Timing – The Presidential Prayer Team

A death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. – Hebrews 9:15

Have you tried to shop a sale only to realize you are a day late? Maybe you have even heard a salesperson mutter “that was then, this is now” in response to your disappointment at missing the discount. Timing makes a big difference in everything from sale prices to relationships.

The Bible is the recorded history of God’s relationship with humankind. While the character of God is never changing, His agreements with people do change. The beauty of God’s contracts with humanity is that He continually moves closer, making it easier and easier for His creation to know Him. The covenants found in the Old Testament establish God’s relationship with the ancient nation of Israel and testify that He fulfills every promise He makes! The people living under the old covenant, the Mosaic Law, experienced faith by looking into the future, believing their promise-keeping God would also rescue them from sin, someday.

The prophet Jeremiah foretold of a time that people could actually see God’s rescue and experience His redemption in knowledge and understanding: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, I will be their God and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33).

Now is the appointed time, an opportunity for people to hear the message of God’s salvation through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray that many from Washington to your hometown will recognize the celebrated Child of Christmas as, more importantly, the sacrificial Lamb of God, the resurrected Lord, their Savior, accepting Him as the One making possible a new and close relationship with God.

Today’s Verse: Hebrews 9:15

Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Recommended for further reading: Hebrews 8:1-13

 Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, ²a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. ³For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. ⁴Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. ⁵They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” ⁶But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. ⁷For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

⁸For he finds fault with them when he says:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
    when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel
    and with the house of Judah,
⁹not 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.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
    and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
¹⁰For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
    after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds,
    and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
    and they shall be my people.
¹¹And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
    and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest.
¹²For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
    and I will remember their sins no more.”

¹³In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.