After I posted last week’s article, “What Happened to the Ritual Uncleanness Laws After Jesus’s Sacrifice?” I continued meditating on the ramifications of the changes we talked about in that post. I find it especially amazing to think about the difference in how easy it is to access God now.
For example, let’s say I lived during a time in the Old Testament history when Israel was mostly faithful to God and there was a temple with priests serving in it. Something wonderful happens, and I want to thank Yahweh for this gift. I can just pray, but I’m not King David or a prophet and probably don’t have the gift of the Holy Spirit and so maybe it doesn’t feel like that’s the best way to get God’s attention. But I know that the Torah says people can offer an offering to Yahweh with thanksgiving as the motivation (Lev. 7:11-15). I get everything ready to take that offering to the priests, but then my period starts. Now, I’m ritually unclean for at least the next 7 days and I can’t go into the temple or touch any holy thing. If I bled longer than that, I’d have to count 7 days after the bleeding stops, then go to the priest with “two turtledoves, or two young pigeons” as an offering to become ritually clean again. There are actually quite a lot of things that can make me “unclean,” blocking my access to God. Even when I’m clean, I don’t have the same access that a priest would or even a prophet. God doesn’t talk with me, unless I find myself in very unusual circumstances.
Today, if I want to thank God for something, I can do so very easily. I can approach the Father directly in prayer through the name of Jesus Christ whenever I want, and it’s as if I’m stepping into the most holy parts of the temple to come into God’s presence (John 16:23-27; Heb. 10:19-22). There aren’t restrictions on when I can do that, or things that make me so unclean I can’t come to Him in prayer. Even if I sin (which results in a type of defilement that still damages relationship with God), I still get to go to God directly through Jesus to repent and ask for forgiveness (1 John 1:5-10; 2:1-6). I don’t have to go through any other person or do any rituals in order to access God.
I think we take that level of access to God for granted. It doesn’t seem unusual to us; that’s just how it’s always been because we’ve only experienced a relationship with Him under the New Covenant and not under the Old. But when we study Old Testament believers, even considering all the things we have in common with them, it also highlights how much changed with Jesus’s sacrifice. This sort of study can give us a greater appreciation of everything that God the Father and Jesus the Lamb have done for us.
A New, More Relational Covenant
If you’re reading this the day that it posted on my blog, then tomorrow night (the evening of April 21/beginning of Nisan 14) is when we’ll be keeping the Passover this year. When we keep the Passover as New Covenant Christians, it’s in remembrance of Jesus’s pivotal sacrifice and the commencement of the New Covenant.
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread, and after he had given thanks he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, every time you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For every time you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26, NET
We’ll be gathering together to remember Jesus and what He did to enact a new covenant, which we’ve agreed to participate in. Passover commemorates the major turning point in God’s plan. For thousands of years, He’d promised His people that He would fix the relationship between them and replace the covenant that they broke with one that was even better. When Jesus died, that happened. The promised Messiah became the once-for-all-time sacrifice that forgives sin, the only High Priest we’ll ever need, and the Head of the body of believers that is the temple where God dwells.
But now Jesus has obtained a superior ministry, since the covenant that he mediates is also better and is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, no one would have looked for a second one. But showing its fault, God says to them,
“Look, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will complete a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
Hebrews 8:6-12, NET (bold italics mark a quotation from Jer 31:31-34)
“It will not be like the covenant that I made with their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I had no regard for them, says the Lord.
“For this is the covenant that I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and I will inscribe them on their hearts. And I will be their God and they will be my people.
“And there will be no need at all for each one to teach his countryman or each one to teach his brother saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ since they will all know me, from the least to the greatest.
“For I will be merciful toward their evil deeds, and their sins I will remember no longer.”
God wants a deep relationship with His people. Notice His focus when describing the New Covenant. He’s writing His laws inside their minds and hearts (not just on scrolls they could hear someone else read). He’s inviting them to call Him their God and claiming them as His people. He promises, “they will all know me.” He also says He’ll be merciful to them and forget the sins that they should justly be punished for. He wants a new kind of relationship with people, one where they know Him at a heart-level and experience relational intimacy with Him. We have that new relationship now, or at least the opportunity for it, and we should appreciate what a great blessing that is.
