Rev David Hann: 0431 685 172
Beautiful sunrise over Masada in Judaean Desert

When our Expectations are Torn by Confronting Reality

Scripture readings:

Psalm 89:38–52

But now you have cast off and rejected; 
you are full of wrath against your anointed. 
You have renounced the covenant with your servant; 
you have defiled his crown in the dust. 
You have breached all his walls; 
you have laid his strongholds in ruins. 
All who pass by plunder him; 
he has become the scorn of his neighbors. 
You have exalted the right hand of his foes; 
you have made all his enemies rejoice. 
You have also turned back the edge of his sword, 
and you have not made him stand in battle. 
You have made his splendor to cease 
and cast his throne to the ground. 
You have cut short the days of his youth; 
you have covered him with shame. Selah 

How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever? 
How long will your wrath burn like fire? 
Remember how short my time is! 
For what vanity you have created all the children of man! 
What man can live and never see death? 
Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah 

Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, 
which by your faithfulness you swore to David? 
Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, 
and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations, 
with which your enemies mock, O Lord, 
with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed. 

Blessed be the Lord forever! 
Amen and Amen.

Hebrews 8:6–13

But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. 
For he finds fault with them when he says: 

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, 
when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel 
and with the house of Judah, 
not like the covenant that I made with their fathers 
on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. 
For they did not continue in my covenant, 
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. 
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel 
after those days, declares the Lord: 
I will put my laws into their minds, 
and write them on their hearts, 
and I will be their God, 
and they shall be my people. 
And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor 
and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ 
for they shall all know me, 
from the least of them to the greatest. 
For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more.” 

In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016).