“The Lord is good and does what is right; he shows the proper path to those who go astray. He leads the humble in doing right, teaching them his way. The Lord leads with unfailing love and faithfulness all who keep his covenant and obey his demands.”
Psalm 25:8-10 NLT
God made a covenant with Israel, as David knew when he wrote, “The Lord leads with unfailing love and faithfulness all who keep his covenant and obey his demands”. This verse implies that those who don’t keep His covenant, obeying what it means, will fail to live with God in the ways that He intended. It also means that such covenant-breakers will fail to experience His “unfailing love and faithfulness”, leaving them outside the “shelter of the Most High” (Psalm 91). A scary thought I’m sure for God-fearing Israelites, but when we look back at their history we find many times when they generally failed to “keep His covenant”. The prevailing covenant in David’s time would have been the Mosaic covenant, given to Moses many years before. This was a conditional covenant, summed up in Deuteronomy 11:26-28, “Look, today I am giving you the choice between a blessing and a curse! You will be blessed if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today. But you will be cursed if you reject the commands of the Lord your God and turn away from him and worship gods you have not known before”.
God also made a covenant with David, promising long life for his kingdom. 2 Samuel 7:16, “Your house and your kingdom will continue before me for all time, and your throne will be secure forever”. And we pilgrims know, of course, the Man who subsequently sat on the throne of David, as we read in Isaiah 9:7, “His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen!” The Angel Gabriel also told Mary, Jesus’ mother-to-be, the same message, “He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David” (Luke 1:32).
We pilgrims are very grateful – actually our feeble attempts at gratitude hardly give it justice – for Jesus coming to this world and giving us a New Covenant. Jeremiah prophetically wrote down, ““The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. … “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31, 33). Although Jesus said He would fulfil the Law of Moses (the Mosaic Covenant – Matthew 5:17), he also promised a New Covenant. Luke 22:20, “After supper he took another cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you“. The New Covenant was given first for the Jews and then the whole of mankind, but what was this covenant? In many ways the whole of the New Testament is based on the premise that Jesus, the Son of God, came to this world to shed His blood to take away the sins of the world. Hebrews 7:22, “Because of this oath, Jesus is the one who guarantees this better covenant with God”. The New Covenant is the promise that God will forgive sin and restore fellowship with those whose hearts are turned toward Him.
But what does all this mean for us pilgrims? We now live in the wonderful Kingdom under God’s grace.“God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it” (Ephesians 2:8-9). And this salvation is gained through faith in Jesus, that He died for us at a place just outside Jerusalem called Calvary so that our sins can be forgiven. What an amazing giving and loving God, that he would do all of that just for you and me! We have the wonderful promise, originally given to David, that He will lead us “with unfailing love and faithfulness“. He did then and He still does today.
But there are two parties to a covenant. God has promised our eternal salvation through grace, through the blood of Jesus. Paul wrote, “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you” (Romans 8:11). Our responsibility is to exercise faith in Jesus, the One who fulfilled the requirements of the original Mosaic covenant on our behalf and brought an end to the required sacrifices through His own sacrificial death. We pilgrims now share in the inheritance of Christ, as we read in Hebrews 9:15, “That is why he is the one who mediates a new covenant between God and people, so that all who are called can receive the eternal inheritance God has promised them. For Christ died to set them free from the penalty of the sins they had committed under that first covenant“.
We pilgrims are highly favoured and very blessed. And so grateful, that we have so much in response to so little from our side of the Covenant. The most valuable possession that can ever be considered and imagined is ours for free. It costs us nothing, but it cost Jesus everything. What can we do other than praise and worship Him. Today and every day.
Thank you, Lord, for the blessings you have bestowed on our lives. You have provided us with more than we could ever have imagined. We praise and worship You today. Amen
Being a Pilgrim 