God's Amendment

Get your bible out now. You have to look up my verses as you read along this time.
The bible is divided into a New Testament and an Old Testament. Testament means
a binding agreement. God started out with one agreement and then made major
improvements.The old Testament is a lot of family history-with God's promises of a better agreement to come sprinkled into the stories.
This next scripture is so complete a picture of the new agreement God has made
with us that you can read it in two places, either in Jeremiah 31:31-34 or in Hebrews
8:8-12. It's like God completely explains the new testament for us! That is to say you
and I not the disciples.
Jesus was telling of the coming of this new agreement in the story of the vineyard,
Matthew 21:33-46, Mark 12:1-12 or Luke 20:9-19. Pick your favorite gospel for
this reading.
Too often we just see these verses as a warning to the Pharisees. Look again at
this story. It is also preparing the minds of the disciples to understand God's
New agreement.
We have the advantage of hindsight and thousands of years of Christianity. That's
why we don't see that it took weeks of prayer and waiting to understand what God
had just put into place as the new covenant between man and God.
The after the Resurrection party didn't happen for 50 days. Instead a growing group
of saddened, confused, uncertain and totally shocked followers huddled up to
pray and seek understanding of all that had just happened.
They may have been afraid of the authorities both Roman and Jewish; but then
they would have realized-Jesus has conquered death! We have nothing to fear.
They may have prayed the Lord's prayer." Father forgive us as we forgive others."
Were the disciples asking themselves,"Could I forgive this much? How can this
be?" Jesus, the son of God, has conquered sin! And that's when the party started.
Many of you know this month's memory verse by heart, John 3:16. Read it anyway;
every word of it is important.
See you next month and keep reading your bible. God is someone exciting to know.