Covenant Renewal Quotes

When we surrendered our lives to God through the Covenant renewed in Jesus’ blood, we were making an agreement with God to live set apart lives, to live His way and not our own way anymore.  Whether we knew it or not, we signed an agreement to make Him absolute Master over our lives, both temporal and eternal.  We gave Him permission to bless us – and to discipline us.  We gave Him permission to adopt us and be our Father.  We were not simply signing up for a “get out of hell free” card.

There is a spirit out there that lifts the heart and renews one’s determination to be better, to try harder, to strive to be more faithful. That is the legacy those wonderful Saints have handed to us.

The purpose of the Sabbath is for spiritual uplift, for a renewal of our covenants, for worship, for prayer. It is for the purpose of feeding the spirit, that we may keep ourselves unspotted from the world by obeying God's command.

The moral covenant of reciprocity calls us to honor our responsibilities for all we have been given, for all that we have taken. It’s our turn now, long overdue. Let us hold a giveaway for Mother Earth, spread our blankets out for her and pile them high with gifts of our own making. Imagine the books, the paintings, the poems, the clever machines, the compassionate acts, the transcendent ideas, the perfect tools. The fierce defense of all that has been given. Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice, and vision all offered up on behalf of the earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world. In return for the privilege of breath.

The Lord sends fire, but He does not abandon His covenant people or wipe them out. Instead, He intends to renew and restore and revive His people.

To honor our grief, to grant it space and time in our frantic world, is to fulfill a covenant with soul—to welcome all that is, thereby granting room for our most authentic life.

Indeed, every sin, in its own nature, has a tendency towards a final apostacy; but there is a provision in the covenant of grace, and the Lord, in His own time, returns to convince, humble, pardon, comfort, and renew the soul. He touches the rock, and the waters flow. By repeated experiments and exercises of this sort (for this wisdom is seldom acquired by one or a few lessons), we begin at length to learn that we are nothing, have nothing, can do nothing, but sin. And thus we are gradually prepared to live more out of ourselves, and to derive all our sufficiency of every kind from Jesus, the fountain of grace.

No, their weapons will not be carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. They will go to the Covenant God of the kingdom, and they will stand before Him, saying, "Thine are we, David, and on thy side, thou son of Jesse." Scotland will renew her covenant with God. The

To those of you who have been blessed by the gospel for many years because you were fortunate enough to find it early, to those of you who have come to the gospel by stages and phases later, and to those of you—members and not yet members—who may still be hanging back, to each of you, one and all, I testify of the renewing power of God’s love and the miracle of His grace. His concern is for the faith at which you finally arrive, not the hour of the day in which you got there. So if you have made covenants, keep them. If you haven’t made them, make them. If you have made them and broken them, repent and repair them. It is never too late so long as the Master of the vineyard says there is time. Please listen to the prompting of the Holy Spirit telling you right now, this very moment, that you should accept the atoning gift of the Lord Jesus Christ and enjoy the fellowship of His labor. Don’t delay. It’s getting late.

With my renewed focus, informed consent—the ritual by which a patient signs a piece of paper, authorizing surgery—became not a juridical exercise in naming all the risks as quickly as possible, like the voiceover in an ad for a new pharmaceutical, but an opportunity to forge a covenant with a suffering compatriot: Here we are together, and here are the ways through—I promise to guide you, as best as I can, to the other side.

the plan of salvation is no halfway fix-it job. God’s plan of restoration brings us back to the pristine state of Eden—in a world now much better and much greater. Augustine once said that he feared to entrust his soul to the great physician lest he be more thoroughly cured than he cared to be. God’s plan of salvation is absolutely thorough, and he is not going to be satisfied with some half job of reformation and renewal in our lives.

Latter-day Saints have often been critical of those who emphasize salvation by grace alone, while we have often been criticised for a type of works-righteousness. The gospel is in fact a gospel covenant—a two-way promise. The Lord agrees to do for us what we could never do for ourselves—to forgive our sins, to lift our burdens, to renew our souls and re-create our nature, to raise us from the dead, and to qualify us for glory hereafter. At the same time, we promise to do what we can do: come unto Christ by covenant, commit our lives to him as Lord and Master, receive the appropriate ordinances (sacraments), love and serve one another, and do all in our power to put off the natural man and deny ourselves of un-godliness. We know, without question, that the power to save us, to change us, to renew our souls, is in Christ. True faith, however, always manifests itself in faithfulness. "When faith springs up in the heart," Brigham Young taught, "good works will, and good works will increase that pure faith within them.

In an authoritarian state, rights derive from the state and are granted to the people. In a free state, rights derive from the people and are granted to the state. In the former, people are subjects, who are only allowed to own property, pursue an education, work, pray, and speak because their government permits them to. In the latter, people are citizens, who agree to be governed in a covenant of consent that must be periodically renewed and is constitutionally revocable. It’s this clash, between the authoritarian and the liberal democratic, that I believe to be the major ideological conflict of my time—not some concocted, prejudiced notion of an East-West divide, or of a resurrected crusade against Christendom or Islam.

His intercession was not only solidarity but identification with us: he bears all of us in his Body. And thus his whole life as a man and as Son is a cry to God’s heart; it is forgiveness, but forgiveness that transforms and renews. I think we should meditate upon this reality. Christ stands before God and is praying for me. His prayer on the Cross is contemporary with all human beings, contemporary with me. He prays for me; he suffered and suffers for me; he identified himself with me, taking our body and the human soul. And he asks us to enter this identity of his, making ourselves one body, one spirit with him because from the summit of the Cross he brought, not new laws, tablets of stone, but himself, his Body and his Blood, as the New Covenant.

