The
Blood Covenant
From the Teachings of
Dr. J.L. Williams
Biblical Principles for Living Series
The
Blood Covenant
From the Teachings of
Dr. J.L. Williams
Copyright © 2023 by Feed the Hunger. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in mechanical or electronic form without the express permission of the copyright holder. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Printed in the USA.
Table of Contents Introduction...........................................................................1 1 What Is a Covenant?.....................................................7 2 Covenants in the Bible................................................13 3 Cutting the Covenant..................................................19 4 Covenant Symbolism..................................................29 5 God’s Promise of a Covenant.......................................39 6 Abraham Enters the Covenant.....................................45 7 Blessings of Covenant Keeping....................................53 8 Curses of Covenant Breaking......................................63 9 Disobedience and Restoration.....................................69 10 A Royal Covenant.......................................................75 11 Blood Brothers............................................................81 12 Between Two Houses...................................................89 13 The Next Generation...................................................95 14 The Covenant Stays Intact.........................................101 15 Testing the Covenant................................................109 16 The First Wake-up Call.............................................117 17 The Second Wake-up Call.........................................121 18 Ultimate Covenant Faithfulness................................127 Conclusion.........................................................................133
Introduction For the last several years, I have been studying the subject of the blood covenant, and it has been the most revolutionary study I have ever done in my Christian life. As I began to study God’s Word, I kept bumping into the word covenant. It was a word with which I was familiar, but I began to realize that the study of covenant represented the very essence, the very heart, and the very spiritual lifeblood of the Christian faith. South African pastor and writer Andrew Murray said, “Covenant is the very gate to heaven.” This statement is absolutely true! I believe this study will help you to understand that it is not only the “gate to heaven,” but also the gate to correct biblical interpretation, spiritual security, and spiritual victory. It is my desire that you, in reading and studying the following, will become as excited as I have been in preparing this material. It has revolutionized many of my former understandings of the Bible. This study will continually reveal the unyielding truth that Christianity is not something that you do for God. Christianity is something that God has already done for you and me. As an example, take Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus. The Apostle Paul was talking about the days before we were Christians when he said we were dead in our trespasses and sin. He reminded us: “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called ‘uncircumcised’ by those 1
who call themselves ‘the circumcision’ (which is done in the body by human hands)—remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners [“strangers” in the KJV] to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:11–13). What is the result? “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of his household” (2:19). Paul said there was a time when all of us who are Gentiles were strangers or foreigners to the covenants of promise. Unfortunately, many of us who have been brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ are still strangers to the covenants of promise. We don’t really understand what it’s all about. God’s word is rich and powerful, and you need to see this truth for yourself. May God open your heart and mind to the understanding of His Holy Word. So, as we begin our deep dive into covenants, let me mention some of the benefits that I think you will gain from this study. •
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Revelation—You will understand the Bible at a deeper level than ever before. Many of the verses you have never understood are suddenly going to come to life! Portions of Scripture that you formerly read over will leap from the page and excite your spirit, because covenant is the basis of the entire Bible. Redemption and Righteousness—You will see the security, depth, and richness of your relationship with God because He redeemed you and gave you His righteousness. The Gospel is the story of what God has done for us, not what we have done or will do for Him. You are going to 2
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understand as never before that you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. I pray you will grasp, as Paul said, “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18). Relationships—A covenant relationship with God and with other brothers and sisters is both the most liberating and the most binding relationship on earth. The Gospel has always been and will always be Good News, but the Christian life is a life lived in a covenant relationship. Responsibility—Through this study, you will get a deeper realization of your responsibility as a Christian. Based on what God has done for me, I have a glorious responsibility and the opportunity to fulfill it. It is human nature to love the privileges and the rights without the responsibilities. You will see the nature of your relationship and responsibility to Christ.
A HARD TEACHING Hopefully you are familiar with what is known as the Last Supper between Christ and His disciples on the night He was betrayed by Judas (Matthew 26:17–30). Here is a familiar passage from this Passover meal: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’” (verses 26–28). But there is a previous incident in the life of Christ that seems out of place. It was in His earlier Capernaum ministry, at least two years before the Last Supper. This story can only be 3
understood in terms of Christ’s early call to covenant. Many of His disciples clearly understood what He was calling for here and “no longer followed him.” We’ll have to read several verses to understand the scope of what He’s saying. At the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus was teaching about the manna that God had sent to their ancestors. The words that begin in verse 53 have been a fuzzy area theologically for many biblical commentators, as Jesus said something that seemed to be totally out of place: Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” . . . On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” (John 6:53–60) So, why did Jesus say this at that point in time? These statements were made at the end of Jesus’ second year of public ministry. This was not the Passover or the Lord’s Supper, yet it sounded so similar that it seemed out of context. Many theologians and commentators have based their interpretations of this passage on a Western viewpoint. They hypothesize that the disciples were confused at Jesus’ words. But the disciples were hardly confused. They understood perfectly what Jesus was saying. He was calling them into a covenant relationship. 4
As we progress in this study, we will increasingly see that when you enter into a covenant relationship, you take upon yourself all that your covenant partner is. And your covenant partner takes on themselves all that you are. Why were these words difficult for Jesus’ disciples? He was calling them to do something hard. To be linked with Jesus Christ was to be linked or coupled with someone who wasn’t popular with the Jews or with the religious authorities—that was the difficulty. “Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this offend you? [Note: He did not ask, “Does this confuse you?”] Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing’” (verses 61–63). This is why Jesus was unpopular. The Pharisees, religious leaders, and the scribes were placing their confidence in the flesh’s ability to fulfill the demands of the law. Then Jesus came saying that the flesh counted for nothing. He was undermining the essence of their religion! In this passage, He shared, “The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe. . . . This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him” (verses 63–65). The passage ends with the sad statement that “from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” Many of His disciples withdrew because they were not willing to pay the price to cut the covenant. The price was absolutely too high. They were not willing to enter into a covenant relationship because of His unpopularity and because of His great demands on anyone who entered into covenant with Him. In the King James Version, the last part of verse 66 reads “and [they] walked no more with him.” Amos 3:3 uses this 5
critical covenant wording: “Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?” You see, Jesus’ disciples wanted to walk with Him, the Romans, and the Pharisees. But His covenant requirement was to walk with Him alone. With this story in mind, let’s now look at what covenant means in order to understand the nature of our relationship with God.
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1 What Is a Covenant? The word covenant is both an Old Testament (or Old Covenant) and a New Testament (or New Covenant) word. The Old Testament Hebrew word for covenant is bereeth (the “h” is not pronounced). It means literally “cutting” or “the act of cutting.” It means to enter a compact or an agreement to a testament by passing between pieces of flesh. The New Testament Greek word is diathēkē, and it means “a disposition of property.” It means one person makes a deposit of valuable property to another person’s account. What does this mean for us? God has made a divine disposition of property. He is demonstrating that all He has and is, is at our disposal. Most of us live such spiritually poverty-stricken lives that we act as though we serve a God who is just barely getting by. Instead, we should embrace the words of Paul, who said, “I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13). Let’s look at three different types of covenants in the Bible. TWO-SIDED COVENANT Just as it implies, a two-sided covenant is a covenant between two people who are roughly equal to each other socioeconomically. 7
Both are agreeable to the covenant. In 1 Samuel 18:1–4, we see David’s covenant with King Saul’s son, Jonathan: “After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. . . . And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.” Malachi 2:14 speaks of marriage as a covenant: “The Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.” God would not bless the life or accept the sacrifices of a Jew who had broken the covenant with their spouse. This is why I believe God’s judgment is on America, because we, too, are a nation of marital covenant-breakers. The moment you start breaking covenant with the wife of your youth, you are under His judgment. Marriage is an indissoluble covenant. It is a holy covenant; it is a covenant of promise. ONE-SIDED COVENANT A one-sided covenant is a covenant that is imposed by a superior party upon an inferior party. To illustrate this, let’s look at Ezekiel 17. Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon. The children of Israel had been continuously disobedient, and God—in fulfillment of His prophecy—sent Nebuchadnezzar’s army to overthrow the Jewish people. They carried off Jehoiachin, who was then the king, into Babylonian captivity (1 Kings 24:8–17). Nebuchadnezzar appointed Zedekiah as his puppet king to rule in Jerusalem. He made Zedekiah enter into a covenant with him, that he would not create problems but be obedient to Babylon. But Zedekiah, even after cutting the covenant, began looking for a way to break the covenant as soon as Nebuchadnezzar got back to Babylon. He looked to Egypt 8
for help and broke the covenant. God said, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, he shall die in Babylon, in the land of the king who put him on the throne, whose oath he despised and whose treaty he broke. . . . He despised the oath by breaking the covenant. Because he had given his hand in pledge and yet did all these things, he shall not escape” (Ezekiel 17:16–18). This clearly shows the seriousness of covenant, even if the covenant was with a pagan king. In Genesis 20–21 we find the story of Abimelech king of Gerar. Abimelech (sometimes spelled Abimelek), with his great military power and possessions, saw that every time he came up against Abraham, God was on Abraham’s side. So, he sought a covenant with Abraham to protect himself. There are two other examples for your own study. Joshua 9 recounts the covenant, or treaty, made between the stronger Israelites and the weaker Gibeonites. Then there is the covenant between the Ammonites and the men of Jabesh in 1 Samuel 11:1–3. Notably, both of these covenants were covenants of deception, in which the weaker party entered upon false pretenses. IMPOSED BY GOD This self-imposed covenant is initiated by God. He does not have to enter into it because there is no one higher. He just chooses to do it because of who He is. For example, God entered into a selfimposed covenant to adopt Israel, as recorded in Deuteronomy 7:6: “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” God also made a covenant with King David: “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to David my servant, ‘I will establish your line forever and make your 9
throne firm through all generations’” (Psalm 89:3–4). And Jesus made the ultimate covenant: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28). This last one, of course, is the covenant to save sinners, a covenant of love and grace for the forgiveness of sins. There are corresponding verses for your own study: Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; Romans 11:27; 1 Corinthians 11:25; 2 Corinthians 3:3; Hebrews 8:8–10; 9:15; 10:16; 12:24. He didn’t do it because we sinners were desirable. After all, we were enemies of God. As Paul said in Romans 5:8, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners [His enemies], Christ died for us.” This is pure grace. This is unmerited favor, and this is what the word grace means. It means I’m getting something I one hundred percent don’t deserve. EVERLASTING COVENANT God’s self-imposed covenant with you and me is remarkable because there is absolutely nothing in us that God needs. One of the reasons why works righteousness has such appeal is because we want to believe that there is something that we have that God needs. But God just loves us. He has set His everlasting affection upon us, even when we fail Him. The study of covenants will convince you of your security as a Christian. However, many Christians live insecurely because they look at the Christian life as though it were something they do or have to maintain. If it is something you do or maintain, you will always be spiritually insecure. But when you realize that the security of your Christian life is based not on you but on God, you will feel like Paul when he said he was “confident in this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). 10
Mark this well, because this study will drive home your security as a believer. If I have cut a covenant with the One who is the Author of life, then it is an everlasting covenant that has brought me peace and life that can never be revoked, life that can never be lost. Remember what Paul said in Ephesians 2:14–18? Jesus has become our peace through His blood and has reconciled us to God. It is the blood that brings the peace, so it is a covenant of peace, a covenant of life. Why? We have entered into an indissoluble relationship with the One who is Life.
