February 10 – LD 6, Day 6: Christ was the Mediator of the Old Covenant

Romans 1:1-3: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scripture concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The Old Covenant is the name given to the church prior to the birth of Jesus.

During that time, God communicated the knowledge of the Mediator in different ways. Already in the Garden of Eden, God spoke directly to Adam and Eve, this is called a theophany. Once when He spoke to Satan, He told Satan that there would be a war between the people whom He would save by the Mediator, and those who would follow Satan’s evil ways. That war would end in the coming of Jesus who would destroy Satan and all his followers, Genesis 3:15.

During the days of the Old Covenant, God reminded His people that the Mediator would come to cover their sins by instructing them to sacrifice animals. By the shedding of the blood of the substitute (a lamb), God declared to them the gospel of the coming Mediator. He held before their eyes a very effective picture of the cross of Jesus who would come as the Mediator in the future. He added to this many ceremonies of the law. They had special festivals in which they commemorated the shedding of blood as the covering for sin. One such example is the Feast of the Passover in which they placed blood on the door posts of their tents to remind them of the night in Egypt when the angel of death passed over them and did not kill their first-born sons. That blood was a picture of their Mediator.

In the quote above, Paul mentions prophets.  God also sent prophets to the Old Covenant people, who told them that their sins would be covered by God’s Lamb, upon Whom God would lay the iniquity of us all. One such prophet was Isaiah. Read Isaiah 53 for an example of such a prophetic message.

It is good for us to reflect upon this gospel given in the Old Covenant. There is only ONE Mediator and ONE gospel because there is only ONE people of God whom God saves in Jesus Christ. Because of this, we benefit from our reading and study of the Old Testament (Old Covenant).