His grace is sufficient in our distress. His covenant of vibrant love is displayed in our hearts continually, even if we are unable to see the rainbowed promise with our natural eyes. God's Word is the same. Its promises hold true regardless of the circumstantial evidence to the contrary. God's promised words which are best exhibited through our daily life are bright and beautiful. Calm lives or chaotic ones; His Word remains steadfast. During times of still waters or when we are in a tempest grip, it doesn't change the life-giving promise that His mercies are new every morning. His compassion never wears out. He renews us just as He is with us. He sustains us just as He is for us. No matter what we face, He will see us through it all. Just as the sun rises in the east to meet our new day, His mercy is new each day.

All of our faith and practice arise out of the drama of Scripture, the “big story” that traces the plot of history from creation to consummation, with Christ as its Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. And out of the throbbing verbs of this unfolding drama God reveals stable nouns — doctrines. From what God does in history we are taught certain things about who he is and what it means to be created in his image, fallen, and redeemed, renewed, and glorified in union with Christ. As the Father creates his church, in his Son and by his Spirit, we come to realize what this covenant community is and what it means to belong to it; what kind of future is promised to us in Christ, and how we are to live here and now in the light of it all. The drama and the doctrine provoke us to praise and worship — doxology — and together these three coordinates give us a new way of living in the world as disciples.

The Bible is in the end a single, great story that comes to a climax in Jesus Christ. God created the world and created us to serve and enjoy him and the world he had made. But human beings turned away from serving him; they sinned and marred themselves and the creation. Nevertheless, God promised to not abandon them (though it was his perfect right) but to rescue them, despite the guilt and condemnation they were under and despite their inveterately flawed hearts and character. To do this, first God called out one family in the world to know him and serve him. Then he grew that family into a nation; entered into a binding, personal covenant relationship with them; and gave them his law to guide their lives, the promise of blessing if they obeyed it, and a system of offerings and sacrifices to deal with their sins and failures. However, human nature is so disordered and sinful that, despite all these privileges and centuries of God’s patience, even his covenant people—who had received the law, promises, and sacrifices—turned away from him. It looked hopeless for the human race. But God became flesh and entered the world of time, space, and history. He lived a perfect life, but then he went to the cross to die. When he was raised from the dead, it was revealed that he had come to fulfill the law with his perfect life, to offer the final sacrifice, taking the curse that we deserved and thereby securing the promised blessings for us by free grace. Now those who believe in him are united with God despite our sin, and this changes the people of God from a single nation-state into a new international, multiethnic fellowship of believers in every nation and culture. We now serve him and our neighbor as we wait in hope for Jesus to return and renew all creation, sweeping away death and all suffering.

All the benefits we obtain in Christ are benefits of the covenant of grace. These are acquired first by Christ in all fullness in an objectively real way. Then they are applied by the Holy Spirit to believers. In this order, justification based on Christ’s objective atonement precedes the acts of repentance of believers and their lives of sanctification in which they grow in grace. For this reason the immediate work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration precedes faith, and since only those who are holy will gain eternal life, sanctification precedes perseverance in order. Another way of stating this is to say that Christ first restores our relationship to God, then renews us after God’s image, and finally preserves for us our heavenly inheritance. Another way is to say that we are called, justified, sanctified, and glorified. All this is from God, in Christ, through the power and working of the Holy Spirit. 

In these moments, I acted not, as I most often did, as death’s enemy, but as its ambassador. I had to help those families understand that the person they knew—the full, vital independent human—now lived only in the past and that I needed their input to understand what sort of future he or she would want: an easy death or to be strung between bags of fluids going in, others coming out, to persist despite being unable to struggle. Had I been more religious in my youth, I might have become a pastor, for it was the pastoral role I’d sought. — With my renewed focus, informed consent—the ritual by which a patient signs a piece of paper, authorizing surgery—became not a juridical exercise in naming all the risks as quickly as possible, like the voiceover in an ad for a new pharmaceutical, but an opportunity to forge a covenant with a suffering compatriot: Here we are together, and here are the ways through—I promise to guide you, as best as I can, to the other side.

For members of a particular religious community, the sense of obligation takes a specific form when it comes to their commitment to each other. In the movie Shall We Dance?, Richard Gere plays a bored middle-aged attorney who surreptitiously takes up ballroom dancing. His wife, played by Susan Sarandon, becomes suspicious at his renewed energy and vitality. She hires a private detective, who discovers the dance studio and reports the news. She decides to let her husband continue dancing undisturbed. In the scene where she meets the private detective in a bar to pay his fee and end the investigation, they linger over a drink and discuss why people marry in the first place. The detective, whose countless investigations into infidelity have rendered him cynical about marriage, suggests that the desire to marry has something to do with hormones and passing fancy. She disagrees. The reason we marry, she insists, is that “we need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet. . . . I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things . . . all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’ ” The sacramental bond that unites two people in a marriage or committed relationship is known as a covenant. A covenant—the word means mutual agreement—is a promise to bear witness to the life of another: the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things. At its heart, the relationship among members of a religious community is covenantal as well. As with marriage, the relationship also includes other dimensions, such as friendship and perhaps financial and/or legal partnership. But the defining commitment that members of a religious community make to each other arises from their calling—their covenantal duty—to bear witness to each other’s lives: the lives they now lead and the lives they hope to lead in the future, and the world they now occupy and the world they hope to occupy in the future.

