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Know The Lord


          For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said:
          “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
          No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
          By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear. (Hebrews 8:8-13)            

          Now if this new covenant were something dreamed up in the New Testament, we might have reason to question, but the lengthy quote in the middle of today’s passage is Jeremiah 31:31-34. There, we are told that it would be new, different, and better. The passage also at least suggests that it will be personal, not a matter of obeying laws, but of being in a relationship with God. That was always the primary goal, but with the New Covenant and the new High Priest, the conquest of the promised land moved inward in ways it had not before.
         But it’s still a conquest of a promised land… the reacquisition of our souls, and the rules really haven’t changed. God told the Israelites they had nations they would have to destroy. We have “nations” in our minds that we must destroy, too: the tribes of pride, gluttony, hatred, lust, and greed, to name a few.
          There are times when we face those nations in great battles. There are also times when they seem to melt before us, and their allure no longer fills us with longing. There are things I used to do that I can’t imagine wanting to do now. And there are things that defeat me on a daily basis. But God has promised that we will conquer if we persevere. 
          The last thing that comes to mind as I read this passage is the fellowship of the saints. I find myself treasuring people who know the Lord; people I don’t think need to be told to know the Lord. I find myself longing for the culmination of this covenant, when we will be free in a way that is unlike the so-called freedom of the world.

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