The moral of all this is simple: Let God have His way.
- If God says in His word that He made the First Covenant with Israel, then non-Israelites must not take it over as if it belonged to them.
- If God’s word says the Second Covenant has come, and made the First obsolete, then let us embrace the new reality. Let that truth determine how we serve God. “We are released from the law… so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code” (Romans 7:6).
- If God’s word says His new worshipers “must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24), then let us fulfill our pure purpose. Let us not pollute it by returning to past shadows.
- If God’s word says that all in the New Covenant know Him, then let us not try to force in those who are too young to know or, in later years, too careless to obey.
- If God’s word promises complete forgiveness in the New Covenant, “let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16). Let this covenant privilege fill us with gratitude, wonder and awe.
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:28-29 quoting from Deuteronomy 4:24)
- If God’s word commissions us to “make disciples,” then let us teach them to trust and obey the King according to His New Covenant.
Here is a better covenant founded on better promises (Hebrews 8:6). Why would we want to tamper with it? Why go backward into shadows, when our Lord urges us forward into the light of spiritual reality? Here, truly, is “a great salvation” (Hebrews 2:3). Here is the covenant of mercy established by divine blood.
When we keep the New Covenant, we honor the Father who planned it, the Spirit who revealed it, and the Son who died to make it effective. As a member of the New Covenant, you receive the same blessing as early Christians, the blessing with which Hebrews 13:20-21 concludes:
Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen!