A Heart
Message (The New Covenant)
A Heart
Message (The New Covenant)
BY THE HAND, BY THE HEART
Imagine finding an official letter in your mailbox, with the return address
from a legal firm. At first it’s scary. But since it’s marked urgent, you open
it immediately at the curb. Soon your fear turns to joy because it turns out
you’re not being sued, but rather, you’re being informed that you’ve been left
a huge sum of money, properties and a host of other considerations by a
relative who recently passed away that you didn’t even know. Fear turns to
gratefulness and wonder. A sense of unworthiness begins to rise. Soon you are
telling others about what you’ve received because the joy is hard to contain.
All you need to do is appear at the legal firm, and sign for your inheritance.
This analogy captures something, though not all, of the New Testament or
Covenant. We do not know this rich relative of ours, God, but He knows us, and
has provided for us riches beyond belief. This last will and testament of Jesus
Christ is an activated inheritance given by God to all who simply accept it.
Jesus Christ provided this inheritance through his death on the cross. Now He
is risen from the dead, and He is making sure His wishes are carried out!
His inheritance has two parts. What we are saved from, and what we are saved
to. We are saved from Divine justice because of our sins. They are washed away
in the blood of Jesus. We are saved to an abundant life of fellowship with the
Lord, where He continues to forgive our sins everyday, and lead us into a life
of adventure, learning, growing, changing, and sharing the joy that we find as
each part of our inheritance manifests.
God pictured the Law through Moses in the Old Testament, as one where He took
Israel “by the hand”. God led Israel from the outside, by signs and wonders, by
His commandments, and decrees, by His prophets, priests and teachers demanding
that they “know the Lord”. He knew that their nature was fallen, and that their
many fallen needs and desires would constantly pull against His hand, until
they would break away into other directions. Thankfully God doesn’t give up on
us, because He loves us beyond our dreams, and so wants us to walk in that
inheritance.
The New Testament provides something much more than the demands to obey in the
Old Testament. It provides a changed heart that wants God and cries out Abba,
daddy! Instead of being dragged by the hand where we loathe to go we can be led
by our changed desires, and the leading of the Holy Spirit who lives inside.
Because God has provided His Spirit to indwell us, we can begin to know Him
very intimately. Of course, this is a process, relationships take time, but
each new revelation of the one we love is a delight to discover.
If we were an old Hotel in need of renovation, when Christ enters our life,
it’s as if He came into our main lobby. After a glorious transformation, the
public is in awe of the changes. But those closer to us know that there are
many rooms and hallways in our lives, filled with all of the hurts, sins and
ruins that still need the transformation of God. (2 Cor. 3:18) This process
goes as fast or slow as we can bear. God will never give up on causing us to
“will and work” His good pleasure. (Phil 2:13) Also, we’re not the only ones
getting an inheritance, He gets one as well. It’s us! We are His reward. And
He’s watching over us as an anxious lover waiting to get married.
Yes, in the New Testament it’s all an inside job, and as we stick with it, the
joy is certain to manifest. When it does, we cannot help but tell others about
the inheritance we are receiving.
“Behold, days are coming," declares
the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with
the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in
the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My
covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the
LORD. "But this is the covenant
which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the
LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I
will be their God, and they shall be My people.
"They will not teach again, each man his
neighbor and each man his brother, saying, `Know the LORD,' for they will all
know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD,
"for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
(Jeremiah 31:31-34)
But now He has obtained a more
excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant,
which has been enacted on better promises. (Heb. 8:6)
“Therefore I also, after I
heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not
cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of
wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding
being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are
the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the
exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the
working of His mighty power” (Ephesians 1:15-19)