Longing For God’s Presence
In the Old Testament, people placed a very high value on the privilege of encountering God’s presence, perhaps because it was more difficult for an average person to do that. They marvel that they’re able to visit God’s tabernacle or temple. They express delight in having any contact whatsoever with Yahweh. If God actually talked with them, they were awestruck and terrified.
David, one of God’s closest friends in the Old Testament, placed a very high value on the unique relationship he had with Yahweh. Speaking of himself, the king, he sang to God, “You make him glad with joy in your presence” (Ps. 21:6, WEB). When he committed a grave sin, he prayed, “Don’t throw me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me” (Ps. 51:11, WEB). David knew not to take God’s presence in his life for granted. It was precious, something to hold onto and value highly. Other psalmists had similar responses (Psalm 42:1-4; 73:28; 84:1-12).
How lovely are your dwellings,
Yahweh of Armies!
My soul longs, and even faints for the courts of Yahweh.
My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. …Blessed are those who dwell in your house.
They are always praising you. …For a day in your courts is better than a thousand.
Psalm 84:1-2, 4, 10, WEB
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God,
than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
When was the last time you genuinely longed for God this way? When you cried out for Him because you wanted to be in His presence, not because you wanted something from Him? When you wanted to be near Him, praising Him alongside His other covenant people? When you’d rather be at God’s house or temple (in the New Covenant, that temple is His people) for even just one day than have a thousand days anywhere else?
I’ve sang this psalm before (“Better Is One Day” and “Doorkeeper“), but I think I’ve been guilty of leaving the sentiment in the psalm behind after the music ends. Sometimes I forget to ask God to be with me unless I’m feeling lonely or hurt or in need of something from Him. I’m not always excited to go to church services and sing to God, at least not so excited that it overshadows how much I look forward to anything else.
Better To Walk With God Than Any Other Way
In the New Testament, expressions of thankfulness for the privilege of a close relationship with God seem quieter than the ones we find in the Old Testament. The New Testament doesn’t record new psalms or songs that highlight enthusiastic praises. Most of the New Testament is letters, and if we’re not paying close attention we might miss the passionate emotion behind those letters. But look at how Paul talked about his feelings regarding Jesus’s relationship with him.
If someone thinks he has good reasons to put confidence in human credentials, I have more … But these assets I have come to regard as liabilities because of Christ. More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things—indeed, I regard them as dung!—that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness—a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ’s faithfulness. My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:4, 7-11, NET
Paul is expressing a very similar sentiment to what we see in Psalm 84, it’s just not as poetical. His main goal is to know Jesus and become like Him. Nothing else can possibly compare to the great honor of being “found in Him,” no matter how impressive it might look from a human perspective.
See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God! For this cause the world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him. Beloved, now we are children of God. It is not yet revealed what we will be; but we know that when he is revealed, we will be like him; for we will see him just as he is.
1 John 3:1-2, WEB
When we really let it sink in that God is making us His children, we should marvel at the greatness of His love. We’ll even get to be like Him in the future and “see him just as he is.” This is a level of closeness and relationship that the people in the Old Testament could only dream about; the psalms rarely mention God as a Father-figure (Ps. 2:7; 68:5; 89:26; 103:13) and the promise “I will be a father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters” wasn’t explicitly clear until the New Covenant (2 Cor. 6:18, NET). The faithful Old Covenant believers will get to experience the same future that we do–they’ll “be made perfect together with us” (Heb. 11:39-40, NET)–but we have a fuller taste during our human lives of the relationship that God wants to have with His people.
Rather than take the close, personal relationship we have with God for granted, we should be even more thankful for our access to God than the people writing Psalms were. It’s incredible that we can talk to and spend time with the creator of the universe, and that He wants us to call Him our Abba, Father (Rom. 8:15). What an incredible privilege to have such a relationship with God!
Featured image by Pearl from Lightstock
Song Recommendation: “Better Is One Day” by Matt Redman
Like An Anchor 