A Better Covenant

Numerous centuries had passed since the rainbow was first set in the sky. After exiting the ark, God made a covenant with Noah that he would never again destroy the earth with a world-wide flood. The rainbow was the sign of that covenant. Next God made a covenant promising Abraham that a great nation would be formed from his descendants in the promised land of Canaan. Two generations later, God made a covenant with Jacob that he would remember the covenant made with Abraham, Jacob's grandfather.

Approximately 400 years later, the Lord established another covenant with Israel at the base of Mt. Sinai. There on the mountain, the Lord promised to make them his chosen people. He promised to protect them. He promised to provide for all their needs. He promised to take them by the hand to lead them into the land he had promised to Abraham many generations earlier.

In the covenant that God made with Israel on Mt. Sinai, there was a certain understanding. God called Israel to be different -- to be a light to the other nations, a magnet to attract their neighbors to the Lord. Every detail of an Israelite's life was prescribed under the Law given at Mt. Sinai.

This was a double-sided covenant -- like you make with your children. If they clean their rooms, you'll take them for ice cream. If they keep their grades up, they'll be able to go out for sports. If they do all their chores, they'll be able to go out with their friends. The covenant you make with your children is that if they obey, then you will bless them.

God treated Israel as children -- but they were his children. God would be their Father if they would be and act like his children. The children of Israel responded to the reading of the Book containing the Covenant: "We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey" (Exodus 24:7). Then Moses sprinkled the blood from the offerings onto the people. This signified that they were bound to this covenant.

But before the blood had even dried, the Israelites were breaking their covenant promise.

As Moses was walking down from Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments in hand, the people were bowing down before a hunk of gold in the shape of a calf.

That's the way it continued throughout the history of the Old Testament. God remained faithful to the promises he made to Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David. The human end of the covenant was another matter. The children were continually disobeying their heavenly Father and worshiping false gods. They were constantly forgetting God, neglecting the call to be God's chosen ones.

That's why the author to the letter to Hebrews says that God had a problem with that old covenant. "If that first covenant were without fault, there would have been no reason to look for a second. But because God found fault with the people, he said: Look, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their forefathers at the time when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt. Because they did not remember my covenant, I ignored them, says the Lord" (Hebrews 8:7-9).

When you think about it, much of the Old Testament is a record of how Israel destroyed the covenant God had established with them. He was a faithful Father, but they were naughty, disobedient children.

I'm sure the Israelites wanted to be better. They probably even tried to be better. But they just couldn't do it without God. They kept falling into the same sins year after year, generation after generation.

I think we want to believe that we are getting better as Christians. We are hopeful that the longer we are Christians, the easier it will be for us. We are expecting to be able to look back and see the moral improvement in our character and lives. We make a promise to God that we will try harder, do better, pray longer, worship more, and everything else we think goes into being better Christians. We might believe that we are on an ascending slope in the graph of our sanctification. The truth is, if we put our sin and our sanctification on the graph, it would go up and down wildly -- like we're schizophrenic. ... Which we are as sinners and saints at the same time!

That's why it is so important that our covenant with God isn't based on our moral behavior. We would be just like the children of Israel -- breaking the covenant over and over again. If God treated us as children, we would never get to do anything fun -- like receive forgiveness, enjoy a new life, or live as child who is inheriting his or her Father's Kingdom. We try so hard ... but we are no different than God's Old Testament naughty, disobedient children.

"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws into their mind, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. Never again will a man teach his fellow citizen or his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful in regard to their unrighteousness, and I will not remember their sins any longer. When God said 'new,' he made the first covenant obsolete, and something that is obsolete and growing old is going to disappear" (Hebrews 8:10-13).

Because his children couldn't keep his old, two-sided covenant, God the Father made a one-sided covenant with his children. That's not what we might expect. Instead of punishing the people who broke the covenant, God enacted a better one-sided covenant with better promises mediated by a better Savior. This covenant promises faith in God, a part in the family of God, familiarity with God, and forgiveness from God.

The whole point of God's first covenant was to prepare his people for the Savior by showing them their sin and pointing them ahead to someone who would fulfill the covenant. The old covenant was written on stone tablets and later written on scrolls. God would write is new covenant right onto people's hearts. This means, by faith we will know what God wants and love what God wants because we've seen and believe what God has done for us. We've been set free from the old covenant, set free from our sins and have the desire and ability to obey out of love.

The author to the Hebrews explains, "Jesus has obtained a ministry that is as much superior as the covenant that he mediates is better, because it has been established on the basis of better promises" (Hebrews 8:6).

This new covenant will be made possible, not because everyone has obeyed one portion of the covenant, but because God will forgive their sins and remember them no more. This covenant doesn't depend on our ability to keep it at all. The covenant depends instead on the ability of Jesus Christ -- our better high priest and better sacrifice -- to keep this better covenant. Which he did!

This new covenant relationship with God won't be based on what people do. It will be based on the One in whom they believe.

God is saying that because of his Son's work through his substitutionary life, his sacrificial death, and his glorious resurrection, everyone will know that God has chosen to be forgetful. It's like what happens when your child says something incredibly hurtful, apologizes for it, and you say, "I didn't hear a thing." The truth is that you did hear the incredibly hurtful thing ... and it did wound you deeply, but because of your love, you have chosen to be forgetful. You have chosen to "remember their sin no more."

God forgets to punish your sins. He forgets to kill you for your insubordination. He forgets that he has every right for harsh revenge. He carries our sins so far away, that he can no longer see nor remember anything we've done to break the first covenant. He forgives it all. He doesn't just overlook our sin. He removes it all as far as the east is from the west. Selective amnesia -- that's what God has. And it is this selective amnesia that is yours through Jesus.

Jesus signs the new covenant, not just with Israel, but with the whole of humanity. The old covenant was carved into stone by God's divine finger. This new covenant is signed with Jesus' divine blood.

Jesus reaffirmed this new covenant at the Last Supper. Jesus said, "This is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (Luke 22:20). This cup of wine -- the blood of Christ -- given for you, this is the new covenant, the one Jeremiah talked about 600 years before.

Will this one-sided covenant of grace improve your behavior? That's asking the wrong question. Christianity fails when we see it only in terms of moral progress. Christianity succeeds when we see it in terms of forgiveness. God comes to us amid all our broken promises, our failed intentions, and our botched efforts and he says, "I still love you because I have chosen you to be my own."

Despite our professional efforts at sin and rebellion; despite our amateur claims to be self-sufficient without God; despite our best attempts at moral improvement; we have failed. We could not keep up our end of the old covenant. That's why God established a new covenant. There are no "ifs" in this covenant. There aren't any conditions. That's because it is a new and better covenant. Amen.