For the last part of the trial in heaven, Yahweh Elohim allowed the litigators to engage in cross examination and rebuttal. The Accuser stood next to Enoch before the throne. Yahweh Elohim announced the beginning of the next exchange, “Accuser, you may speak.” The Accuser began with his first complaint, “On this fourth aspect of the covenant, the ‘blessings and curses,’ we find another series of immoral maneuvers by Elohim, the first of which is the injustice of his capital punishment.” The Accuser delivered his lines with theatrical exaggeration. It would have annoyed Enoch had they not been so self-incriminating. “What kind of a loving god would punish a simple act of disobedience in the Garden with death and exile? In the interest of wisdom, the primeval couple eat a piece of fruit and what reward do they receive for their mature act of decision-making? Pain in childbirth, male domination, cursed ground, miserable labor, perpetual war, and worst of all, exile and death! I ask the court, does that sound like the judicious behavior of a beneficent king or an infantile temper tantrum of a juvenile divinity who did not get his way?” The Accuser bowed with a mocking tone in his voice, “Your majestic majesticness, I turn over to the illustrative, master counselor of extensive experience, Enoch ben Jared.” The Accuser’s mockery no longer fazed Enoch. His ad-hominem attacks on a lowly servant of Yahweh Elohim was so much child’s play. It was the accuser’s impious sacrilege against the Most High that offended Enoch — and the Most High’s forbearing mercy that astounded him. He spoke with a renewed awe of the Almighty, “If I may point out to the prosecutor, the seriousness of the punishment is not determined by the magnitude of the offense, but the magnitude of the one offended. Transgression of a fellow finite temporal creature requires finite earthly consequences, transgression against the infinite eternal God requires infinite eternal consequences.

Who will have their strength renewed? “Those who wait upon the Lord”. Waiting could signify passivity: being still. Waiting could also indicate action: serving. Waiting — either kind — can be nearly impossible while we are being run by our emotions. In learning to balance your emotions with wisdom, learning to wait upon the Lord in both senses of the word, you will find that your strength is renewed every day in every situation. On the other hand, operating out of emotions can be exhausting. In your Christian walk, the ability to discern seasons is vital. There are times in your life where immediate action is not only unnecessary, it can be damaging. There are situations in which your best course of action is to “be still and know that He is God” (Psalm 46:10). Allowing Him to speak to you in the midst of your storm, finding your peace in Christ when your life seems upside down may be exactly what is needed. There are times when patience is the order of the day, and waiting on the Lord to move or instruct you in the way you are to move is exactly what is needed. Sometimes the most difficult course to take is to wait and allow the Lord to direct your heart “into the love of God and the patience of Christ” (2 Thessalonians3:5). However difficult it may be, practicing waiting will serve you well. “Waiting” can also signify an action. A waitress will wait on you in your favorite restaurant. You may wait on, or serve, your family. In being able to discern the seasons of waiting passively, we must also be able to discern the seasons of waiting actively. Even in times when you might feel unsure of the next step, there are continually ways for you to serve the Lord: prayer, study, service to others being a few examples. In times when everything is going along smoothly, waiting actively on the Lord is always in order. Paul encourages young Timothy to “be diligent to show yourself approved” (2 Timothy 2:15). In learning to wait actively on the Lord, it is good advice for us as well. Applying ourselves to faithful service to the Lord (active waiting) will sustain us through times when the waiting requires patience and stillness. In our Christian walk, both kinds of “waiting” are needed: an active waiting on or serving the Lord, and likewise a passive waiting for the Lord to move on your behalf. As everything in our relationship with the Lord is a partnership or covenant, this waiting is a “two way street”. As we serve the Lord, He is moved to action on our behalf. Psalm 37:3-7 speaks to both kinds of waiting (parentheses mine): “Trust in the LORD (passive), and do good (active); Dwell in the land (passive), and feed on His faithfulness (active). Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD (active), Trust also in Him (passive), And He shall bring it to pass (the Lord’s action). He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your justice as the noonday (the Lord’s action). Rest in the LORD (passive), and wait patiently for Him (passive)”. Tremendous and amazing results can come from this kind of waiting. Of course, the Lord in His generous and kind manner will send you opportunities to practice if you want to learn to wait! In His providence, those opportunities are already provided — it is for you to take advantage of them. Will you? Unfortunately, patience is not one of Ahasuerus’ virtues. He is motivated by his emotions, and seems to rush right into whatever comes into his mind without much forethought. Let’s return to Persia, and find out what Ahasuerus is rushing into today. After these things, when the wrath of King Ahasuerus subsided, he remembered... Esther 2:1 “After these things”…. By the beginning of chapter two, four years have passed since King Ahasuerus dethroned Queen Vashti. God was working through this Persian chronicler as he wrote this history

This renewed politics of otherness not only allowed entire categories of poor whites to develop a powerful sense of racial belonging, but also allowed entire categories of erstwhile nonwhite immigrants (the Irish are the most prominent example) to become white.

By the time of the Mosaic covenant, the peace offering (Lev 17:11ff.) was the divinely prescribed means of maintaining a harmonious relationship between God and his covenant people. The sin offering (Lev 4) dealt with sin as a barrier between the worshipers and God. This sin offering was a slaughtered bull, lamb, or goat with which the worshiper had identified himself by laying his hands on its head. When the blood of the victim, signifying its life (Lev 17:11), was daubed on the horns of the altar, symbolizing the presence of God, God and the worshipers were united in a renewed relationship.

THE EIGHT PRAYER WATCHES FIRST PRAYER WATCH (6.00PM—9.00PM) Father God in the name of Jesus, thank you for your love and protection throughout the day. Thank you for you for your blanket of protection over our land of South Africa, the continent of Africa and the entire world. You say in your word you will never leave us nor forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6). We believe Your word, Your word is true and Your word is alive. Heavenly Father help us to renew your covenant of love with you concerning our nation, our children, all our assignments that are given to us by you Jehovah including our businesses.We declare Jesus Christ as our senior partner in our lives and we call down your consuming fire in our lives and over the land of South Africa in the mighty name of Jesus. We ask you Holy Spirit to give us the spirit of discernment so we can sense the evil tactics of the enemy in the name of Jesus. Help us Lord to acknowledge your Kingship and your Rulership in the mighty name of Jesus. Thank you King Jesus for answering our prayers, you are a faithful God and you are the same yesterday, today and forever. Thank you Father. Amen.

