Exodus 19:5-6. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”
They made it!
God has brought the Hebrews out of Egypt, through the Sea, across the wilderness and settled them at the base of Mount Sinai. The same mountain where God appeared to Moses in a burning bush. The mountain that God told Moses that the people had to go to to worship God. It is here that God will describe his personal relationship to the nation. It is here that he will speak their identity over them.
You will be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine –God not only possesses the nation; they are his treasure. His heart would be broken without them.
you shall be to me a kingdom of priests – from the garden, humanity was meant to be priests before the Lord. Here, at Sinai, God re-established that priestly mandate. This nation will be the world’s bridge to God.
a holy nation – As God’s representatives they will be set apart to display the very nature of God. His holiness is now their holiness.
This is jaw-dropping. These statements from God to the people are powerful. They are life-giving. They renew the purpose of humanity. And they reveal the heartfelt desire of God to live in relationship to us.
But there’s a catch. This beautiful new identity is rooted in a really big ultimatum.
If.
Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant…
Obviously this isn’t going to work. And we know that it doesn’t. The rest of the Old Testament recalls failure after failure of this people to live as God’s possession, his priests, and his holy nation. They simply won’t keep this covenant.
That is until Christ.
Jesus Christ will come to earth as the new Israel. He will represent the nation. He will keep the covenant. Every IF fulfilled. Every law obeyed. He will be God’s perfect possession. He will be God’s perfect priest. He will be holiness incarnate.
Romans 8:3-4. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Now Jesus has turned God’s IF into a SINCE.
God now says to Jesus, “SINCE you have indeed obeyed my voice and kept my covenant now I can reclaim my possession. My priests. My holy nation.”
And Christian that’s us! We are in Christ. Christ is in us. Since Christ obeyed, we the church are now the prized possession of God. His royal priesthood. His holy ones. Not because we have done it, because since Christ has done it for us.
1 Peter 2:9-10. 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
“To live is Christ” is to have everything God offered his people through the law, but to have it through Christ. Now we are God’s treasured possession. We are owned by God. We are empowered by God as his priests. And we are transformed by God as his holy ones. May we now proclaim the excellencies of him who has called out of darkness and into his marvelous light.
You
Where have you failed to keep God’s covenant?
You in Christ
Praise Jesus for keeping God’s covenant in your place and for placing you into an unconditional covenant.
Christ in you
How can you live as a holy priest before God today, pointing to our great High Priest?
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To Live is Christ 