Jesus is the great high priest that God has chosen to make a new covenant.

Song (Click to listen): Jesus, is here right now. Jesus, is here right now. He is here to meet your needs and to set the captives free. Oh, Jesus, is here right now.

God is the one who chooses people. Jews or Christians are not the ones who choose. Jews and Christians are what people who have the heritage as the chosen people of God call themselves. A people who, when God chose them, said yes. Yes, to following him, yes to trusting him, yes to believing in his word and promises and serving him as the only God. The Bible documents the history of people, who God has chosen, some who say yes, and some who say no. No to following God, no to trusting him, no to believing in his word made flesh and promise fulfilled in Jesus and no to serving him. Isaiah 42:18-20 speaks about the people who God chose, but who do not choose him and pleads with them to “Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and see! Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the servant of the Lord? You have seen many things, but you pay no attention; your ears are open, but you do not listen.” While this is an appeal to Jews, it is also an appeal to Christians, believers in Christ, to trust in the one God has chosen (Jesus) and not in themselves or their own beliefs.

When God spoke to Abraham and asked Abraham to trust him, God knew that the descendants of Abraham would be “ever hearing, but never understanding, ever seeing, but never perceiving” [Isaiah 6:9]. God chose to “make the heart of this people calloused; their ears dull and close their eyes” and only if they chose, to trust in God, “they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn and be healed” [Isaiah 6:10].

Genesis 12:1-4 and Genesis 17:1-8 documents the covenant that God made with Abraham. When God spoke to Abraham and made a covenant with him, he said, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you,” Abraham believed God and said yes [Genesis 12:4,2-3]. God is the one who is responsible for fulfilling his promise. God made this promise to Abraham that this covenant was something that he would fulfill, not any work of Abraham’s own doing. God is the one who is responsible for fulfilling his promises to heal and to bless people who put their trust in him. Jesus is the gift God chose, as the new covenant of God, for the people God has chosen, people who choose to believe in him.

Jesus is prophesied about in the Old Testament and presented in the New Testament as the new covenant and gift God chose to heal and to bless the world. Isaiah prophesies about Jesus as the new covenant in Isaiah 42:1, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.” These are the things that God promises to do, not Jews or Christians, but God. God does not delight in the works of humans; God delights in the works of his own doing and those who put their trust and faith in what he is doing. Only God can keep his promises, only God is faithful. Psalms 117 verse 1 and 2 reminds us not to praise the works of our own doing for salvation but to “praise the Lord, all you nations, extol him all you peoples”, for his great love towards us and his faithfulness that endures forever.

The Bible documents the people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, rejecting God and his covenant repeatedly. However, because God is faithful and because his love endures forever, God made a new covenant, that would fulfill the old promise that he made to Abraham in Genesis 12:2,3 that, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

God knew that Abraham would believe and trust in him and God also knew that many people would reject his promise to bless all the people of the earth, through his promise to Abraham and his new covenant through Jesus. Isaiah prophesies in Isaiah 53:2 that Jesus would have no beauty or majesty to attract the world to him, and in Isaiah 53:3 that Jesus would be despised and rejected by mankind. However, because God delights in the work of his own hands and because he is faithful to do what he promised, Isaiah prophesies that Jesus would make a way for God’s will to be fulfilled despite the unfaithfulness of mankind.

In Isaiah 6:1-6, when God called Isaiah to be a prophet. This was a calling to speak God’s words to the children of Israel. At first even Isaiah, rejected the call because of his own unworthiness and because he didn’t know how faithful God is, he had yet to find out that God’s love endures forever. In Isaiah 6:5 Isaiah says to God in fear, “woe to me, I am ruined! for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people with unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Isaiah had yet to see that it is God’s responsibility to make clean by the work of his hands. Isaiah 6:6-7 says, “one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it, he touched my mouth and said, ‘see, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” A coal from the altar of God had the power to atone for the sins of one man, how much more then does God himself, through Jesus, have the power to make the entire world acceptable to God, through the new covenant given through Jesus’ sacrifice? In Isaiah 53:5, Isaiah prophesies that Jesus was, “pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him (Jesus) the iniquity of us all.”

Song (Click to listen): He touched me, oh, he touched me and oh the joy that floods my soul. Something happened and now I know. He touched me and made me whole.