That is why they are called a “warped and twisted generation,” because good and evil were so interwoven in their conduct, and “it is difficult to separate good and evil when evil is done in a holy cause.

God hates hatred between people, and Scripture reckons it as equal to idolatry, forbidden sex, and bloodshed combined.

There are failings to which intensely religious people are sometimes prone, namely, indifference to the injustices of society, a willingness to overlook corruption within their own ranks, and a tendency to believe that attachment to God relieves one of the duty to be upright, civil, and gracious in one’s dealings with human beings.

Narrative teaches us the complexity of the moral life and the light-and-shade to be found in any human personality. Without this, self-righteousness can destroy the very perceptions and nuances, the tolerance and generosity of spirit on which society depends.

By the first century, a complete system of universal, compulsory education was in place, an achievement the Talmud attributes to Yehoshua b. Gamla (Bava Batra 21a), the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

Unbelievers do not gather for worship. The Lord’s family assembles on the Lord’s Day for worship. In Christ the saints have sanctuary access. They are invited into heaven itself. If unbelievers are present, they are nevertheless not the focus of the assembly. They are not “in Christ” and therefore have no heavenly access to the Father.

Seeker” appears to function as a pious code word for “religious consumer,” a potential client eyeing each particular church to see which one might offer the best product. Unfortunately, many “seeker friendly” churches really do not do much by way of biblical evangelism at all.

when the Church behaves properly in worship, the “outsider” who enters “is convicted” and “called to account by all” so that “the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really present” in the assembly (1 Cor. 14:24–25).

Jews became the people whose heroes were teachers, whose citadels were schools, and whose passion was study and the life of the mind.

His body did not accompany his people as they entered the land, but his teachings did. His sons did not succeed him, but his disciples did. He may have felt that he had not changed his people in his lifetime, but in the full perspective of history, he changed them more than any leader has ever changed any people, turning them into the people of the book and the nation who built not ziggurats or pyramids but schools and houses of study.

Greatness is humility.

Physically, the taller you are the more you look down on others. Morally, the reverse is the case. The more we look up to others, the higher we stand. For us, as for God, greatness is humility.

Moses would not have won an election. He was not that kind of leader. Instead Moses summons the people to humility and responsibility.

Every individual would count. Therefore every individual had to feel part of the whole, respected and given the means of a dignified life. Injustice, gross inequality, or a failure of concern for the weak and marginal would endanger society at its very roots. There was no margin for error or discontent. Without indomitable courage based on the knowledge that God was with them, the people would fall prey to larger powers.

There neither was nor would be a time when Israel could rely on numbers, or vast tracts of territory, or easily defensible borders. So it was then. So it is now.

Moses’ words still challenge us today. God has given us freedom; it is for us to use it to create a just, generous, gracious society. God does not do it for us but He teaches us how it is done.

He once said: “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”3 To put it at its simplest: In Egypt, where the source of life was the Nile, you looked down. In Israel, where the source of life is rain, you had no choice but to look up.

Moses insists on three things. First, we are free. The choice is ours. Blessing or curse? Good or evil? Faithfulness or faithlessness? You decide, says Moses. Never has freedom been so starkly defined, not just for an individual but for a nation as a whole.

On this, the Mishna comments: “Did the hands of Moses make or break war? Rather, the text implies that whenever the Israelites looked up and dedicated their hearts to their Father in heaven, they prevailed, but otherwise they fell” (Mishna Rosh HaShana 3:8).

That is the nature of Jewish faith – not security but the courage to live with insecurity, knowing that life is a battle, but that if we do justice and practise compassion, if we honour great and small, the powerful and the powerless alike, if our eyes do not look down to the earth and its seductions but to heaven and its challenges, this small, vulnerable people is capable of great, even astonishing, achievements.

Jewish law is concerned not only with protecting the rights of those who have been wronged, but also helping wrongdoers rebuild their future. Guilt, in Judaism, is about acts, not persons. It is the act, not the person, that is condemned.

The manner in which doctrine is embodied, communicated, lived, and sung is not neutral. Style equals form, and form matters. In other words, the form or manner in which we approach God in worship is not something indifferent (adiaphora). The way we pray and how we worship is inexorably related to who we are, to whom we are praying, and what we believe about the One we engage in prayer and praise.

there is a genuine evangelistic dimension to the Lord’s Day liturgy. The Gospel is embodied in the liturgy and preached in the sermon. Nevertheless, it is not directed primarily to those outside of the faith, but to the community of believers. If unbelievers visit, they will hear the Gospel, but it will not be on their own terms.

Jesus said that the meeting place of his people ought to be a “house of prayer”(Mt. 21:13; Is. 56:7), not a lecture hall. The heavenly hosts are not seated as armies of students armed with note pads and pencils around the throne of the Lamb in Revelation 4 and 5. Rather, we see them “fall down before him who sits on the throne” (Rev. 4:10) and hear them “singing a new song” (Rev. 5:9). If this heavenly scene models for us earthly Christian worship, then the corporate acts of kneeling, antiphonal responses, and singing are fundamental to worship.

falling down before God means allowing oneself to be lifted up by him (Dan. 8:17–18). It is to give one’s self over to the Lord’s service. In effect, falling down before God puts us in the position to be served by God.

Every conception and form of liturgy that focuses on man will eventually degenerate into intellectual or psychological manipulation.