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2 Covenants in the Bible As we take our deep dive further into covenants, let me summarize seven of the distinct covenants found in the Bible. Future chapters will deal mainly with three of them. IN EDEN This is the covenant that God made in Eden with Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and 2. They could have a life of blessing, but it was conditioned upon their obedience. You know what happened. They didn’t obey, yet because of God’s mercy, redemption was going to eventually come, as Genesis 3:15 foretold. There would be that One out of woman (Jesus) who would bruise the serpent’s head (Satan), but His own heel would be bruised in the process (the Crucifixion). WITH NOAH God made a covenant with Noah following the flood. God promised preservation of the human race and the natural world. Never again would there be another deluge that would destroy the world. The rainbow symbolized this covenant: 13
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you— every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. . . .” (Genesis 9:8–17) WITH ABRAHAM God entered into an everlasting covenant with Abram, who had come from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan. God told Abram that through his seed, He would bring a blessing to the entire world. In Genesis 15:18–21, God specified to Abram what are now roughly the borders of the nation of Israel: “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates—the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.’” At this present time, not all the borders mentioned in this passage are honored, but I can assure you that if God is God (which He is) and not a liar (which He is not), those borders will one day be fully occupied by the Jews. God promised it, and that settles it. ON MOUNT SINAI God chose the nation of Israel (Exodus 19). He entered into 14
a covenant with His people, who were the seed of Abraham, through the son of promise (Isaac) as opposed to the son of the flesh (Ishmael). On Mount Sinai, God gave the rules for living out the covenant with Him. WITH PHINEHAS Numbers 25:10–13 explained the covenant that God made with the Levites (the priests of Israel) through a man named Phinehas. Although the sacrifices of the Old Covenant that were overseen by the Levites atoned for sin, they could not forgive sin. They only covered sin (the word atone means “to cover”). But, through the blood of the New Covenant, Jesus cleansed and continues to cleanse our sins. WITH DAVID God promised that through David there would come One who would be His Messiah. He would ultimately bring about the New Covenant, or the covenant of reconciliation, whereby those who were formerly enemies—those who were formerly dead in trespasses and sin and strangers to the covenants of promise—would be brought into reconciliation. God was, in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. We’ll take a deeper look at the covenant between David and Jonathan. THE NEW COVENANT Paul, in 2 Corinthians 3:1–6, replied to those who questioned his apostleship: “He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Many Christians I know are not living lives of spiritual 15
confidence because there is guilt in their lives—real or imagined. If you have guilt, you can’t have confidence before God. But, when you have been sprinkled clean by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, you can come boldly before the throne of God with confidence. Paul stated that our competence and confidence comes from God and the new covenant, not from the letter of the law. However, it is the law that makes us aware of our sinful nature. Watchman Nee, in his book The Normal Christian Life, put it this way: “The law makes our weakness manifest. Had it not been for the law, we could never have known how weak we are. The law is what exposes our true nature.” We can’t be victorious in following the letter of the law because rules, regulations, religiosity, and ritual kill. But the Spirit gives life! It is a covenant of life that we should be enjoying. The Old Covenant, or Law of Moses, was written on tablets of stone; the New Covenant is written on the human heart. In Hebrews 10:16, God says, “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” This is why I don’t need a rule book, a list of dos and don’ts. Through His Holy Spirit He has inscribed on my mind and on my heart what pleases Him. This is the New Covenant of grace. Paul calls the Old Covenant a ministry of death, and he calls the New Covenant a ministry of the Spirit. The Old Covenant was a ministry of condemnation (2 Corinthians 3:9), of “fading glory,” while the New Covenant is a ministry of righteousness. If you are having trouble understanding “fading glory,” do you remember when Moses came down from the mountain? His face was aglow, but after a while the glory began to fade. This, brothers and sisters, is the perfect picture of religion. In contrast, the New Covenant is one of increasing glory: “And we all, who with unveiled faces [as opposed to Moses, 16
who had a veiled face] contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). The Greek word used here for “transformed” is also the word translated “metamorphosis.” We are going through spiritual metamorphosis into His likeness. Because we have entered into a covenant with the Author of life, whose Holy Spirit has inscribed on our hearts and on our minds those things that please Him, we don’t have to die to exhibit “ever-increasing glory.”
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3 Cutting the Covenant In the modern Western world, we are unfamiliar with entering into a covenant. In my travels, however, I have found that almost all cultures are familiar with covenants, and there are always several steps involved in formalizing a covenant. We will specifically look at the Hebrew blood covenants of Jesus’ time. PREPARATION Preparing for a covenant involved counting the cost. A Hebrew man would in no way enter into a covenant lightly, because he knew what it meant. Every Jewish person knew that a covenant was the most serious, the most sacred, and the most binding relationship that two people could ever enter into. He would ask himself, Do I want to be inseparably bound to this person? Much thought and prayer went into counting the cost. Jesus would draw on this concept when highlighting the high cost of covenant, or discipleship, with Him in Luke 14:25–33. CHOOSING A LOCATION The place for sealing a covenant had to be chosen very carefully, because from then on it would become a special location. The 19
Israelites chose carefully the place to enact a covenant because they would want to leave a mark or a memorial which, from that time on, would be a reminder to them. Here are a few examples from Scripture: After the Lord confirmed His covenant with Abram, Abram “went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he pitched his tents. There he built an altar to the Lord” (Genesis 13:18). Abraham marked the location of his covenant with Abimelech. “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called on the name of the Lord, the Eternal God” (Genesis 21:33). When God reminded Jacob of the covenant with his family, Jacob named the place Bethel (“house of God”) and “took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it” (Genesis 28:18). Jacob, after making a covenant with Laban, “took a stone and set it up as a pillar” (Genesis 31:45). The spot where Moses met God was holy ground. God told Moses, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. . . . When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain” (Exodus 3:5–12). And let’s not overlook the greatest example of a tree symbolizing a covenant: a tree formed into a cross and placed on a hill. WITNESSES Appropriate witnesses to the covenant were also chosen very carefully. These people needed to understand the solemnity, holiness, and importance of this special moment. Family members, a close trusted friend, a priest, or a religious person were often chosen. 20
Genesis 21 has the story of the covenant that Abraham cut with Abimelech, the powerful Philistine king of Gerar. Abimelech was a dynasty name, similar to “Pharaoh” in Egypt. He was much more powerful militarily and politically than Abraham, but he said, “God is with you in everything you do. Now swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or my descendants” (verses 22–23). When he entered into the covenant, Phicol, the commander of his forces, was called upon as a witness. God Himself would frequently be the primary witness called upon in this covenant situation. Jacob and Laban’s covenant with one another invoked God as witness: “May the God of Abraham . . . judge between us” (Genesis 31:53). When renewing the covenant with the Lord at Shechem, Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel, along with the elders, leaders, judges, and officials, and they “presented themselves before God” (Joshua 24:1). God is also called to be a witness in the sacred covenant of marriage: “The Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth, . . . the wife of your marriage covenant” (Malachi 2:14). Even heaven and earth are called upon to witness! From Isaiah 1:2: “Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth! For the Lord has spoken.” Moses stressed to Israel the seriousness of breaking the covenant, telling the people, “I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you this day” (Deuteronomy 4:26). There is also a beautiful example in Psalm 89 of God’s covenant with David enduring “forever like the moon,” which is referred to as “the faithful witness in the sky” (Psalm 89:37). EXCHANGING COATS Exchanging coats may seem strange to us in the Western world, 21
