Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Occasionally in the Bible, God speaks in the first person.  The writer of Hebrews gives us the voice of God himself in  Heb. 8: 8-12.  I'll give you the short version:

"…I will make a new covenant with Israel…",  "Not according to the covenant I made with Israel…",  "I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt…"   "I regarded them…"  This is the covenant  I will make …with Israel…",

And then God (personally, using the word " I" ) adds an important new concept for the reader of the book of Hebrews.  He tells us a remarkably wonderful thing.  A thing that neither the Jews, nor the Gentiles would never have thought  up by themselves.

In  Heb. 8: 10b,  God says:  "I will put my laws into their mind, and write them (the laws) in their hearts:  and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:" 

God had always connected with people in the temple.  Through a priest, in a pillar of fire, a burning bush, to name a few ways he spoke to them.  He gave them laws to follow--which they (and we) broke.

But now, after the perfect sacrifice for sin had been made through the death of Christ on the cross,  God is saying that we will have a new way of knowing right from wrong.   He will take up residence within us and lead us in the paths of righteousness.  We become the temple of God.  He will write law on our hearts.

1Corintthians 6: 19-20 "What?  don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own?  For you ares bought with a price;:  therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's."

Bought with a price.

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