Login | Sign up

2024 - Korean scientists say they have created "meaty rice", with beef grown inside rice grains in a lab, adding 8% more protein.

Chinese New Year celebrations are fun for children. When relatives and friends get together, it's the custom for adults to give children small, red envelopes containing token sums of money. Children often rip open their packets just to get the money, and their parents have to remind them that the giver is more important than the gift.

Similarly, when we study the prayer of Jabez in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10, it is important to remember that the Giver, the Lord, is more important than the gift. If we focus solely on the request of Jabez, it could be easy to make the mistake of turning it into a formula for obtaining what we want from God.

We don't know much about Jabez, except that his mother gave him a name that sounds like the Hebrew word for "distress" or "pain." We're also told that when he grew up, "Jabez was more honourable than his brothers."

What made Jabez "more honourable"? On the basis of his prayer, we can assume that he took his relationship with God seriously. There was no magic in the words of his prayer. Rather, he knew that God is the giver of all things. Jabez was honourable, I believe, because he honoured the Lord.

Our prayer should be to emulate the character of Jabez, who lived to please God.

In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away. Hebrews 8:13. References from Hebrews 8:1-13.

Henry Ford made the automobile easy to build and relatively affordable. With this mode of transportation suddenly available to so many people, the days of the horse and buggy were numbered. Old forms of transportation simply couldn't compete with the automobile. With the advent of Ford's Model T, a new age had dawned.

With the advent of Jesus Christ, a new age dawned within the history of creation. In Jesus, the world has a superior mediator of a new, superior covenant, one in which the sins of God's people have been dealt with once and for all.

In case we missed it, the writer of Hebrews uses these verses to drive home his point that in Christ we have an eternal high priest who ministers in the presence of God (v12). He also takes some time in this passage to spell out the implications of having such a great high priest. Specifically, the advent of the eternal high priest in the priestly order of Melchizedek implies the advent of a new law or covenant (v6, 13).

This is not to say that the practices and institutions of the old covenant were bad or even unrelated to those of the new covenant. Rather, the old institutions foreshadowed the eternal, heavenly realities (v5). They played a key role in God's plan to redeem His creation. But in the coming of God's Son, a way has been opened into these actual eternal realities. 

We don't have to settle for old copies when we can look forward to the full reality. As great as Moses was, something better has come with Jesus.

The significance of this change could not be greater. This shift from one priestly line to another and from the old covenant to the new is a shift from the model or copy to the reality. It is the shift from the old order, which while glorious and good was insufficient to deal adequately and completely with the problem of our sin.

For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. (2 Cor. 1:20).

Amen is a Hebrew expression used to affirm that something is reliable or true. As you confidently approach God's throne in prayer today, speak the amen to Him. Let Him know that you agree that His ways are good, reliable, and true.