but it is simply an outward expression of taking on a new identity. The outer coat, or robe, covered the inner tunic, a loose coat over the garments. To the Hebrew, the coat represented who you really were; it represented your identity. The modern expression is “the clothes make the man,” but to Jesus’ contemporaries, the clothes were the man. As a counselor, I can often judge a great deal about a person by the clothes they are wearing. Colors and style tell you a lot about a person’s qualities, such as modesty (or lack of it) and security (or insecurity). Here are some biblical examples: “Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him” (Genesis 37:3). “Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt” (1 Samuel 18:4). “Bring the best robe and put it on him” (Luke 15:22). This was a sign of position and acceptance for the Prodigal Son. (See also Genesis 41:42; Zechariah 3:4) Sometimes belts were exchanged (see 1 Samuel 18:4 above). The belt in biblical times held a person’s armor. This exemplified that all of one person’s equipment of warfare was exchanged for the other person’s weaponry, such as swords or daggers. In essence, this made the statement: “All my strengths are your strengths. If you must go to battle, you can count on me. If they mess with you, they are messing with me. Your battles are my battles.” CUTTING This was the most sacred, solemn part of the covenant ceremony and one that is hard for us today to comprehend. The participants would seal the covenant in blood. An animal was cut in half, right down the middle and through the backbone, including the 22
head. Then, the two halves or pieces of flesh were laid out with a walkway between them. The men stood facing each other, between the walls of flesh, symbolizing two important facts of covenant. This animal’s death was a symbol of dying to self. It also symbolized a pledge of faithfulness to death. The participants then took a knife and each made a cut on his wrist. Both lifted their hands toward God in heaven with their palms open. As the blood ran down their arms, they basically said, “God, You see this covenant that we have just cut. You are the witness of the oath that we are making together.” In our culture, we shake hands. This covenant-making step is the origin, literally, of the handshake. It represents, then and now, a grasp of friendship. We often refer to it as the “right hand of fellowship.” For centuries, major deals were sealed between businessmen with nothing more formal than a handshake. There was no need for a contract, lawyers, or a notary public. One’s word was their bond. The Hebrews, after lifting their hands heavenward and verbalizing their covenant before God, would “shake hands” up on the forearm, so that their open-cut blood would intermingle at the wrist. This was the origin of having a “blood brother” and was the covenant of brothers we mentioned earlier. They were considered by all to be one soul in two separate bodies. They would then take dirt, powder, or an herb and rub it into their cut. This set the wound as a permanent scar. They never wanted the scar to fade, physically or mentally. In my travels and ministry, I have personally met African tribesmen who proudly bear scars from sealing covenants. Depending on the culture, the scar might be on the forehead, finger, upper arm, belly, or thigh. There was a cut somewhere on the body, and something was rubbed into the cut to create a 23
scar as a permanent reminder of the covenant privileges and responsibilities. This scar was also a constant reminder to others—especially enemies—that there was a covenant partner to deal with as well. There was more than meets the eye, an unseen partner to contend with. If the male children and all male descendants of the covenant-makers were to be included as part of the covenant, circumcision would be a part of the ceremony. To the Israelites, all heirs “come out of the loins” of the father (Hebrews 7:5 kjv). All the children would then be “born into the covenant.” As these children came of age, they were given a choice to ratify or not ratify the covenant. EXCHANGING NAMES The name of the covenant partner was added to the other’s name. Just as most of us are given middle names at birth, the name of the covenant partner would become the “middle name” and therefore be integrated into the other’s identity. From that point on, this would be how they were referred to, and this is how they would legally sign any document. This way, each covenant partner carried the other’s name. Notice how these names were changed: “No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham. . . . As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah” (Genesis 17:5, 15). The sound of the letter h was inserted into their names. It is the same h sound in the name of the Lord, “Yahweh.” The exciting thing is just how much Scripture is made clear from the understanding of this practice alone! Similarly, when you identify yourself as a Christian, you are letting people know that you are a “little Christ”—one who carries and bears the name of Jesus. 24
When the Israelite had taken the covenant partner’s name into his own, everything he did would either be a blessing or a curse to the other’s name, a credit or discredit. Hence there is the expression “to take someone’s name in vain.” When we are specifically cautioned against taking the Lord’s Name in vain, we are not necessarily cautioned against profanity, but about our whole way of living if we call ourselves Christians. EXCHANGING PLEDGES AND OATHS Prior to making the covenant, each partner prepared a list of all assets and liabilities. They shared promises that would be fulfilled with the other person and then they read the lists to each other. If one owned a home or property, the other was told what it was and where it was. Any clothes that were owned, any storehouses of food, any money—all were offered unconditionally to the covenant partner. After sealing the covenant, each partner was given a copy of the list of assets and liabilities, and pledges were shared in writing. Now we can see why covenants were never entered into lightly, but with much thought and much prayer! You would definitely need to count the cost. After exchanging lists, with the hand that had been cut again raised heavenward (because God was the third witness) and the other hand pointing to the bloody “wall of flesh,” pledges were read aloud by each partner. Each then affirmed it by saying, “God, do so to me and more if I break this covenant.” In other words, “God, see this lifeless body, this bloody piece of flesh? Do so to me and more if I break this covenant.” (On a less bloody note, isn’t this exactly what marriage is also about? Marriage is the closest thing to a covenant today because marriage is a covenant. We stand before witnesses—a minister, family, and friends—and make an oath: “For better, 25
for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health . . .”) Let’s suppose, however, that my covenant partner and I didn’t trust each other too much prior to making this covenant. There’s a perfect example of this in Genesis 31:44–55 in the story of Jacob and Laban. These two con artists had a 14-year history of trying to deceive each other. Laban finally entreated Jacob to enter into a covenant with him, and they sealed it with the mizpah. This is a Hebrew word meaning “watchtower.” With one hand pointed heavenward and the other pointed down, they would say, “God, you watch between us while we are apart.” The unspoken end of the sentence would read, “because I know I can’t trust this guy.” SHARING A COVENANT MEAL The two parties established a memorial sign, token, or plaque at the location as a permanent reminder of the covenant that had been made. They also partook in a memorial meal, a simple remembrance consisting of bread and wine brought by both participants. Again, we see this in Genesis 31:54 with Jacob and Laban. In modern marriage ceremonies, immediately after the vows are exchanged, the wedding party goes to the reception, and the bride and groom put cake into each other’s mouth and drink from each other’s glass. Similarly, the covenant partner took the bread that he had brought, broke it, and put it into the other’s mouth. He would say, “Take this. Eat me—this bread is me. And you are now eating me. From this moment on, I have entered you. I am one with you.” He would open the wine that he had brought, and say, “Drink this wine. This is my blood. You are drinking me. From this moment on, my blood and your blood are as one 26
blood.” The other partner did the same, partaking of the bread that represented the other’s body, and drinking the wine that represented the other’s blood. This would have consummated a Hebrew covenant. Remember again the words that Jesus spoke two years into His public ministry, a full year before the Passover that instituted the Lord’s Supper? They would have been perfectly familiar to a Hebrew. A MODERN-DAY STORY Let me close with a story shared by a dear African friend of mine. Let me warn you, however, that there are graphic details, but they provide a vivid picture. A young man from a tribal village was killed in an auto accident. The driver of the car asked my friend and six other elders to go with him to meet with the family to resolve the death with a financial settlement. He and the elders agreed and met with the parents and relatives. The family refused his offer, saying no amount of money would compensate for such a loss. Since blood was shed, there would have to be bloodshed in exchange. Nothing else would satisfy. Without a blood sacrifice there would be ongoing revenge. But the family went on to say that instead of a member of the man’s family being killed, their tribe had another way. The driver had to provide a lamb to be killed as a substitute. The appointed day came for the sacrifice. All the extended families on both sides were present, plus the approved elder witnesses. The lamb was carefully killed and cut down the middle only through the skin. Then the entrails were opened and pulled out to the height of a man’s head and separated to make a bloody doorway. Then the heads of both households walked through, followed by all the family members and relatives on both sides. 27
Once this was done, the father of the slain boy declared that the death was atoned for; there would be no revenge from him or any of his family members. Money was not acceptable—only a blood substitute. When the offense was declared forgiven by the father, everyone clapped and cheered! Then both families sat down and had a feast together. My friend told me that this experience had brought new understanding to his heart and mind about the substitutionary death and atonement of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who was slain for us. God calls us into covenant. We were made for covenant partners and relationships. The deepest craving in one’s life is for an intimate relationship, a covenant relationship. Your heart cries out for it. But we need a covenant relationship with someone greater than us. We need someone who is strong where we are weak and wise where we are simple. We must have one who has all that we desperately need and has all the time in the world for us. This is none other than the Lord God Almighty!
