agreement between Israel and God confuses us...
...let’s remember our Genesis reading...
600 years before the exodus of Israel from Egypt, God made an “unconditional” covenant/promise to Abraham and his descendants. The fundamental difference between that covenant and the one God made with Israel through Moses on Mt Sinai is expressed by one little word...“If”.
In the Genesis record, we don't find the word “if” in the promise God made to Abraham. It does not say, “If” you and your offspring do this, I'll give you the land. And it does not say, “if” you and your descendants will do that, I'll make you a nation.”...
According to the ancient “covenant-making” procedures of Abraham’s time, two parties to a covenant had to walk between the bloody halves of an animal to seal the deal.
However, it was only the blazing torch of God and the smoking pot of God that passed between the animal body parts...Abraham never walked through.
God walked through the blood path...for himself...and then He walked through the blood path for Abraham and his descendants.
God was saying, “If I don't keep my promise to be your God, give you a land, and make you a nation, then you can kill me and stomp your feet in my blood. And if you don't keep your promise to me to be my people and continue in our covenant relationship, then you can kill “me” in your place and stomp in my blood.
You ask...”Is that the end of the story? Not quite...
This Old Testament Covenant foreshadows the gospel!
Listen...and see it...“ One of the Hebrew priests blew the ram’s horn at 9:am....in the Temple courtyard just outside of the Temple doorway...a signal...
The Passover lamb was offered on the altar...at that very hour, outside Jerusalem’s eastern gate...the blazing torch and smoking pot of God’s presence was hung on a cross...his blood ran down that cross...and his enemies, dressed in religious robes, walked through his path of blood...all of which fulfilled the promise of God made to Abraham and all those who followed God by faith...” you couldn't be faithful to me so I will be faithful for the both of us...I take the death you owe and I give the eternal promised land.
Thanks Jesus...You make sense of it all...
Have a great day
