Four Points to Help You Celebrate Today
Your day is here.
Jeremiah 31 says: 31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Today is the day in which you get results. Today is the day of which you have been waiting.
What’s so special about today? Everything.
Today is the day for a word spoken directly to you. In a world that tells you you’re unimportant in the grand scheme of things, God says the grand scheme of things is His to direct. And if He chooses to speak to you directly with a direct message, then the grand scheme of things is whittled down to a manageable size for you to receive. Today, the grand scheme of things is directed so that you might know the Christmas story in your own, personal context. God prophesied for you that He would direct your circumstances to resolution in the birth of His Son, and in His death and Resurrection you would find a way to rationalize the difficult directions in which life takes you. All things find their grace in what God did when He spoke His covenant directly to you with a direct application.
God believes in speaking directly to people. When we read the prophesies ordained for a nation, we must believe that we are a part of that chosen people, given the great chance to take those promises as our own, given so that we are assured of our inclusion. What we find in these words of God for His people is a direct set of events that will help us find closure in our weakness today and give life when this life has ended. Sin is for this world; Righteousness is for the next. Christ’s birth satisfies what we try to break.
Here is what God is speaking to us directly today:
(1) Some covenants get amended, some get rewritten
God says that He will make a new covenant. God knows that we cannot save ourselves and so salvation must come from Him. It has always been that way. Covenantal satisfaction has never been something that we, as humans, have been good at. There’s always those pesky things we forget about or don’t seem to care about. That is why God had rituals set up for His people that covered all that other stuff. It was a reminder that there is so much more to sin than we realize. It is all-consuming on so many levels. It has the power to relegate us to a life of fear if we don’t hear words of grace. The words of grace are that a new covenant was needed to fulfill what shielded sinful man from true freedom and restitution. All of the Old Testament looked forward to the true redemption that would one day come. That is why Christ’s birth, life, death, and Resurrection were all so important. Without any one part of those things, our salvation has not been accomplished.
Amending what had been done would only have continued what we cannot by ourselves do. God’s gracious prophecy gave His people hope that sin would not continue to hang over our head. Today is the day to receive those words directly for yourself. Here’s the truth of grace for us: God did not rewrite the covenant for His sake, but for ours. God’s life here on earth was given so that you might know that a new covenant was created for you and your unique circumstances, pains, struggles, and times of suffering.
(2) God is willing to take us to the triumphant places
God is willing. He prepares those places, He prepares us, and He promises what can happen when we trust in Him in those places. Because He is willing to lead, we must be willing to follow. And that means we must be willing to believe that life with God is better than with anyone else. He has chosen to protect and care for us. His covenant means He is willing to work beyond what we believe is possible, or even in His best interests. But He does it anyway, and He is diligent and faithful.
Are we willing to trust?
(3) We have the power to corrupt contracts
Covenants are broken all the time by the unfaithful. It is a sad reality in our world. Whether it’s the covenant of marriage, a medical bill unpaid, or a spoken word unfulfilled, they are broken. And that hurts. It hurts our world by eroding the power of integrity. It hurts our witness as people of the covenant.
How can you honor a covenant today?
(4) We are meant to know God
The great covenant of God would be a sign that only sin would cause us to deny. God proclaimed it in the highest way. He announced its coming, He testified to its necessity, and He made it into such a spectacle, that all would be drawn into the story. It was not meant to be denied.
Such are acts of grace for God’s people. They are meant so that we would know God. But we continue to believe they come from some other source. We believe that God should thank us for every little thing, but shouldn’t we be thanking God for every little thing?
We are meant to know God. I wonder how many really know Him.
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Today is your day. Today is all about what you hear and trust from God. He reminds the world every year of what is to come and what has already come. Pray it doesn’t get lost to those who need it most. Amen.
Amen is all I can think of to say! Nice blog!
Great! Glad you enjoyed the post.