7 June 2015 - blood of the covenant

All that the LORD has said, we will heed and do.

We say this. Yet we don't really succeed at doing it. All that the LORD has said may be distilled down into the first and greatest commandment, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" and the second which is like it, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Another way to say this is "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

When we hear it this way we start to wonder if it is even possible. Implicit in our acceptance of this covenant is the fact that it is more than we can manage on our own.

Then he took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying,
"This is the blood of the covenant
that the LORD has made with you
in accordance with all these words of his.

It is as if to say that our own lives in their totality are not enough to keep this covenant. But what else have we to give? We have nothing which we have not received. So, in our place we give back to the LORD the very things he gives us.

But these animals are not meant to pay the price of "eternal redemption". They serve to remind us that redemption is beyond price. They serve to remind us that we cannot of our own strength do that which God asks of us to do.

But they also prefigure a greater sacrifice which can "cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God." They teach us to long for that which only Jesus can do for us.

For this reason he is mediator of a new covenant:
since a death has taken place for deliverance
from transgressions under the first covenant,
those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance.

What Jesus gives is a true sacrifice. In his body and blood is the full life of the Triune God. In this life is the strength we need to actually keep the covenant of God and "All that the LORD has said".

This is my blood of the covenant,
which will be shed for many.

Our sinfulness made it so that the only way we could share in this life is through the cross. Our inability to keep the covenant is why Jesus sheds his blood. He pours it out so that we can receive it. When we receive it we are no longer empty. We now have something to offer which can genuinely please God.

How shall I make a return to the LORD
for all the good he has done for me?
The cup of salvation I will take up,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.

Let us praise the one who gives us "the promised eternal inheritance" which we could never afford on our own. Let us acknowledge, "you have loosed my bonds" with voices full of thanks and exultation!