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4 Covenant Symbolism Symbolism in the covenant ceremony served as a permanent, perpetual memorial for the covenant makers and others. The following are several of the more prominent symbols associated with covenants in the Bible, but the list is certainly not exhaustive. Some will overlap what we’ve studied so far. THE RAINBOW This was the first covenant symbol referred to in the Bible (Genesis 9) and is perhaps the most widely known. It was God who initiated the covenant after His judgment against the earth: This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. (Genesis 9:12–15; read the whole passage) 29
CIRCUMCISION As we saw earlier, the covenant was not only to include the covenant partners but also their children and descendants. When God established His covenant with Abraham, He told Abraham that the covenant was also between God and Abraham’s heirs. God initiated the covenant, and male circumcision was the covenant symbol. Now, it is man’s basic propensity or inclination to latch onto the sign—the physical symbol—and forget the spiritual reality behind it, thus forming a rule-bound, ritualized religion. By the time of Christ, the Jews were glorying in a physical circumcision. But the physical circumcising of the foreskin was to be a memorial that the foreskin of their heart was to be circumcised. In Galatians, Paul chastised the Jewish Christians for adhering to external rules and rituals without understanding that the external is often a symbol of spiritual things. God entered into covenant with Abram before circumcision, which was only the external symbol or sign of the covenant based on Abram’s faith. In Genesis 17:9–13, we read: “Then God said to Abraham, ‘As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is . . . the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. . . . My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant.’” ANIMALS Again, using the covenant of Abraham and Abimelech as an example, Abraham made a gift of livestock to symbolize their 30
agreement. “So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelek, and the two men made a treaty. Abraham set apart seven ewe lambs from the flock, and Abimelek asked Abraham, ‘What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs you have set apart by themselves?’ He replied, ‘Accept these seven lambs from my hand as a witness that I dug this well’” (Genesis 21:27–30). STONES OR HEAPS OF STONES Genesis 31 details the familiar story of Jacob and Laban forming a covenant after 14 years of trying to outdo each other. They used a heap of stones as a witness. There are many other examples in Scripture of stones and heaps of stones serving as a memorial to covenant ceremonies (Genesis 28:18; Exodus 24:4; Joshua 4:8–9; 24:25–27). Joshua, in fact, inscribed a stone with the words of the covenant into which the people of Israel had entered (Joshua 8:32). COVENANT MEAL As we previously saw, a covenant meal sealed a covenant ceremony. The Passover meal, first eaten to commemorate God’s deliverance of the firstborn from death, became a perpetual memorial to the Jews that God had cut a covenant with them in leading them out of bondage in Egypt. Luke 22 contains one of the many references to the institution of the Lord’s Table, a meal of celebration marking the ultimate deliverance of God’s people. OIL In Genesis 28, Jacob used a stone for his pillow and had a dream. As he slept, he saw angels ascending and descending 31
on a stairway with the Lord at the top. In the morning when he woke up, he anointed that stone with oil as a symbol of the covenant between him and God. King David was anointed with oil to symbolize a covenant: “When all the elders of Israel had come to King David at Hebron, he made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel, as the Lord had promised through Samuel” (read 1 Chronicles 11:1–3 for the fuller context). NAME CHANGE Abram’s name changed to Abraham as part of the covenant, along with his wife’s name from Sarai to Sarah. Jacob’s name changed to Israel. We will look at these in more detail later on. A WRITTEN RECORD In Exodus 24, God had Moses make a written record of the covenant He had entered into with the nation of Israel. It became one of the most sacred things to the Jewish people because it was a record of God’s covenant. In Malachi 3:16 there is a reference to a book, or scroll, of remembrance: “Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.” This confirms just how precious your thoughts, your prayers, and your praises are to God. THE ARK The symbol that was most precious to the Jewish people was the ark of the covenant, and it held the Book of the Covenant. 32
When the ark moved, the nation of Israel moved, and when it was still, they were still. It was a symbol of God’s presence. SALT Leviticus 2:13 shows an example of salt being used in a covenant offering. Every sacrifice had to have it. Salt is a symbol of permanence and incorruptibility, a symbol of that which stops corruption. The covenant made between God and the Levitical priests (Numbers 18:19) and the covenant between God and the house of David (2 Chronicles 13:5) were each referred to as a “covenant of salt.” And, of course, salt is a symbol of the Christian life. Jesus said we are to be the “salt of the earth.” Paul said, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1). SONG God loves music. He wrote the song in Deuteronomy 31 and gave it to Moses. He instructed Moses to teach it to the children of Israel and have them sing it as a reminder of the covenant. “Now write down this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it, so that it may be a witness for me against them” (verse 19). CLOTHES David and Jonathan exchanged clothes, as they represented who you were. This might include finger rings, nose rings, bracelets, crowns, anklets, earrings, veils, headbands, amulets, and signet rings (a symbol of authority, like Pharaoh gave to Joseph and the father gave to his prodigal son). 33
Another symbol was the wearing of phylacteries, small boxes containing selected Old Testament scriptures. This practice arises from a literal interpretation of verses like Exodus 13:16 (“And it will be like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead that the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his mighty hand”) and Deuteronomy 11:18 (“Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads”). In Matthew 23:5, Jesus judged the scribes and Pharisees for abusing this covenantal symbol: “They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long . . .” They were accentuating the externals as though those were somehow effective in making them more spiritual and religious. WEAPONS Sometimes covenant partners exchanged weapons of war. The covenant promise was to stand with each other in battle, even in a fight to the death. BLOOD AND TEARS Blood was the essence of the covenant. In Leviticus it states that “the life of a creature is in the blood” (17:11), and no sacrifice was worthy unless blood was shed. The word altar translates a Hebrew word meaning “a place of slaughter”—a place where a lamb was slain. The ultimate altar was called Golgotha, where the Lamb of God was slain for you and me. Regarding tears, Psalm 56:8 says, “Record my misery; list my tears on your scroll—are they not in your record?” God takes our shed tears and puts them, as it were, in a bottle, a fragrant incense that becomes a libation, or drink offering, that 34
is poured out before Him. The record of every one of those tears is in His Book of Remembrance. A SEAL Over and over again, beyond a shadow of a doubt, we are shown that Jesus Christ is the Great Covenant—the Great Symbol, the Great Sign! The symbols have become flesh. Who seals this? It is the Holy Spirit! Ephesians 1:13–14 deserves your further study, prayer, and meditation: “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.” The King James Version refers to this deposit of the Holy Spirit as “the earnest of our inheritance.” Any businessperson is familiar with earnest money when an agreement has been made. The earnest money seals the deal and guarantees that the full amount will be paid. The Holy Spirit is God’s seal upon us when we have entered into a covenant relationship with Him. The signet ring of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords is inscribed indelibly on us, and we are then guaranteed safe passage and delivery to the Father’s presence to be forever with the Lord! The security of the Christian life is wrapped around us. God has “set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come,” as it says in 2 Corinthians 1:22. And Paul declares later in chapter 5, “Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come” (verse 5). 35
THE SABBATH The Jews celebrate the Sabbath because it is a commemoration of the Old Covenant: “Keep my Sabbaths holy, that they may be a sign between us. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:20). As Christians, we celebrate the Lord’s Day because it was then that the Lord Jesus was triumphantly resurrected from the dead. After ascending to the Father, He then sent the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee or earnest of our ultimate eternal fellowship with God. SCARS This Scripture deserves your prayer and meditation: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me” (Isaiah 49:15–16). In John 20:24–28, we read of Jesus appearing to the disciples after the resurrection. He showed Thomas the scars of His covenant: “‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’ Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” To the Jews in biblical times, the wrists were considered to be anatomically part of the hands. The nails that nailed Jesus to the cross were actually hammered into His wrists. That was God cutting the covenant in the wrist. The One seated at the right hand of God has eternal covenant marks in His hands, and He has eternally inscribed us in His hands. Every time Satan comes forward and says of us, “He’s helpless, he’s hopeless, he’s unworthy!” the Lord Jesus just says, “Look at My arms. We have cut a covenant.” Paul said in Galatians 6:17, “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” He was saying, “I have covenant scars with Jesus.” 36
In Isaiah 42:1–6, we are shown that all signs and symbols were pointing to the ultimate symbol, the Lord Jesus: “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. . . . I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles.”
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5 God’s Promise of a Covenant Thus far, we have tried to establish something of a cultural base. We have looked at many of the things the average Israelite understood when they saw the word covenant. When we see the word covenant in English, we just see the word as some sort of contract or agreement. But the Jew knew it as bereeth—the cutting of a covenant by walking between two walls of flesh. We have also looked at the symbolism when two people cut a covenant. In these next two chapters, we will look at one of the most exciting stories in the Bible. In many ways, we could say that Genesis 15 is the foundation for the Good News of Jesus Christ. It is the foundational covenant that God established: the Abrahamic covenant. God’s calling of Abram is found in Genesis 12:1–4: “The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’” We’ll look at several aspects of the Abrahamic covenant in this chapter. They all start with S to help you remember them. 39
SOVEREIGNTY It is enlightening to realize that God called Abram from Ur of the Chaldeans. Why is this important? His father and all of his relatives (including Abram) were heathen idol worshippers. There was absolutely nothing meritorious in Abram. He was sovereignly chosen of God. Joshua recounted this fact to the people of Israel: “Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods. But I took your father Abraham from the land beyond the Euphrates and led him throughout Canaan and gave him many descendants” (Joshua 24:2–3). God sovereignly chose Abram. In the same way, He reminds us: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit” (John 15:16). SEPARATION It is important to note that God’s first call is always a call to separation, a break from our old way of life. “The Lord had said to Abraham, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you’” (Genesis 12:1). In obeying this command and commission of the Lord, Abram was to separate himself from his place, people, and possessions. Luke also recalled God’s direction to Abraham through the words of Stephen: “‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’ So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran” (Acts 7:2–4). SIGNIFICANCE Man rebelled against God (Genesis 10–11) and tried to build 40
a great tower that would reach the heavens. God subsequently rejected mankind because they were seeking to build a great nation and a great name without Him. He began a new nation through Abraham—a nation of great significance that would be a source of spiritual blessing to the whole world. “I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2). STRENGTH In Genesis 12:3, we read the familiar blessing and cursing aspect of every covenant: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.” The covenant was strengthened through the promise of both blessings and curses. And through this covenant, God was eternally binding Himself to Abram. He was totally identifying Himself with His covenant partner. From this moment on, to touch Abram was to touch God and to bless Abram was to bless God! To curse Abram was to curse God and be cursed by God! Earlier, we discussed covenant partners defending each other in battle. But now, as we study God’s covenant with Abraham, remember that God has promised retribution to those who go against Abraham or his heirs. I believe that is still true, and the nations must never forget God will defend Israel. Every nation that has ignored this and has persecuted the Jews has done so to its peril. SCOPE The scope of the blessings of God’s covenant with Abram was to be much larger than just his family, people, race, and nation. The Lord proclaimed to him that all peoples (or families) and nations on earth would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:3; 18:18). 41
This covenant would be worldwide in scope and eventually mean that the world would know about Jesus. “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations” (Matthew 24:14). We can see its ultimate fulfillment in John’s revelation of heaven and the song the elders sang: “With your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:9–10). The scope of the Abrahamic covenant is another reason that Christians must be focused on the world with this broad commission in mind. SPIRITUALITY Abram and Lot left their home, as God instructed (Genesis 12). Genesis 15 tells us that “after this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision” (verse 1). It is important for us to see that all the events in Genesis 15 take place in a vision rather than in a physical sense. This reminds us that sometimes God speaks to us through supernatural means rather than in an audible way. As Paul says, “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit” (Romans 8:16). So, Abram perceived, experienced, and saw all these events in a vision. This is probably one of the reasons he quickly asked God for some external, visible, or tangible proof! SECURITY God addressed Abram’s fears when He told him, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward” (Genesis 15:1). Fear has been mankind’s oldest enemy, his primary response ever since the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve 42
