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Leviticus 10:8-11
This mornings sermon emphasized that in the New Covenant we are invited to draw near to God in the heavenly sanctuary, where God offers the hidden gifts to us. One of these gifts is the gift of food, the meal that we celebrate here at this table.
But there is another sign of our inclusion in a New Covenant that brings better promises than the old. That is, we not only eat the bread of heaven, the bread of angels, but we are also invited to drink wine in the presence of God. That was something that the Israelites of the Old Covenant were never permitted to do. Leviticus 10 warns Do not drink wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sins with you, when you come into the tent of meeting.E But here we are, having come not to a shadow and copy of the heavenly sanctuary but to the heavenly sanctuary itself, and we drink wine.
Wine is a Sabbath drink. Wine takes time to make, and you drink wine at the end of things, when your work is completed. But for the priests of the Old Covenant, work was never completed. They were constantly standing, Hebrews says, because they had to offer the same sacrifices year after year. But now, in Christ, and through His blood, we have entered into rest. We are in the sanctuary drinking wine, a sign not only of the joy but of the rest of the New Covenant.
So, come and drink the wine of God. Come and enter into His rest.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, July 04, 2004 at 07:48 AM
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