His Encouragement #220

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Welcome to His Encouragement Thursday! I don’t know about you, but Thursdays are my struggle day of the week. By Thursday, I have already been working hard at school and at home, and I just wish it would hurry up and be Friday already. LOL! I definitely need a little extra Jesus time on Thursdays.

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He did the same with the cup after the meal, saying, ‘This cup is the New Covenant, ratified by my blood, which is being poured out for you.'”

Luke 22:20 (CJB)

Here is the text of the NEW COVENENT:

 “Here, the days are coming,” says Adonai, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Isra’el and with the house of Y’hudah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day I took them by their hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt; because they, for their part, violated my covenant, even though I, for my part, was a husband to them,” says Adonai. “For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Isra’el after those days,” says Adonai: “I will put my Torah within them and write it on their hearts; I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will any of them teach his fellow community member or his brother, ‘Know Adonai’; for all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest; because I will forgive their wickednesses and remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-33 CJB; emphasis mine).

The new covenant parameters are as follow: 1.) One day AFTER the days of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and the people who broke the original covenant with God (i.e., their fathers), Yahweh will enter a new covenant with a new people — the “after” people. 2.) Yahweh will write Torah on the hearts of these “after” people. God’s Word will be so known to these people that there will be no more need for teachers because hearts will be so filled with God’s Word they will just know what it means. And it doesn’t matter a person’s station in society. From great to least, richest to poorest, most educated to least, IF Yahweh has written His Word on your heart, you will know it! 3.) Yahweh will do this BECUASE He will forgive these “after” people’s wickednesses and He will completely forget their sins as if they never existed.

So, who are the “after” people? I believe they are ALL people (no matter what time period they lived) who believe in the Messiah, the Redeemer. For example, in Job 19:25-27, Job states emphatically, “But I know that my Redeemer lives, that in the end he will rise on the dust; so that after my skin has been thus destroyed, then even without my flesh, I will see God. I will see him for myself, my eyes, not someone else’s, will behold him. My heart grows weak inside me!” It is believed that Job lived before, or was a contemporary of, Abraham and he got it. He might not have known Jesus’s name as Yeshua, but he fully knew he had a Messiah and one day he would see him face to face. That is some serious faith, and that faith is what makes the “after” person a person of the New Covenant.

Knowing this — the parameters of the New Covenant and who the “after” people are — let’s look at what Yeshua says in Luke 22:20 about the New Covenant: “He did the same with the cup after the meal, saying, ‘This cup is the New Covenant, ratified by my blood, which is being poured out for you (emphasis mine).'”

To understand Luke 22:20, you have to understand the Passover Seder meal. Yeshua is not intending for us to believe that the new covenant is a cup, but rather what the cup represents. During the Passover meal, which Yeshua clearly observed and even asks us to observe (Luke 22:19), there are FOUR cups which represent the promises Yahweh made to the Israelites in Exodus 6:6-7: the cup of sanctification (cup 1; “I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.”), the cup of deliverance (cup 2; “I will rescue you from their bondage.”), the cup of redemption (3rd cup; “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.”), and the cup of praise (4th cup; “I will take you as My people.”). In Luke 22:20, when Yeshua speaks of the New Covenant, He and the apostles drink from the 3rd cup, the cup of redemption. Yeshua is saying that the New Covenant, as described in Jeremiah 31, will come about through His blood sacrifice, His redemption. And through His redemption, our wickednesses are forgiven and our sins are remembered no more because Yeshua’s blood covers us.

Once our sins are blotted out of all existence our hearts are clear and ready surfaces to receive Yahweh’s inscriptions of His Torah, His Word. At this point, we can be His people and it is all thanks to Yeshua’s sacrifice. Because Yeshua stretched out His arms and redeemed us on that cross, we can be Yahweh’s New Covenant “after” people. And it’s open to ALL. All we have to do is believe like Job.

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NOW, IT’S YOUR TURN!

WHAT BIBLICAL VERSE IS ENCOURAGING YOU TODAY?