broke their relationship with God, they were afraid and hid. Whether the heathen Abram or the twenty-first century person, everyone outside of a relationship with God is motivated by fear. We try a thousand ways to compensate, to overcome, to run away, and to suppress the fear. Yet, there is only one secure, permanent way that fear can be alleviated. Not through tranquilizers, alcohol, psychotherapy, or religiosity, but through a covenant relationship. This is the only antidote to fear. Remember that 1 John 4:18 says “perfect love drives out fear.” In other words, the fears in my life will be alleviated and I will become perfected when I have really begun to grasp that He has set His everlasting affections upon me and when I appropriate my covenant privileges into my life experiences. Through God’s covenantal words, He reminded Abram that He would be his shield. This means that God would be his protector, safeguarding him from all the things he feared most. Abram struggled with believing and applying this principle—just as we do! A study of his life shows that he often lapsed into fear and therefore went back into the flesh (see Abraham and Abimelek in Genesis 20). Not only would God be Abram’s shield, He would also be his “very great reward.” God didn’t say, “I am going to give you a very great reward,” but that He would be Abram’s reward. In obeying God’s call, Abram gave up his place, people, and possessions. God assured him that his reward would be far greater than his loss. We always gain far more than we give up when we follow God. This is true security! SON If God were going to reward Abram, it would be meaningless unless he had someone to whom he could pass the reward. Since Abram had no physical heir, he struggled with who his 43
successor and inheritor would be. We can relate, can’t we? If someone says, “I am going to be your very great reward,” we ask, “Well, what are you going to give me?” God had promised Abram blessings ten years before, and nothing had happened. Do you ever get frustrated with God’s timing? Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir” (Genesis 15:3). The child of a household servant could be adopted, and so Abram’s question was whether the child of his servant Eliezer would gain the inheritance of God’s promised blessings. “Then the word of the Lord came to him: ‘This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir’” (verse 4). Abram was getting on in years—100 to be exact. And Sarai was 90! Abram had to be thinking, “Lord, time is passing on. We’d best get on with something pretty quick. Ten years have passed since You promised to make me a great nation.” But God had made it clear. He was wrapping up all the blessings of His covenant with Abram in the promise and person of a son. It would not be an outsider, servant, or foreigner who would be the heir of Abram’s estate. This, of course, was foreshadowing a greater Son of Abraham who would make all of us “sons of God.” Remember, too, that Abram was a tent dweller. He was a sojourner who lived in tents made of goatskin and camel wool. He was a nomad in the desert. God awakened him, came to him in a vision, and led him outside the tent. “He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be’” (verse 5). Abram had to be wondering about God’s sense of humor and had to be scratching his head at the very least. But something profound happened, which we’ll look at in the next chapter. 44
6 Abraham Enters the Covenant As we continue our closer look into God’s covenant with Abram described in Genesis 15, we reach a pivotal moment in the story. God just made Abram an incredible promise: he would not just have an offspring, but numerous descendants. What was Abram’s response? SALVATION This is the moment when Abram’s salvation occurred. He hadn’t been “saved” in our modern terminology when he was called ten years earlier (Genesis 12), but 15:6 states, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” This is the first reference in the Bible to belief. What does the word literally mean? Here is an important principle: the first reference to anything in the Bible is usually the key to interpreting subsequent references. The Hebrew word used here is āman, meaning to confirm, affirm, or ratify, and is the root of our English word “amen.” It means to say yes or “so be it,” to agree with. When we say “amen” we are saying “so be it in my life”—“I affirm, I accept, and I believe.” Amen has a deeper meaning when we personalize it. 45
In Galatians 3:6–9, it is repeated that this is the moment of Abram’s salvation. In spite of how unbelievable it was, Abram said āman. There was nothing in Abram that God needed or found worthy. Whereas Noah was chosen by God as a righteous man, that wasn’t the case here. Abram was a heathen, a pagan, but God sovereignly called him. Before God called him, Abram had faith, his father had faith, and his relatives had faith, but the object of their faith was wrong. What was credited to Abram as righteousness was not that he had faith, but that he took that faith and placed it in a worthy object. When he did that—when he said āman to God’s promise—it was credited to him as righteousness. The object of your faith determines the validity of your faith. There is nothing inherently meritorious in faith. Everyone has faith. It is the object of your faith that makes a difference. This is what caused Abram (soon to be known as Abraham) to be counted as righteous before God. John 8:39 shares the story of Jesus talking with the Jews about Abraham being their father. “If you were Abraham’s children,” Jesus told them, “then you would do the things Abraham did.” What were the deeds of Abram that resulted in his salvation? Abram believed God, but it was not the belief that pleased God. It was that Abram redirected his belief to the promises of God. That was when salvation occurred. Everybody in the world has faith, but the majority of the world has an unworthy object for their faith. They may believe only in themselves, in materialism, in a political system, etc. Therefore, like Abram’s once was, their faith is misdirected. Just as Abram’s belief was credited to him as righteousness, we must do the same! We must appropriate, affirm, ratify, and place all our trust in what God has said. Then we are saved, and we become the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ. As Paul said, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though 46
God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:20–21). SUBSTANCE Now, to the next verse (15:7): “He also said to him, ‘I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.’” God was telling Abram that this was one of the things with which he would be blessed. We saw earlier that in verses 18–21, God specified the boundaries of the land. Since Abram gave up his people, place, and possessions, God now gave him a new land—the “Promised Land.” Since God had promised him a son and an heir, he would need a place to live. However, the land was occupied by hostile people who would have to be dispossessed, the people often collectively known as the Amorites. They were the strongest of the Canaanites and represented all the inhabitants of the Promised Land (see Joshua 24:15). The heirs of Abram would not fully receive their Promised Land for several generations, “for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure” (verse 16). The Jews today have not totally established those boundaries. Many generations have passed since God’s announcement, but it will happen one day. In response to this land promise, Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” (verse 8). Isn’t that what we would have said? Here is Abram, a nomad, living out of a tent and not even owning the land his camels are parked on! But note here that Abram asked this after he had evidenced faith. He didn’t say, “Show me and I’ll 47
believe.” He said, “I believe, now show me!” He believed the promises before there was one shred of evidence or substance. God calls things into existence that do not exist. He speaks of things that are not as though they are! God verified Abram’s faith after the “Amen.” SACRIFICE Verses 9 and 10 share God literally cutting the covenant with Abram: “‘Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.’ Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half.” Abram laid each half opposite the other without cutting the birds. It is obvious that Abram thoroughly understood this sacrificial procedure from his upbringing in Ur, where cutting a covenant was commonly practiced. And without a further word of instruction from God, Abram prepared the animals for the covenant ceremony. SUFFERING Verse 11 shares a dark detail: “Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.” As a shepherd, he had seen the birds of prey eat the bodies of dead animals. This was symbolic of the great suffering that would occur in the life of the party who would dare break the covenant. It is a graphic symbol that everyone could clearly understand. Throughout the rest of Scripture, God used this picture of the fate of the covenant breaker. God would judge them with death, and the birds of prey would consume their dead bodies! Abram was held responsible for driving away the birds because this act was a symbol of protecting the covenant. When 48
you have the time, look at Matthew 13 and read of the birds that also came to feast in order to attack what God was doing. Further references can be found in Deuteronomy 28:26, 1 Kings 14:11, 2 Kings 9:10, Psalm 79:2–3, and Jeremiah 34:17–20. It is an exceeding dangerous thing to break a covenant with God and suffer the consequences. SURETY Now on to verse 12: “As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.” Remember who else God put to sleep when He had something important to do? He knew that if He didn’t put Adam to sleep to create a helpmate for him, Adam would have messed up the whole thing! God did the same thing to Abram. Even though Abram knew the process of cutting a covenant, he was much better off asleep than awake, simply because God knew that Abram would ruin everything if he were awake. Now, how is it that Abram, being asleep, could enter into the covenant with God if he could not walk between the walls of flesh? God knew that Abram had nothing to give Him. It was purely on the basis of a desire within God to bless Abram that He was initiating the covenant. Through this action, God was explaining to Abram that the pagan covenant practices he had been acting on before were between two equals giving each other things or strengths that would complement the other. God was telling Abram that he had nothing God needed. God tries to help us understand that He has all the assets, and we have all the liabilities. We are sinners by nature. A sinner has no asset that a Holy God desires! As a result (speaking of Jesus), “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). 49
Pay close attention to Genesis 15:17: “When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.” Deuteronomy 4:24, Hebrews 12:29, and 2 Thessalonians 1:7 all speak about the fact that God is a consuming fire. Exodus 13:21 states that God led the people as a pillar of fire. Now, He was the one passing through the walls of flesh as fire in Abram’s place. All God had now belonged to Abram. When Jesus hung on the cross in our place, it was as if God Himself were hacking right down to the backbone of the animal of the covenant. Hebrews 10:19–20 and 22 declare: “Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body . . . let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings.” Recall that when Jesus stated, “It is finished,” the veil of the temple was split right in two. For the first time, we could walk into the presence of a Holy God. Through the torn veil of the body of the perfect sacrifice, God now entered into a perfect covenant with us. As a result, we have surety and can boldly enter into the Holy Place. To understand the significance of what took place in this covenant, let’s pause and define the word surety. According to Webster’s dictionary, it means: “a basis of confidence or security” and “one who has become legally liable for the debt, default, or failure in duty of another.” The Hebrew equivalent means to braid, to intermix, or to give pledge, and the Greek means a pledge or a bondsman. So, a surety is someone who stands in for someone else, takes someone else’s place, guarantees, or protects. There are a number of instructive examples of surety (usually translated “guarantee,” “security,” or similar) to study on your own: 50
Genesis 43:8–9, 44:30–32, Psalm 119:122, Proverbs 6:1, and Hebrews 7:22. Let’s look at another term, arrabōn, used three times in the New Testament (2 Corinthians 1:21–22, 2 Corinthians 5:5, and Ephesians 1:14). It means a deposit or down payment. This is what Jesus meant when He said, “Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). As was noted earlier, all these events Abram was seeing in a vision were but a foreshadow of another covenant that God would cut. This time there would be no animals, but His beloved Son, whose body and blood were the basis of the New Covenant! This was the day that Abraham foresaw—and rejoiced! God had cut the covenant that was bringing new life, resurrection, righteousness, and eternal security. Hallelujah! SIGN You might recall that one of the final tasks with a covenant was to change names. Abram’s name was changed to Abraham in Genesis 17:5–6: “No longer will you be called Abram; your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.” Imagine the gossip from people wondering about anyone visiting this man named Abram at his tent, 99 years old and still thinking (believing) he was to actually be the “father of many.” Don’t think they didn’t laugh when he told everyone he was changing his name from “father of many” to “father of many nations.” Yet, Abraham continued to believe. As previously mentioned, God literally took the h from His own name, Yahweh, and gave it to Abram as a sign that he became Abraham. Sarai became Sarah. Never again were they called by their old names. Interestingly enough, now that 51
they were eternally placed within God, He attached His name to their descendants, saying of Himself, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” From here on out, Abraham was not a “servant” of God, but a friend of God forever.
