Who is God? All hail the powers.... (Part 19)

I love the passage in Psalms 107:6-20, in which God is described as guiding the writer through darkness. He comes to me when there is no other, and I am never alone. And I can trust Him, and my love for Him is returned, and He is gentle and kind and He is good. In fact Jesus said nothing is good except God. (Matthew 13:17) How much does God love me? God loved and loves me enough to make a new covenant with me through His Son, sealed with His blood, affirmed by the sacrifice on the cross and magnified and in action when I obey Him, much as He made a covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15: 1-21). God is such a generous God and so merciful, the hope of mankind was foretold in the first covenant and finalized in the second covenant. Why two covenants? I believe that God knew the heart of man could not stay pure on its own and it certainly couldn’t stay pure with the first covenant. But then if that is so, why give two covenants? Why put man through this? It is the same as when in math class people learn long division first before short division. Long division gives one the reason for short division. And the presence of the first covenant, through which the law of Moses was established and added to, gives the reason for the second. The first covenant defines the sins of man, the “thou shalt nots and the thou shalts” and lays down judgment, the second defines man in terms of what He becomes when He is a child. While the first covenant was nailed to the cross, that was only the strength of the old covenant. The old covenant has not gone out existence, only its ability to condemn mankind. In the second covenant gives the power of God to overcome the sins of the world that are defined in the first covenant. Put it another way, the second covenant gives man the tools he needs to be in relationship with the Father fully and in the Spirit. The second covenant gives us hope, the hope in Christ.  God knew we would all need this second covenant and had it all planned. Think of it, God not only knows the universe’s history, He knows my history and my beginnings before I was born and He knows that my life changes in Christ, and He promises His blessings.