Today’s passage is Hebrews 7:20-28. Because Jesus became a priest by God’s oath that he would be a priest forever, he guarantees a better covenant. And because he lives forever, unlike other priests, he can save us forever. Because he is perfect, he doesn’t need to sacrifice for his own sins. Instead he sacrificed himself for all of us.
Have you fulfilled an oath you made?
What sins do you need to sacrifice for?
When you get married in a church in the West, you make a promise, you take an oath.
This is the oath that the pastor asks of you: “Will you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do you part, so help you God?”
It says nothing about happiness.
It is a promise to endure together for God’s sake.
It is an oath that makes your union holy.
I broke the spirit of that oath with my first wife. Her death ended our marriage.
I made no such oath with my daughter’s mother because we never married.
I made it with my present wife Kim Jin Kyeong, but I break the spirit of it when I wish she wasn’t sick or tired or asks me to do something when I just want to do nothing.
With my first wife, I often wanted to run away, especially when we were suffering in our poverty with three little kids.
As far as I can remember, I have never wished to run away from my Jin Kyeong, but I have wished to run away WITH her, especially when my duties and responsibilities feel too heavy.
But that selfish, irresponsible wish is breaking my promise to God to stay with my wife “for better, for worse”, to endure for the sake of holiness, not happiness.
It is breaking my oath for which I need to repent. In a way, it is trying to lay down my cross and not follow Jesus any more.
My attitude towards my job is the same.
God gave me the job “to have and to hold...for better, for worse”.
God never said my job was for my happiness.
Today I didn’t want to go to work.
I’m tired and I knew that what was waiting for me was more than I can handle, but part of my training is learning how to handle it through the Lord.
So I prayed and I went.
My sin is wanting to stop when God calls me to keep going.
Application: to get up a little earlier tomorrow to pray for what I need to say at a high school assembly in the morning, and to pray for a girl in our church who will have an operation on the cancer in her thyroid tomorrow morning.
Lord, give me your strength to keep my eyes on you and carry the cross you gave me.