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7 Blessings of Covenant Keeping Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 37–39) So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God. (1 Corinthians 3:21–23) These verses share covenant promises. We don’t have to worry about life or death because we possess these promises. Christ is the one with whom we have a covenant. Therefore, all that He is, is now made totally available to all that we are. Is all that we are totally dependent on all that He is? Jesus lived His life in total dependence upon the Father. This 53
means everything in us is available to God and all of God is available to us. If we live our lives in total dependence on Jesus, just as Jesus lived His life in dependence on God, we can have more victory. The great question is this: Is all that I am in total dependence on all that He is? If so, then all things belong to you and me. We belong to Christ and He belongs to God. Here is a good quote from Watchman Nee in his book Changed into His Likeness: “The Christian life is Christ-life. Christ in me has become my life and is living my life instead of me. God gives Him to me to be my life.” There were certain blessings bestowed on those who obeyed the covenant. In Elisabeth Elliot’s book Discipline: The Glad Surrender she said, “What a gift of amazing grace—that the One who made me allows me to deny His existence! God created me with the power to disobey, for the freedom to obey would be nothing at all without the corresponding freedom to disobey. . . . It is a loving Lord who calls me through the world’s fog to His island of peace. If I trust Him, I will obey Him gladly.” In many places in the Bible, we find God enumerating the blessings of covenant obedience. Let’s look at some now. GOD’S PROMISES In Genesis 9, God promised Noah that there would never again be a flood. In Genesis 15, God promised Abram that He would be his shield and his exceeding great reward. In Genesis 17, God promised Abram and Sarai that they would be exceedingly fruitful even in their old age. Both Abram and Sarai’s loins were dead, yet God blessed them both with life. Can you see a resurrection principle springing forth from these examples? You are dead in your trespasses and sin. But 54
God can call forth life from death because He is the Author of life. This is the principle we must have faith in. God can call into being things that are not. He also promised the nation of Israel that it would be His own possession. They were going to be His special treasure, a holy nation, and a nation of priests. Exodus 34 and Leviticus 26 are two other examples of God’s miracles and promises of covenant peace and security. God also promised victory in war as long as His people lived in obedience. Why? Because God said that He was a shield that nothing could penetrate. Deuteronomy 8:18 promised Israel the ability to produce great wealth. In Psalm 25, God promised to lead Israel in paths of loving kindness and truth, and that He would make known the secrets of His heart to them. OLD COVENANT BLESSINGS TO NEW The Old Covenant, as the writer of Hebrews said, was but a shadow of a greater reality—Jesus, who was the fulfillment of all that was represented in the Old Testament. Once the greater reality comes, you no longer focus on the shadow. Look at what the shadow represented. The Old Covenant was primarily about the blood of animal sacrifices. Leviticus 17 taught that the life of the flesh was in the blood, and that the blood was sacred. The Israelites were to neither eat nor drink the blood of any kind of animal as the pagans did. God said, however, that He had given the blood for atonement. This is a word commonly found in the Old Testament, and it comes from a Hebrew word meaning to cover or purge. All of us are guilty before God. We somehow must assuage the guilt in our lives either by bearing it through the shedding of our own blood or by someone dying in our place. There must be 55
a substitute. God allowed in the Old Testament for an innocent animal’s blood to be poured out instead of the sinner’s. This was a reminder to the Jews that this should have been their life. They are the guilty ones, and the animal was innocent. Jesus said that anyone who commits a sin is a slave of sin. All of us are born into a sinful condition. All of us sin just like Adam. Therefore, we are in bondage and enslaved to sin. God temporarily provided a covering, or the atonement. There was going to be a time when the past, present, and future sins of the human race would be uncovered and laid on Jesus Christ. But, once they were, the New Covenant, through the blood of Jesus, provided redemption. To redeem means to pay the ransom price or to buy a slave out of their slavery to the end of setting them free. Our sins were absolutely cleansed once and for all, not just covered. Therefore, we have been purchased or bought out of the slavery of sin and set free. We have not been purchased and cleansed so that we can do our own thing. We are freed to do His thing! We are redeemed to become slaves to righteousness. As the writer of Hebrews clarified: “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” (9:14). This tells us that if the blood sacrifices from animals temporarily atoned for sin, how much more the eternal blood of Christ will cleanse consciences from guilt. When the children of Israel saw a lamb slain, they knew that they were still guilty. Their consciences still condemned them, and they would have to regularly sacrifice animals. Now our consciences have been sprinkled clean by the blood of Jesus Christ. Here is some assurance from the New Testament: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have 56
fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). “He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9). Peter said that God indeed was redeeming the Gentiles because He had cleansed the Gentiles’ hearts just as He had cleansed the Jews’ hearts by faith. So, the blood of Jesus Christ cleansed us and His Word continues to cleanse us. As Hebrew 10:22 states: “Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.” This allows us to come boldly into His presence before the throne of grace. If we feel guilty, it is difficult to come boldly. Only when our consciences have been sprinkled clean can we come boldly. This is really how God wants us to live. SPIRITUAL FORMULA Let us go further in understanding that the means of redemption is the blood of Jesus Christ by looking at several more verses: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace” (Ephesians 1:7). “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18–19). 57
The following passage, Hebrews 9:11–15, provides a clear picture to the Jewish people—and to us—how Jesus replaced the need for the animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant. There are several verses to read, but they are crucial because of the clear message about the New Covenant: But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. A. W. Tozer rephrases this in his book The Attributes of God: “When Jesus died on the cross the mercy of God did not become any greater. It could not become any greater, for it was already infinite. We get the odd notion that God is showing mercy because Jesus died. No—Jesus died because God is showing mercy. It was the mercy of God that gave us Calvary, not Calvary that gave us mercy.” 58
REDEMPTION PRODUCES REMISSION The word remission literally means to send away. On the Day of Atonement, knowing that many of the people had wronged God or someone else, the high priest had to bring sacrifices whose blood would be poured out. The blood of the animal was the substitute, the innocent dying for the guilty. Then, laying hands on another animal, the priest confessed the sins of the people. This symbolized that out of our hearts was pouring all of the sin and bile, transferring our sin onto that innocent animal, which was then sent away into the wilderness. God literally separated us from our sins. He sent away our sins—and all this came through the blood of Jesus. On this basis, we now receive righteousness because we have been redeemed and fully forgiven, and it is reckoned to us as righteousness. Once this has happened, we are made right for the first time. We need this because we were born wrong by nature. This is what it means to be a sinner! If God says that we are just, then no person can say that we are unjust. Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in a covenant relationship with Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:21). Remember God having all the assets and Abram having all the liabilities? You and I are the same. God is holy, righteous, and just. We are none of these. God’s grace was placed upon His Son, Jesus, so that we could become the righteousness of God. We cannot work for it nor in any way achieve it. God had to give, or impute, His righteousness to us. That’s why there is now no condemnation. When God looks at us, He sees us through the righteousness of His Son and can now say that we are His beloved, in whom He is well pleased. We are totally forgiven! The moment we are placed in Christ, He is where we live, move, and have our being. This was what Paul used as his 59
“spiritual address.” If anyone needed to get in touch with him, they could find him in Jesus Christ. No matter where I live, I am in Him and He is in me. He extends forgiveness to you and me and opens up a relationship for us where fear is dispelled and we know God as “Abba, Father.” God knows us better than we know even ourselves, yet He still chose us. Jesus told us, “The one who loves me will be loved by my Father” (John 14:21). FRIENDSHIP God’s relationship with us is also a precious friendship. Abraham was God’s friend, as mentioned in Isaiah 41:8, 2 Chronicles 20:7, and James 2:23. The word friend is a covenant term clearly understood by covenant partners. It is not used in the light, casual manner employed in our western culture today. Covenant partners sealed their covenant in blood, meaning they were covenant friends to the death. As we have already seen, it was a serious thing to enter into covenant relationship with another because, if necessity demanded it, one partner would give his life for his covenant partner. This friendship is available to us as well. “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:13–15). The Jewish audience Jesus was speaking to knew full well the weight of the covenant term, friend. Jesus told His disciples in advance all the things that were to be, so that they would not be caught off guard. He counted them among His friends and wanted them to know of certain events ahead of time. 60
The same thing goes for all the secrets God has revealed to us in the New Testament—and the unsaved world doesn’t understand. These are secrets of how we are to live our everyday lives and secrets of the things to come. Now we see that through the covenant God has cut with us, He doesn’t hold anything back from us. Again, we are counted among His friends and He wants us knowing these secrets so that we can move with God in the coming events instead of against Him. First John 1:3 affirms this: “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.” A. W. Tozer wrote: “An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.” This is part of the intimacy that God wants to have with us. You cannot lose this relationship. You may indeed lose the fellowship, but you will not lose the relationship. Sin can break the fellowship, but the fellowship is restored in repentance. This all goes hand in hand with reigning with Jesus Christ. “For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!” (Romans 5:17). Can we see that God has raised us up to sit with Jesus at the right hand of the Father? We did not earn this position! It was freely given to us. Our sins were remitted, sent away, and we were wondrously forgiven. This forgiveness gives us the right to sit with Jesus and make the enemies of God our footstool. If we sit with Christ in the heavenlies, then we reign with Him! All we have to do is say, “Amen!” 61
8 Curses of Covenant Breaking God told Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse” (Genesis 12:3). Moses later told the Israelites, “Carefully follow the terms of this covenant, so that you may prosper in everything you do” (Deuteronomy 29:9). God promised prosperity to Abram if he kept the covenant with Him: “I am . . . your very great reward” (Genesis 15:1). Wouldn’t it be nice to think that the children of Israel lived prosperously and happily ever after? But they did not keep the covenant. They were disobedient and came under judgment from God. Just as God kept the promises of His rewards for covenant keeping, He also kept His word on covenant breaking. Deuteronomy 30:17–18 warned of the consequences: “But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.” God created us as willful, volitional creatures. This is why He set before us a choice. Joshua made it clear that a choice was to be made between serving God and Baal. What we like 63
