Remember God's Covenant
Keeping Faith In-Between Times
It's been a busy Fall at CCPC! Over the last five weeks, we've been Getting in the Rhythm of Jesus by celebrating three major Hebrew Holidays mandated by God through Moses and celebrated by Jesus: Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), and Sukkot (the Festival of Booths). Now we enter into a stretch of the Jewish calendar year that is simply "ordinary time."
In the midst of the holiday season, it is much easier to keep our lives focused on God. But how do we maintain that closeness with God during the ordinary time, the "in-between" time that lacks the special reminders and celebrations of the holidays? This is the focus of our next section of our Dust of the Rabbi series: Keeping Faith In-Between Times.
Dust of the Rabbi:
Remember God's Covenant
For Jesus, as for all our Jewish ancestors, keeping faith primarily meant remembering the covenant made between God and His people Israel. In Scripture, a covenant is an agreement between two parties (one of whom is usually God) that includes a promise of future behavior. Some covenants in Scripture are unilateral promises from one party to another. The first covenant in Scripture is of this type: God covenants with Noah, and all living creatures, never to again send a flood to destroy all flesh. God makes a similar covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12, promising that He, the LORD, would make Abraham into a great nation.
The other type of covenant in Scripture is the conditional covenant, where one party's obligation to fulfill a promise is conditional on the other's behavior. God's covenant with the nation of Israel, mediated by Moses, is such a covenant. God states that "if you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully ... I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you will be my people." "But if you will not obey me, and do not observe all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes and abhor my ordinances, so that you will not observe all my commandments, and you break my covenant, ... I will set my face against you." (Read all of Leviticus 26 for context).
For a faithful Jew in biblical times, as for Jesus, keeping faith in-between times meant remembering the covenant that God made with His people, and following and obeying the laws He set before them. These laws and commandments were not seen as a burden; instead, they were the tangible reminders that God chose Israel, from amongst all the nations and peoples, for this extraordinary honor.
Extras
Read this Sunday's OT passage, Exodus 24:1-18, and then read Matthew 26:20-30. Notice the parallels between the institution of the Old Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. Both invoke the language of covenant, both are established in blood that is transmitted to the people, both are connected to meals where God is supernaturally present and visible, and both are made with communities rather than individuals. And yet the New Covenant is markedly more powerful than the Old, for God is not merely present but incarnate, and the blood offered is not that of animals but that of the God-Man Himself. Even in the most important event of the Old Testament, we can clearly see yet another instance of the Old Covenant foreshadowing Jesus' ministry.
Our bible is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. The word "Testament" is a synonym for "Covenant." Our Bible is divided into those books that primarily refer to the establishment of the Old Covenant with Israel through Moses, and those books that refer to the New Covenant with the church through Jesus.