Today we begin our look at a new passage from Isaiah: “Pay attention and come to me; listen, so that you will live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the promises assured to David. Since I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples,” (Isaiah 55:3-4, HCSB).
To understand these two verses more clearly, we need to look at Matthew 26:28. As Jesus gathered with His disciples for His final earthly Passover meal, He broke the bread and then presented the wine, initiating the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, or communion. He told them, “This is My blood [that establishes] the covenant; it is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Jesus clearly identified His “blood” as the one thing, the single act, which established “the covenant.” What “covenant?” Look back at Isaiah 55. Jesus is speaking of the “everlasting covenant” established by His shed blood, the one that for all time will cleanse and set free any person who accepts what He has done for him.
Hebrews 10:4 reminded the Jews that “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” These imperfect sacrifices were a temporary fix to a permanent problem – man’s sinful nature. Man needed ONGOING forgiveness, an “everlasting” pardon. And only the Perfect Sacrifice of the Son of God could open that doorway.
Man was trapped in permanent inescapable condemnation until Jesus Christ became “the door” (John 10:7)! Now each person who cries out to Him for forgiveness and salvation receives a full pardon, and LITERALLY passes “from death to life” (I John 3:14).
Let me encourage you to read Hebrews 8:6-13 today. It speaks of Jesus as is “the mediator of a better covenant” (Verse 6) and goes on to declare God’s promise that He “will be merciful [concerning our] wrongdoing, and… will never again remember [our] sins” (Verse 12).
This day and every day, we have so much to be thankful for.
No comments:
Post a Comment