to believe is that there is some sort of middle ground, a median where we can have a little of both. God says, “No.” BREAKING YOUR WORD God established the law of vows, or the law of oaths, first stated in Numbers 30:2: “When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said.” Several more times in both the Old and New Testaments we are warned of the consequences of covenant breaking. Moses reminded the Israelites of the importance of keeping one’s vows before the Lord: “If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not be slow to pay it, for the Lord your God will certainly demand it of you and you will be guilty of sin. But if you refrain from making a vow, you will not be guilty. Whatever your lips utter you must be sure to do, because you made your vow freely to the Lord your God with your own mouth.” (Deuteronomy 23:21–23) Solomon, through the wisdom given to him by God, restated this in no uncertain terms: “When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it.” (Ecclesiastes 5:4–5). Once we reach the New Testament, we find the same principle being taught by Jesus Himself: “But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:36–37). What a sobering statement coming from the Lord Jesus! It is almost as if we are going to stand before Him while He plays back to us, on some sort of divine audio recorder, the vows that 64
we made. “God, I’m going to start tithing!” “God, I’m going to be a man of my word!” “God, I’m going to be your woman!” Make no mistake, one day He will play these back to us because they are vows that we made. As far as God is concerned, He said that it is better never to vow at all than to vow and break it. However, the children of Israel, of which we are now a part, continually and habitually broke vows made to God. Here are just a few of the many examples from Scripture: “But then they would flatter him with their mouths, lying to him with their tongues; their hearts were not loyal to him, they were not faithful to his covenant” (Psalm 78:36–37). “They make many promises, take false oaths and make agreements; therefore lawsuits spring up like poisonous weeds in a plowed field” (Hosea 10:4). “He [Zedekiah, king of Judah] despised the oath by breaking the covenant. Because he had given his hand in pledge and yet did all these things, he shall not escape. Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: ‘As surely as I live, I will repay him for despising my oath and breaking my covenant’” (Ezekiel 17:18–19). The following passage in the New Testament is often partially quoted, but is taken out of context. It is a covenant text. Here, the writer of Hebrews (10:28–30) contrasts the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Anyone who broke the old, and whose guilt was established based on two or more witnesses, could be put to death. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of 65
grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” These are serious words! This is like literally taking the blood of Jesus and hurling it back into the face of God! I believe this is grieving the Holy Spirit perhaps to the extent of blasphemy—the sin unto death. C. S. Lewis said, “It is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands . . . it is ourselves. . . . He will be infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise” (The Weight of Glory). “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). What is the clear implication? In verse 30, God is essentially saying, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay” and “If you break My covenant, I will bring it back on your head.” We will either fall into the hands of Abba, Father, or into the hands of God, a consuming fire. The Old Testament constantly told how the children of Israel were covenant breakers. The New Testament clearly repeats this in Romans 1:31, the only place in the Bible where the word asynthetos is used, which literally means “covenant breakers” (and is translated as such in the KJV). What is the result? “Just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness. . . . Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:28–32). WHAT WAS UNLAWFUL? What are some of the signs of a people who have become 66
covenant breakers? First of all, God says that unlawful alliances are formed. Over and over again, God said that since Israel had entered into covenant with Him, they were not to enter into unholy alliances with pagan nations or it would lead to their destruction. Unlawful marriages also come into the picture. In Exodus 34 and Judges 3, God told Israel that if they married unbelievers, soon their hearts would begin to follow other gods. This is exactly what happened to Solomon. He “held fast to” women who were not believers in Yahweh and ultimately lost his kingdom. Unlawful desires are another indication of a people who have broken covenant. Remember that the children of Israel were not satisfied with the manna and other provisions that God had supplied during their 40 years in the wilderness. This is symbolic of craving the things of the world. Numbers 11:33–34 relates that those who were disappointed and dissatisfied with what God had provided became objects of His wrath. God struck them down and they were buried by those who had obeyed Him. We as Christians still have the desire to flirt with and covet the things of the world. There are some unlawful practices that we find enumerated in the Old Testament. One was astrology and the reading of horoscopes; that is, depending on the stars for their fate. Another was necromancy, the practice of trying to communicate with the dead. Child sacrifices, abortion, and infanticide took the form of sacrificing to the god Moloch and making children pass through the fire. Apostate grandchildren abandoned the faith of their predecessors. Lastly, an unrepentant spirit refused to ask forgiveness for sins.
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9 Disobedience and Restoration There are many Scriptures that list various consequences for disobedience (covenant breaking). Galatians 3:10 states, “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’” In Genesis 17:14, God tells Abraham, “Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” Remember that Abraham had been given circumcision as his covenant. Anyone not submitting to circumcision was cut off from the blessings and the benefits of the covenant because he was revealing a rebellious heart toward God, and God would not tolerate that. The children of Israel were likewise warned by God, “If you reject my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out all my commands and so violate my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will bring on you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and sap your strength. . . . I will punish you for your sins seven times over” (Leviticus 26:15–18). God promised Noah that He would not destroy humanity again in the way that He had done before. But, when mankind became disobedient, God started disciplining them. 69
Disobedience results in discipline, not divorce. Moving from the gentler punishments to the more severe, we begin with grace. GRACE AND DISCIPLINE In The Pleasure of God, John Piper defines grace this way: “The separation of faith and obedience, as though faith were necessary for salvation and obedience were optional, is a mistake owing to a misunderstanding of what faith really is. . . . Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon . . . it is the power to press on in obedience.” God said that He disciplines those He loves. If we respond to His discipline, then we will live. “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?” (Hebrews 12:6–9). Look also in Psalm 78:34–35: “Whenever God slew them, they would seek him; they eagerly turned to him again. They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer.” Unfortunately, most of us have to learn things the hard way. SOWING AND REAPING The author and explorer Isabelle Eberhardt once said, “Oh, if at every moment of our lives we would know the consequences of some of the utterings, thoughts, and deeds that seem so trivial and unimportant at the time!” She is basically referring to the law of sowing and reaping. As Paul said, “Do not be 70
deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” (Galatians 6:7). Here are some other biblical references: Proverbs 1:31 says, “They will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.” And Jeremiah 4:18 adds, “Your own conduct and actions have brought this on you. This is your punishment. How bitter it is! How it pierces to the heart!” Look on your own at Isaiah 3:8–9 and Jeremiah 2:19 for two other examples. Here is what the great theologian John Stott said concerning sowing and reaping: “The seeds we sow are largely thoughts and deeds. Every time we allow our mind to harbor a grudge, nurse a grievance, entertain an impure fantasy, or wallow in self-pity, we are sowing to the flesh. . . . Some Christians sow to the flesh every day and wonder why they do not reap holiness. Holiness is a harvest; whether we reap it or not depends almost entirely on what and where we sow” (The Message of Galatians, part of the Bible Speaks Today series). DEATH Now we come to a consequence of disobedience that is exceedingly heavy. We can be disciplined by death. God had promised that obedience would result in long life. Deuteronomy 5:33 states clearly: “Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you shall possess.” Look also at Psalm 91:14–16: “‘Because he loves me,’ says the Lord, ‘I will rescue him. . . . With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.’” And Proverbs 10:27 gets right to the point: “The fear of the Lord adds length to life, but the years of the wicked are cut short.” Now just think of all the things—including irrational 71
fears—that tend to bring our lives to a premature end. Disobedience decreases both the quantity and the quality of life, as Proverbs 1:32 notes: “For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them.” And later in 8:36: “For he who finds me [wisdom] finds life, and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who sins against me injures himself; all those who hate me love death” (nasb). In Ezekiel 18:32 God simply states: “For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone. . . . Repent and live!” There is a further sobering thought that should shake the very foundation of every believer who accepts what 1 John 5:16 says: “There is a sin leading to death.” And Ecclesiastes 7:17 further warns: “Do not be overwicked, and do not be a fool—why die before your time?” My immediate question is, What is that sin leading to death? Isn’t it interesting that God does not tell us what it is? Why? Because we would go and commit every sin but that one. It is just a part of our human nature. There is such a thing as the premature death of a believer. We must be very sensitive in this conclusion. We cannot presuppose that when a brother or sister appears to have an untimely death that it is the premature death of a disobedient believer. Ultimately, only God knows these things. The Bible clearly tells us, however, that we can die before our time. The ultimate discipline that God brings on us when we do not respond to His warning is death. God is grieved to the degree that He says, “Enough! I’m going to take this person home,” and He takes the life of a believer. There are two biblical examples to mention here. One is Moses, who died while healthy (“his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone”; Deuteronomy 34:5–7). The other is a warning from Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:27–30: “So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an 72
unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. . . . That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 11:27–30). So, a believer can suffer premature death if disobedient to the chastening of the Lord. Again, only God knows when this point is reached. God will also hold us to our covenant vows whether or not we want to be faithful to them. Many of us seem to believe that we can play fast and loose with God while enjoying all the blessings and benefits, never having to worry about reaping the consequences for our disobedience. God, however, will not bless disobedience. It is a basic principle from God’s Word that sin results in forfeiture. When we sin and break our covenant, we lose a great deal of God’s will in our lives. How much time we waste and how many opportunities we lose over disobedience! Sin results in loss. The way of the transgressor is hard. God makes exceptions for no one. Many people think they can beat the odds and play now, repent later. They cannot! GOD’S RESPONSE How does God respond to our unfaithfulness? He remains faithful. Take it from Paul: “What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar” (Romans 3:3–4). And also in 2 Timothy 2:13: “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” Even if we constantly deny who we are in Christ Jesus, Christ remains faithful. God’s love is an everlasting love. Psalm 89:27–34, Isaiah 54:7–8, and Jeremiah 31:3 are all examples. This also means that God neither calls His love back nor changes His mind. 73
There are some things we cannot call back once they have been spoken or done, but God said in Joel 2:25, “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm—my great army that I sent among you.” God can restore anything He wishes in His own time.