Jesus, the great high priest, that God has chosen to make a new covenant, is willing.

The sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross for sins is greater than the sacrifices the law of Moses requires for atonement. There was a man who had a skin condition that covered his entire body and due to the shame of his condition he was ostracized from society. No one would touch him or dared to even approach him.

Luke 5:12 shares the account that when this man saw Jesus, that he fell on his knees and begged saying Lord if you are willing you can remove this stigma from me. He was asking for a physical miracle, but I imagine that he was also asking for a psychological and social miracle. He asked Jesus to make him “clean”.

There were teachers of the law, who prayed for people with illnesses for their healing and physicians who gave treatments, but this account shares that his condition was extreme. Luke 5:12 says that he was “covered” with leprosy. His condition was so hopeless that even the priests must have told him that God has condemned you. The doctors, his friends, family and society said, there is no place for you and we can’t help you and cast him out.

However, he had faith. He trusted that if Jesus was willing, that he could do what no one else was able to do for him: remove this stigma from his body; and make him clean.

In Luke 5:13 it says that Jesus reached out his hand and touched him. How many people before Jesus touched him had gone to great lengths to avoid him, to not touch him? How many friends or family members did not reach out to him in tenderness? How many priests had condemned him?

In Luke 5:13 Jesus says to the man, “I am willing”. Isaiah 53:3 says that Jesus was willing because he too was “a man of suffering and familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised and held in low esteem.” When no one else is willing to take in the despised, Jesus is willing. When no one else is willing to touch the one suffering and in pain, Jesus is willing. When no one is willing to approach the ones held in low esteem, Jesus is willing. Jesus, through his sacrifice on the cross, has made a way to make the despised and rejected, clean, and he is also willing.

Jesus said to the man in Luke 5:13, “Be clean” and it says that immediately the leprosy left him. When Jesus says you are clean, immediately, you are clean. Jesus, through his new covenant, restores every person who sees Jesus and has faith in him.

For this man, even the law of Moses was unable to bring healing and restoration, the law that was given to the children of Israel, by God. Jesus, as the new covenant, can completely and immediately restore what the law of Moses is incapable of doing. In Luke 5:14 Jesus tells the man to show himself to the priest and to offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for a cleansing like this, and to do it as a testimony, to them. What was the man testifying about? Nothing in the law of Moses had restored him. Perhaps, he had offered sacrifices to God in the temple for a cleansing like this and was still in the condition that he was in before he met Jesus. None of the sacrifices cleansed him, none of them restored him, none of them made him approachable, none of them removed the stigma or the leprosy. Only the words of Jesus and his willingness to make him whole, cleansed him.

This was his testimony: that God had healed him, not through sacrifices but through his word, Jesus. That God restored him, not through self-righteousness, but through his word. That God had cleansed him and made it so that no one could see the stain and stigma of his leprosy anymore, through his word. God is responsible for fulfilling his word to bless and heal all the peoples of the earth through his new covenant in Jesus, and whatever God speaks is. The words of Jesus are enough. In Acts 10:15 Jesus says to Peter ‘do not call anything unclean that I have made clean.’ To trust in Jesus is to believe the words of Jesus, that he is willing to make clean, with his sacrifice, all who believe in him. Not because of our works, but by his word. Not because of our sacrifices, but because of his sacrifice. Not because of our righteousness, but because he is the righteousness of God.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, God of all creation, thank you for choosing to heal and to bless the earth yourself through Jesus your word. Thank you for keeping your promises and for your love and your faithfulness that never ends. Thank you that I have access to you and am chosen by you because you chose Jesus to fulfill your promise. Thank you that Jesus has made a way for me to be made clean, to be healed and to be blessed by you. May my heart, my eyes and my ears always be open to hear, see and understand your word. Lord, I say yes to you, I am willing to believe in you and to trust you. As I continue to say yes to following you and yes to trusting in you, God, be responsible for expanding my faith in you so that I can trust you more with every part of my life.

Song (Click to listen): I’ll say yes, Lord, yes to your will and to your way. I’ll say yes, Lord, yes I will trust you and obey. When your spirit speaks to me, with my whole heart I’ll agree and my answer will be yes, Lord, yes.