Poverty is not, in Judaism, a blessed condition. It is, the rabbis said, “a kind of death”3 and “worse than fifty plagues” (Bava Batra 116a). They said, “Nothing is harder to bear than poverty, because he who is crushed by poverty is like one to whom all the troubles of the world cling and upon whom all the curses of Deuteronomy have descended. If all other troubles were placed on one side and poverty on the other, poverty would outweigh them all.

What he tells them is unexpected, counter-intuitive. In effect he says this: “You know what your parents suffered. You have heard about their slavery in Egypt. You yourselves have known what it is to wander in the wilderness without a home or shelter or security. You may think those were the greatest trials, but you are wrong. You are about to face a harder trial. The real test is security and contentment

Our contemporary consumer is constructed in the first-person singular: I want, I need, I must have. There are many things we can achieve in the first-person singular but one we cannot, namely, simĥa – because simĥa is the joy we share, the joy we have only because we share.

What would be seen as charity in other legal systems is, in Judaism, a strict requirement of the law, enforceable by the courts.

The corrupt not only believe they can fool their fellow humans; they believe they can fool God as well. When moral standards begin to break down in business, finance, trade, and politics, a kind of collective madness takes hold of people. The sages said Adam bahul al mamono (Pesaĥim 11b), meaning, roughly, “Money makes us do wild things.

There are, however, dangers in covenantal politics. First, it can lead to overconfidence, the belief that “God is on our side.” This was the message of the false prophets whom Jeremiah denounced in his day. Second, it can lead to moral self-righteousness. People can come to think: We are the chosen or almost chosen people, therefore we are morally better than the rest. The prophet Malachi addresses this with biting irony: “From where the sun rises to where it sets, My name is great among the nations…but you profane it” (Mal. 1:11–12).

Yet there is no verb in biblical Hebrew that means to obey.

In Judaism faith is a form of listening – to the song creation sings to its Creator, and to the message history delivers to those who strive to understand it. That is what Moses says time and again in Deuteronomy: Stop looking; listen. Stop speaking; listen.

God’s greatness is that He hears the unheard.

Faith in Judaism is not about ontology (what exists?) or epistemology (what can we know?) but about relationships – about the people with whom we converse.

You do not need numbers to enlarge the spiritual and moral horizons of humankind. You need other things altogether: a sense of the worth and dignity of the individual, of the power of human possibility to transform the world, of the importance of giving everyone the best education they can have, of making each feel part of a collective responsibility to ameliorate the human condition.

The very name Ishmael means “God hears.” One of the tasks of a leader, according to Moses, is to “hear between your brothers” (Deut. 1:16; to this day, a court case is called “a hearing”). The great social legislation in Exodus states that “if you take your neighbour’s cloak as a pledge, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? When he cries out to Me, I will hear, for I am compassionate” (Ex. 22:25–26). Hearing is the basis of both justice and compassion

the same five-fold covenantal pattern can be discerned in the way the details of the sacrificial ritual unfold. The first offering of Leviticus 1:1–9 illustrates this:

In the New Testament sacrificial language is not confined to the historical work of Christ on the cross (Eph. 5:2; Heb. 9:26; 10:12). The author of Hebrews, for example, tells us that the entire Old Covenant sacrificial system “was symbolic for the present time” (Heb. 9:9–10).

much of the language used to describe the Church and the Christian life in the New Testament is derived from the tabernacle, temple, and sacrificial system.

after the death and resurrection of Christ, the Church is the New Temple. She feasts with the King of Kings every week when she gathers. The fact that the covenant renewal meal is an integral part of weekly Christian worship was a dramatic experience for the first-century Jews. They understood the change: the Church was the New Temple (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:18–22; Heb. 8:1–2; 1 Pet. 2:5; Rev. 21:3).4 When the early Christians met they ate (Acts 2:42, 46; 20:7, 11; 1 Cor. 5:8; 10:16–17; 11: 17–34; Rev. 3:20).

Every church service is a liturgy, if it has various elements in some arrangement. That is what liturgy is. Liturgical churches are churches that have thought about those elements and their proper order. Nonliturgical churches are those that have not. It is no compliment to say that a church is a nonliturgical church. It is the same thing as saying it is a church that gives little thought to how it worships God.

But in the New Testament period the temple system was central; after its destruction the Rabbis organized a new Judaism on enlightened Pharisee lines. But it was a new religion, not the old. The old religion died in the year A.D. 70, and gave birth to two children; the elder was modern Judaism without temple or priest or sacrifice; the younger was Christianity, which was proud possessor of all three. What links Hebrews with Revelation is its insistence on this fact. Christianity is the true heir of the old faith. To it have been transferred the priesthood and her sacrifice.9

Consider the birth of the New Covenant church on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two. In the old world, when the glory cloud descended upon the tabernacle and temple, the fire of God ignited the wood on top of the altar for the purpose of sacrifice. At the inauguration of the new creation in Christ, the glory cloud descends upon the new temple of God in Acts 2 and the fire of God is ignited over the heads of the Apostles, the new human temple of God, enabling them to offer their lives as living sacrifices (Eph. 2:21; 1 Pet. 2:5).

The Church of Jesus Christ is the New Temple and as such the worship and ministry of the Church is in some profound sense “temple service.”10

Call to Worship: God calls the worshiper to draw near. In response to God’s call the worshiper comes with the appropriate animal. (Lev. 1:1–2)

The way of sacrifice has not been abrogated; animal sacrifices have. Discussion of the revocation of the sacrificial system has not always been carefully nuanced. The meaning and application of the Old Testament animal sacrificial system cannot be exhausted by referring it all to the historical work of Christ on the cross.

every Sabbath day was to be a “holy convocation,” one of the “feasts,” according to Leviticus 23:1–3. Such a mandate demands local, weekly worship, and not in Jerusalem, but decentralized in the towns.

