Reading
SAA Notes
God is the author of our religion. It is not up to us to pick and choose our beliefs and practices. We are to be guided by God’s covenant with us and by His covenant promises. He has told us what is good!
SJA Notes
* Faithful God, please teach us today of Your faithfulness.
“Therefore I brought upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did not.”
God remembers His covenant!
Back in the book of Deuteronomy, chapters 28 and 29, we read these words from Moses, speaking of God’s covenant with them.
Blessing for obedience. Curse for disobedience.
“And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, …”
BLESSING.
“But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, …”
CURSE.
Here is Jeremiah we find ourselves in the midst of curse. God’s punishment on His people for their disobedience.
God clearly gives blessing for obedience and punishes disobedience.
However, we are by nature disobedient people, from conception (Romans 5).
What are we to do then?
God asks the question in this passage,
“Can even sacrificial flesh avert your doom?”
Then down a little in the passage we read of a lamb. In Israel’s understanding, from the law given through Moses, lambs were used for atoning sacrifice at the altar of God.
“But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter.”
So before all else, this points us to Jesus!
We read in Isaiah 53, speaking of the suffering servant (Jesus),
“… Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,”
He is the covenant keeper, both sides. God and man.
He is the true atonement, the sacrificial flesh that did avert our doom!
Hallelujah, what a Saviour!
* Faithful God,
Thank You for Your covenant with us, a new covenant of grace, mercy to the undeserved.
Thank You that we find rescue in Jesus, the lamb slain, the sacrificial flesh that averts the doom of sin.
Thank You Lord!
Amen.