Bible Diary - Hebrews 8:7-13
August 31, 2008
Why does an omniscient God need to create a second covenant with his people? There can be only one answer: It was simply unmerited grace. After all, it wasn’t God who screwed up the first covenant! God loves His created beings so much that He gives them a second chance. The evidence of this extraordinary love was sending His Son. He simply chose, for His own good reasons, to be merciful.
8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, no one would have looked for a second one. 8:8 But showing its fault, God says to them,
“Look, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will complete a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
8:9 “It will not be like the covenant that I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I had no regard for them, says the Lord.
8:10 “For this is the covenant that I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and I will inscribe them on their hearts. And I will be their God and they will be my people.
8:11 “And there will be no need at all for each one to teach his countryman or each one to teach his brother saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ since they will all know me, from the least to the greatest.
8:12 “For I will be merciful toward their evil deeds, and their sins I will remember no longer.”
8:13 When he speaks of a new covenant, he makes the first obsolete. Now what is growing obsolete and aging is about to disappear.
Only God knows the beginning and the end. He is in control of His creation, from the new galaxy still forming, millions of light-years away, to the babies that were born on Earth this day. There can be only one response to this great mystery: joyful praise.
Dave
-sdg-
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