Jesus was not only our substitute, but also the forerunner (Heb. 6:20). In union with Him we are drawn into God’s presence as living sacrifices. In Him the Church is holy space, the environment in which living sacrifices are offered.

Now, let us review what we have discovered in our analysis of the first creation covenant. Yahweh’s covenant with Adam contains in seed form everything that will go into the other covenants in the Scriptures. There will be some important changes, of course, after the fall of man, but the post-fall covenants are not ad hoc, novel arrangements, but renewals of the creation covenant. Our outline of the form of God’s covenant includes five dimensions: As covenant Lord, Yahweh takes hold of His creation in order to do something new with it. The Lord effects a separation. What God grasps is then transformed from one state to another, from the old to the new: a new creation. This new union (dirt and life-giving breath of Yahweh) receives from God a corresponding new name, which implies a new hierarchical relationship. There is a covenant head (Yahweh) and there are those who are dependent on that covenant head (human creatures). A new verbal communication of stipulations is expressed by the covenant Lord, a way of life fit for the new covenantal situation, a gracious enumeration of how to live fully and joyfully in this new covenant. The Lord offers His covenant partners a fellowship meal. He gives the gift of signs and seals of the covenant (two trees) together with a setting forth of blessings for grateful faithfulness and curses for ungrateful disobedience. The Lord arranges for the future succession of the covenant, which in this covenant involves marriage and children.

The time is now, man or woman of God, to renew your covenant of love in all sincerity and surrender. Love is too holy a treasure to trade in for another, and too powerful a bond to be broken without dire consequences. Fasten your love afresh on this one the Lord has given you to cherish, prize, and honor. Your life together is before you. Choose to take hold of it and never let go. We dare you.

The Sinai covenant itself, then, is a law-covenant. The land is given to Israel, but for the purpose of fulfilling its covenantal vocation. Remaining in the land is there fore conditional on Israel's personal performance of the stipulations that people swore at Sinai...The ultimate promise of a worldwide family of Abraham--sinners justified and glorified in a renewed creation--is unconditional in its basis, while the continuing existence of the national theocracy as a type of that everlasting covenant depended on Israel's obedience...The Decalogue and Joshua 24 fit this suzerainty pattern, but as Mendenhall observe, "it can readily be seen that the covenant with Abraham (and Noah) is of completely different form." P.15

But there was a still greater truth to be impressed upon their minds. Living in the midst of idolatry and corruption, they had no true conception of the holiness of God, of the exceeding sinfulness of their own hearts, their utter inability, in themselves, to render obedience to God’s law, and their need of a Saviour. All this they must be taught. God brought them to Sinai; he manifested his glory; he gave them his law, with the promise of great blessings on condition of obedience: “If ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ...ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.” Exodus 19:5, 6. The people did not realize [372] the sinfulness of their own hearts, and that without Christ it was impossible for them to keep God’s law; and they readily entered into covenant with God. Feeling that they were able to establish their own righteousness, they declared, “All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.” Exodus 24:7. They had witnessed the proclamation of the law in awful majesty, and had trembled with terror before the mount; and yet only a few weeks passed before they broke their covenant with God, and bowed down to worship a graven image. They could not hope for the favor of God through a covenant which they had broken; and now, seeing their sinfulness and their need of pardon, they were brought to feel their need of the Saviour revealed in the Abrahamic covenant and shadowed forth in the sacrificial offerings. Now by faith and love they were bound to God as their deliverer from the bondage of sin. Now they were prepared to appreciate the blessings of the new covenant. The terms of the “old covenant” were, Obey and live: “If a man do, he shall even live in them” (Ezekiel 20:11; Leviticus 18:5); but “cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them.” Deuteronomy 27:26. The “new covenant” was established upon “better promises”—the promise of forgiveness of sins and of the grace of God to renew the heart and bring it into harmony with the principles of God’s law. “This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.... I will forgive their iniquity, and will remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah 31:33, 34.

The same law that was engraved upon the tables of stone is written by the Holy Spirit upon the tables of the heart. Instead of going about to establish our own righteousness we accept the righteousness of Christ. His blood atones for our sins. His obedience is accepted for us. Then the heart renewed by the Holy Spirit will bring forth “the fruits of the Spirit.” Through the grace of Christ we shall live in obedience to the law of God written upon our hearts. Having the Spirit of Christ, we shall walk even as he walked. Through the prophet he declared of himself, “I delight to do Thy will, O My God: yea, Thy law is within My heart.” Psalm 40:8. And when among men he said, “The Father hath not left Me alone; for I do always those things that please him.” John 8:29. [373] The apostle Paul clearly presents the relation between faith and the law under the new covenant. He says: “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh”—it could not justify man, because in his sinful nature he could not keep the law—“God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Romans 5:1; 3:31; 8:3, 4. God’s work is the same in all time, although there are different degrees of development and different manifestations of his power, to meet the wants of men in the different ages. Beginning with the first gospel promise, and coming down through the patriarchal and Jewish ages, and even to the present time, there has been a gradual unfolding of the purposes of God in the plan of redemption. The Saviour typified in the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish law is the very same that is revealed in the gospel. The clouds that enveloped his divine form have rolled back; the mists and shades have disappeared; and Jesus, the world’s Redeemer, stands revealed. He who proclaimed the law from Sinai, and delivered to Moses the precepts of the ritual law, is the same that spoke the Sermon on the Mount. The great principles of love to God, which he set forth as the foundation of the law and the prophets, are only a reiteration of what he had spoken through Moses to the hebrew people: “hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” Deuteronomy 6:4, 5. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Leviticus 19:18. The teacher is the same in both dispensations. God’s claims are the same. The principles of his government are the same. For all proceed from him “with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” James 1:17. [374] Chapter

