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The Amish Voice 9
outside. The people on the inside were for-
mer slaves, freed on the night they applied
blood on their door frames.
But now, the children of Israel looked on as
their leader, Moses, went up the mountain to
meet with God. And it was there that he was
handed laws such as the world had never
seen. The laws of the land were designed to
keep God in the center of their activities so
that they would never forget who had set
them free. Those who
obeyed were promised a
blessing, and those who
disobeyed received punish-
ment.
Later, the law was con-
firmed when the covenant
was established.
Exodus 24:6-8 says;
And
Moses took half of the
blood, and put it in ba-
sons; and half of the
blood he sprinkled on the
altar. And he took the
book of the covenant, and
read in the audience of
the people: and they said, All that the
L
ORD
hath said will we do, and be obe-
dient. And Moses took the blood, and
sprinkled it on the people, and said,
Behold the blood of the covenant, which
the L
ORD
hath made with you concern-
ing all these words.
The covenant was now confirmed with
blood.
The
Old Covenant
included much more
than Exodus 20-23. Hebrews 9:1 tells us that
it also included directions for the tabernacle.
Verse 7 says “
he took the book of the cove-
nant and read it
”. The response of the peo-
ple was, “
All that the LORD has said will we
do
” Now the children of Israel had become
heirs of a promise.
As we read the history of Israel and their first
750 years, we see many, many failures. Was
God surprised? Obviously not. He knew that
the great majority of men would fail. That
same failure still remains today, even among
us Gentiles. The old covenant was unable to
do the job because of man’s weakness. He-
brews 8:7 says;
For if that first covenant had been fault-
less, then should no place have been
sought for the second.
The Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Mat-
thew 5-7, points out a different kind of law,
known as the
spirit of the law
. If anyone
thought they were doing pretty good at obey-
ing the law, Jesus’ sermon quickly showed a
failure in everyone who listened carefully.
We needed a savior! We also needed a
New
Covenant
desperately. Israel could not live
up to the demands of the
Old Covenant
;
neither can we. And God had already prom-
ised a
New Covenant
way back in the
prophet Jeremiah’s time. In Jeremiah 31:31-
34, it says:
Behold, the days come, saith the L
ORD
,
that I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel, and with the house of
Judah: Not according to the covenant
that I made with their fathers in the day
that I took them by the hand to bring
them out of the land of Egypt; which my
covenant they brake, although I was an
husband unto them, saith the L
ORD
: But
this shall be the covenant that I will
make with the house of Israel;
After those days, saith the L
ORD
, I will
put my law in their
inward parts
, and
write it in
their hearts
; and will be their
God, and they shall be my people. And
they shall teach no more every man his
neighbour, and every man his brother,
saying, Know the L
ORD
: for they shall all
know me, from the least of them unto the
greatest of them, saith the L
ORD
: for I
will forgive their iniquity [sins], and I
will remember their sin no more.
Let’s take a closer look at the
New Cove-
nant
. Hebrews 9:33b says: “
I will put my law
in their inward parts, and write it in their
hearts.”
This, dear reader, is the core of the
New Covenant
. No more is the law in-
scribed on stone and enforced with hard un-
bending requirements. Now the law is put
into our
inward parts
; that is, our minds and
our hearts. This happens only when a person
surrenders their life to Christ.
The trouble with the
Old
Covenant
was that it saved
no one. Not one person was
able to fulfill the righteous
demands of the law. Mankind
was unable to reach that high
demand. So it was necessary
that the
New Covenant
ad-
dress that problem. That is
precisely what Jesus came to
do. He fulfilled the law for us
and extended salvation by
His grace. As seen on Pente-
cost (Acts 2) and many other
occasions, Jesus Christ—the
Saviour of the world, gave us
His spirit—to live inside us. This is how it
works out for us to have the law of the Spirit
written on our hearts and in our minds. We
also have the awareness of sin put inside us.
1 John 1:9 says:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness.”
Fortunately, for us who are Gentiles, the
New Covenant
extends to all mankind. God
had told Abraham that in his seed
all nations
would be blessed. Not just one or some na-
tions, but all nations. There are about 6,900
languages on earth. Every language is repre-
sented in that great scene in Revelation 7:9,
where it says:
A great multitude, which no
man could number, of all nations, and kin-
dreds, and people, and tongues, stood before
the throne…
Will you be there?
Eli Stutzman
8717 Beattie Road RR 1
Straffordville, ON N0J 1Y0
Canada—(519) 866-3737
—The Two Covenants—
continued from previous page