I ask my readers to observe how deeply thankful we ought to be for the glorious gospel of the grace of God. There is a remedy revealed for mans need, as wide and broad and deep as mans disease. We need not be afraid to look at sin and study its nature, origin, power, extent and vileness, if we only look at the same time at the almighty medicine provided for us in the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. Though sin has abounded, grace has much more abounded. Yes: in the everlasting covenant of redemption, to which Father, Son and Holy Spirit are parties; in the Mediator of that covenant, Jesus Christ the righteous, perfect God and perfect Man in one Person; in the work that He did by dying for our sins and rising again for our justification; in the offices that He fills as our Priest, Substitute, Physician, Shepherd and Advocate; in the precious blood He shed which can cleanse from all sin; in the everlasting righteousness that He brought in; in the perpetual intercession that He carries on as our Representative at Gods right hand; in His power to save to the uttermost the chief of sinners, His willingness to receive and pardon the vilest, His readiness to bear with the weakest; in the grace of the Holy Spirit which He plants in the hearts of all His people, renewing, sanctifying and causing old things to pass away and all things to become newin all this (and oh, what a brief sketch it is!)in all this, I say, there is a full, perfect and complete medicine for the hideous disease of sin. No wonder that old Flavel ends many a chapter of his admirable Fountain of Life with the touching words: "Blessed be God for Jesus Christ.

The covenant of grace describes the road by which elect people attain their destiny; it is the channel by which the stream of election flows toward eternity. Christ sends his Spirit to instruct and enable his own so that they consciously and voluntarily consent to this covenant. The covenant of grace comes with the demand of faith and repentance, which may in some sense be said to be its “conditions.” Yet, this must not be misunderstood. God himself supplies what he demands; the covenant of grace is thus truly unilateral—it comes from God, who designed, defines, maintains, and implements it. It is, however, designed to become bilateral, to be consciously and voluntarily accepted by believers in the power of God. In the covenant of grace, God’s honor is not at the expense of but for the benefit of human persons by renewing the whole person and restoring personal freedom and dignity. 

That plan, it appeared, was quickly coming to its conclusion. Forty-one Jubilee cycles after Adam, the covenant had been renewed through the promise given to Abraham and his “seed.” Then, forty-one Jubilee cycles later, the covenant was confirmed by its fulfillment in Jesus. Zane read Paul’s testimony to that fact in his epistle to the Galatians:

But Abraham’s Covenant with God was also unique, because of how it would be renewed, after his descendants broke it in the future.  Abraham stood there for a long time, waiting for a manifestation of God to come and walk through the pieces with him.  Birds came and he had to chase them away, and still he waited.   It wasn’t until finally Abraham fell supernaturally asleep that the LORD Himself manifested and passed between the pieces Himself in the form of both smoke and fire – just as He would manifest for the children of Israel over 400 years later as they wandered out of Egypt and through the wilderness. 

April 24 MORNING “And because of all this we make a sure covenant.” — Nehemiah 9:38 THERE are many occasions in our experience when we may very rightly, and with benefit, renew our covenant with God. After recovery from sickness when, like Hezekiah, we have had a new term of years added to our life, we may fitly do it. After any deliverance from trouble, when our joys bud forth anew, let us again visit the foot of the cross, and renew our consecration. Especially, let us do this after any sin which has grieved the Holy Spirit, or brought dishonour upon the cause of God; let us then look to that blood which can make us whiter than snow, and again offer ourselves unto the Lord. We should not only let our troubles confirm our dedication to God, but our prosperity should do the same. If we ever meet with occasions which deserve to be called “crowning mercies” then, surely, if He hath crowned us, we ought also to crown our God; let us bring forth anew all the jewels of the divine regalia which have been stored in the jewel-closet of our heart, and let our God sit upon the throne of our love, arrayed in royal apparel. If we would learn to profit by our prosperity, we should not need so much adversity. If we would gather from a kiss all the good it might confer upon us, we should not so often smart under the rod. Have we lately received some blessing which we little expected? Has the Lord put our feet in a large room? Can we sing of mercies multiplied? Then this is the day to put our hand upon the horns of the altar, and say, “Bind me here, my God; bind me here with cords, even for ever.” Inasmuch as we need the fulfillment of new promises from God, let us offer renewed prayers that our old vows may not be dishonoured. Let us this morning make with Him a sure covenant, because of the pains of Jesus which for the last month we have been considering with gratitude.

By passing through alone, the LORD made a prophetic promise – that when this Covenant would later be broken by Abraham’s descendants, the LORD Himself (represented by the smoking furnace) would pay the price on the cross at Calvary so that the eternal Covenant could be renewed in the blood of Jesus.  As the original Covenant was between Abraham and God, and because Abraham didn’t break the terms of the covenant, God to this day honors that contract with Abraham in that He has promised to never forsake or destroy the genetic remnant of Abraham’s descendants through Isaac and Jacob.[40]

We are also called to be holy, to be used where He wants, for what He wants, in the way that He wants.  When we surrendered our lives to God through the Covenant renewed in Jesus’ blood, we were making an agreement with God to live set apart lives, to live His way and not our own way anymore.  Whether we knew it or not, we signed an agreement to make Him absolute Master over our lives, both temporal and eternal.  We gave Him permission to bless us – and to discipline us.  We gave Him permission to adopt us and be our Father.  We were not simply signing up for a “get out of hell free” card.

First of all, let’s look at the word “new” in Greek. Greek has two words for new – the first is neos, which means brand new – like you got a neos pair of shoes because the old ones fell apart.  The second is kainos, which means “renewed” like the moon every month.  When the moon goes black and the sky is darkened, it looks like the moon disappears and then with the first sliver sighting a day or two later, we get a new moon – but it isn’t a neos moon, it is a kainos moon.  It is simply renewed, now we can see the moon again.

Lord, I have let myself be deceived; in a thousand ways I have shunned your love, yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord, take me once more into your redeeming embrace.

When We Need to Remember the Purpose of Family Did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. MALACHI 2:15 THE PURPOSE OF A FAMILY—a husband, wife, and children—is to glorify God. For those of you who do not have children, for whatever reason, I am not mentioning this to make you feel bad or self-conscious about that. Paul did not have children or a wife because God had another plan for him. Perhaps He has another plan for you. He used Paul in a powerful way that would not have been possible if he was a husband and a father. He is surely using you in that same way. If you have peace about not having children, then God has something else for you to do. If you don’t have peace, then ask God to either give you a child or else give you the peace you need about not having a child. He will do that. With that said, the simple truth about the purpose of marriage is to have “godly offspring” who will grow up to glorify Him. The message in this section of Scripture is that the husband is not to “deal treacherously” with his wife and treat her badly, because the Lord sees all that goes on in your marriage (Malachi 2:13-14). He knows how your husband treats you, as well as how you treat him. But God lays the responsibility right in the husband’s lap. He expects the husband to honor the covenant of marriage by treating his wife well. You both made a covenant before God when you married, and now you are one in His sight. And it is your husband’s responsibility to love you as he loves himself because you are part of him and he is part of you. When he does that, you can glorify God by having godly children—or raising up spiritual children—and not ending up in divorce court. Family is a great calling and a high purpose, and God wants you both to never forget it. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would help both my husband and me to remember that the purpose of our marriage, and any children we may have, is to glorify You. I know we are one in Your sight, but help us to truly become one in our hearts toward each other. Help us not to live in separate worlds, but to grow closer together with each passing year. Where we have already grown apart, I pray You would stop that drift between us and reverse our course so we are headed in the same direction. Teach us how to glorify You in the way we treat each other and in the way we raise our children—or raise up spiritual children—to follow You. Help us to “take heed” to our spirit so that we are always controlled by Your Spirit and no other. Even though I know that the purpose of our marriage and our family is always to glorify You, I know we cannot do that without Your help. Enable each of us to rise above our own selfishness and put renewed desire in our hearts to serve You only. In Jesus’ name I pray.

The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is the renewal of the covenant: “this is my blood of the new testament” (or covenant), so that the sacrament itself re-establishes the law, this time with a new elect group

This rhythm is itself at the service of a still deeper meaning: Creation is oriented to the sabbath, which is the sign of the covenant between God and humankind

To this must be added the fact that Torah, the law, is an expression of Israel’s history with God. It is an expression of the covenant, and the covenant is in turn an expression of God’s love, of his “yes” to the human being that he created, so that he could both love and receive love. Now we can grasp this notion better. We can say that God created the universe in order to enter into a history of love with humankind.

The act of eating the bread and drinking the water does not renew covenants in and of itself. Eating and drinking with intent renews covenants.

201 years after the deception was ratified by representatives of the states, who created a new covenant and a new nation by their collective act of ratification-incorporation. This new covenant meant a new god. The ratification of the United States Constitution in 1787–88 was not an act of covenant renewal. It was an act of covenant-breaking: the substitution of a new covenant in the name of a new god.

As a distillation of some of the things we have talked about in this chapter, we present here a brief list of hermeneutical guidelines that we hope will serve you well whenever you read the Old Testament Pentateuchal law. Keeping these principles in mind may help you to avoid mistaken applications of the law while seeing its instructive and faith-building character. 1. Do see the Old Testament law as God’s fully inspired word for you. 2. Don’t see the Old Testament law as God’s direct command to you. 3. Do see the Old Testament law as the basis for the old covenant, and therefore for Israel’s history. 4. Don’t see the Old Testament law as binding on Christians in the new covenant except where specifically renewed. 5. Do see God’s justice, love, and high standards revealed in the Old Testament law. 6. Don’t forget to see that God’s mercy is made equal to the severity of the standards. 7. Do see the Old Testament law as a paradigm — providing examples for the full range of expected behavior. 8. Don’t see the Old Testament law as complete. It is not technically comprehensive. 9. Do remember that the essence of the law (the Ten Commandments and the two chief laws) is repeated in the Prophets and renewed in the New Testament. 10. Don’t expect the Old Testament law to be cited frequently by the Prophets or the New Testament. Legal citation was first introduced only in the Roman era, long after the Old Testament was complete. 11. Do see the Old Testament law as a generous gift to Israel, bringing much blessing when obeyed. 12. Don’t see the Old Testament law as a grouping of arbitrary, annoying regulations limiting people’s freedom.

The rhythmic songs of crickets and grey tree frogs sound to me like little clocks. But instead of ticking time away-time going, going, gone-they seem to be accumulating time, season after season of mystery, wisdom, and wonder. With each trill and chirp and throb, these voices are keeping turtle time, renewing the covenants that keep the world alive, and offering us the gift of eternity.

God did not renew it with them now, and not before, because they were better able to keep it, but because they had more need to be made acquainted what the covenant of works is,

his purpose in renewing the covenant of works, was not, neither could be, to give life and salvation by working; for then there would have been contradictions in the covenants, and instability in him that made them. Wherefore let no man imagine that God published the covenant of works on Mount Sinai,

For this was it that God aimed at, in making the covenant of works with man in innocency, to have that which was his due from man:82 but God made it with the Israelites for no other end, than that man, being thereby convinced of his weakness, might flee to Christ. So that it was renewed only to help forward and introduce another and a better covenant; and so to be a manuduction unto Christ, viz: to discover sin, to waken the conscience, and to convince them of their own impotency, and so drive them out of themselves to Christ.