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10 A Royal Covenant We have looked at the covenant God established with Abram, thereafter known as the Abrahamic covenant. We saw that the Hebrew word bereeth means to seal a compact by walking between pieces of flesh. The Greek word is diathēkē, and it means a disposition of property from one person who has all the assets to someone else who has nothing but liabilities. This is a beautiful picture of grace. Now, in 1 Samuel 18, we come to the story of David and Jonathan. It gives us some of the most graphic illustrations of cutting a covenant that we have seen so far. When you come to the book of Samuel, you find three primary characters: Saul, David, and Jonathan. SAUL The name Saul means “asked for” (the Israelites repeatedly asked God for a king; see 1 Samuel 8). While he was always asking of God, he never obeyed what he knew God required. How tragic. King Saul was handsome. He stood head and shoulders above all the rest of the Israelites. He was a person who had a great deal going for him. Saul’s problem was that he had an 75
unbelievable propensity toward the flesh and a natural dislike of doing God’s will. At that time in their history, Israel was a theocracy. God was ruling over them through judges and prophets—people like Samuel. But there came a time when the people of Israel no longer desired that kind of government. So, they asked Samuel to appoint a king to rule over them (1 Samuel 8:4–7). God’s response to this request was that the people had rejected Him as their King, not Samuel as their judge. God was not only their God, but also their King, and they were to be His people. But they no longer wanted that kind of operation. They wanted to move from a theocracy to a monarchy. They decided that their way was better than God’s way. They wanted to be like the Philistines, the Moabites, and all the other people around them. God told Samuel to heed the voice of the people and give them what they wanted. They got their choice for a king— Saul—but he was not God’s choice. It eventually led to the downfall of the whole nation. This is a clear example to help us understand that God has a perfect will, a permissive will, and an ultimate will. There is no difference between His perfect will and His ultimate will except time. During the time between His perfect will and His ultimate will, He permits many things to occur that are not His first choice. An example is His allowance to permit Saul to rule, although not His perfect will. Saul was never His choice because he was a man of the flesh, not the Spirit. Saul boldly took over the priestly duties, although God did not appoint him as priest. He also placed his soldiers under a foolish oath of fasting during warfare. It almost cost him the life of his son Jonathan. Still another story was when God instructed Saul to slay the Amalekites and kill everyone. But he kept the best of what God had said to destroy. The flesh always 76
wants to keep the things that God insists we do away with. The flesh does not mind being religious and will even try to set up worship of itself, which is exactly what Saul did. Saul set up a monument to himself and ultimately sought to substitute sacrifices for obedience. Samuel responded with a word of judgment against Saul: “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king” (1 Samuel 15:22–23). God was not interested in Saul’s superficial sacrifices offered as an external cover-up. God wanted heart obedience; Saul had tried to substitute sacrifice for obedience. Saul even killed 85 priests of God out of sheer passion because he did not get his way (1 Samuel 22:6–18). These are but a few instances where Saul acted presumptuously toward God. As a result, God wrenched the kingdom from him and gave it to someone with a different heart. DAVID The name David means “beloved.” David was the opposite of Saul. Just as Saul had a habit of asking for but not obeying God’s will, David had a natural inclination to obey God’s will. David had a heart after God. First Samuel 13:14 records this news to Saul: “But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.” Paul reiterated this leadership transition in his sermon at Antioch: “All this [from Egyptian bondage to the Promised 77
Land] took about 450 years. After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet. Then the people asked for a king, and he gave them Saul son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled forty years. After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do’” (Acts 13:20–22). God took the kingdom from Saul and gave it to a man after His own heart. You will recall how Samuel was sent out to look for Saul’s replacement and he kept looking at external features. He viewed the various sons of Jesse, and several looked like prime candidates to him. But God was not interested in their outward appearance. He was looking at the heart—and He knew which one had a heart like His. God’s choice was David. So, we have two characters thus far: Saul, who is a picture of the flesh, living almost constantly against God, and David, who is a picture of the spiritual man, seeking to live for God. Both of these men were sinners. Both of them needed grace. But one man had a heart toward obedience and was, despite all his fumbling, failing, and falling back into sin, ultimately committed in his heart to do God’s will. A pictorial contrast emerges as we recall that when Samuel told Saul to repent, Saul tried to cover it up. But when David sinned and the prophet Nathan exposed him, David repented. He had a heart after God, and that was what God was looking for. JONATHAN Between Saul, the man of the flesh, and David, the man of the spirit, we have another man who seems totally out of place in this story: Jonathan. The name means “Jehovah has given.” 78
He was King Saul’s son, and yet he was totally different from his father. From all we can conclude in Scripture, Jonathan was also totally different from his brothers and sisters. Whereas they were very much like their father, Jonathan had a very different nature, character, and outlook. Though fully of his father’s house, fully of his father’s humanity, he was a different person altogether. Jonathan can be viewed as a type of Jesus. It is important to understand these characteristic typologies if we are to have proper understanding of this story. Saul is a symbol of the flesh, David is a symbol of the spiritual man, and Jonathan is a picture of Jesus.
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11 Blood Brothers Now that we’ve established the three major characters involved in this specific covenant, we’ll look at four aspects of the covenant in this chapter and four more in the next chapter. PARTNERS During Saul’s lifetime, David and Saul could never walk together; they could never agree. Saul was going in one direction and David was going in another. Saul was dominated by the flesh, and David was motivated by the Spirit. As a result, there was constant enmity and warfare between them. First Samuel 18:1, in contrast, encapsulates the deep friendship between David and Jonathan: “After David had finished talking with Saul, he met Jonathan, the king’s son. There was an immediate bond between them, for Jonathan loved David” (nlt). David and Jonathan walked together. Their hearts were knit together in love, and their souls were as one soul because they had agreed to it. They were partners in a covenant. PASSION I love how the RSV translates this first verse: “The soul of 81
Jonathan was knit to the soul of David.” Notice the word knit. The Hebrew word used here means to tie, physically or mentally. Have you ever tried to take something apart that’s been knitted? In garments made from other types of fabric, you can quickly find a seam, loosen it, and take it apart without destroying the garment. But a garment that has been knit together is virtually impossible to take apart without destroying the whole garment. This word is a beautiful picture of the oneness of the hearts of Jonathan and David. They were totally knit together. The picture of David receiving Jonathan’s love is a picture of our receiving God’s love in Jesus Christ. So, just as the soul of Jonathan was knit together with the soul of David in selfless love, so Jesus loves me as Himself in that same selfless love. God loves us just as He loves His beloved Son. When that truth sets in, perfect love will set you free from fear. This is one of the greatest liberating principles of the Bible. The Living Bible’s paraphrase of this verse is fascinating and is the most accurate I have seen: “David met Jonathan, the king’s son, and there was an immediate bond of love between them. Jonathan swore to be his blood brother.” Now, pay close attention to verse 2: “From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family.” No sooner did Jonathan (considered a type of Christ) get involved than Saul (a type of the flesh) got involved. There is an important lesson here on the role of the flesh. As soon as the heart of Jonathan was knit to the heart of David, Saul stepped in and wanted to control the situation. That is the exact role the flesh always desires—control! Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Our flesh does not want to admit this truth. Rather, it always wants to have its own way. So, the picture forms that as soon as the Spirit through Jonathan began to work in David, the arm 82
of the flesh, King Saul, immediately wanted to get involved and control the situation. PROCEDURE First Samuel 18:3 records the covenant: “And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.” You may never have fully understood verse 3 because you did not fully understand the word covenant. Perhaps you previously thought they just came to some sort of agreement, maybe written, maybe verbal. We know beyond any shadow of a doubt that David and Jonathan cut a covenant together. They swore to be blood brothers. Remember, they cut the animal and then cut themselves and bound themselves together in an unbreakable oath. The basis of the covenant was love. The initiator of the covenant was a type of Jesus Christ. In our case, God is always the initiator. God is always the one seeking us. He called us before we ever knew Him and it is the Lord Jesus, motivated by love, who is always reaching out to us. In Deuteronomy 7:7–8 and several other places, God revealed His reason for choosing Israel. Let’s look at verse 8: “It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” God has done the very same thing for us. For God so loved the world that He cut a covenant with the world through His Son, Jesus Christ (John 3:16). “In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves” (Ephesians 1:5–6). Jesus Christ is the “One he loves” in that verse. The Father said 83
on several occasions in the presence of witnesses that He was well pleased with this One, His Son (see Matthew 3:16–17 for a good example). God the Father and God the Son cut a covenant on our behalf. Because of this covenant, we are accepted in the “One he loves,” or, as the King James Version says, “in the beloved,” which is Jesus. And because of this covenant, God loves you and me as much as He loves Jesus! Most of us live all our lives thinking that God could never really love us that way. But if I am in the Beloved, then God loves me just like He loves Jesus Christ. “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him” (John 14:21). PROVISION Now, on to verse 4 and the provision of clothing and armor: “Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.” Although it might not appear important, the phrase “took off the robe” is significant. It literally means “stripped himself of the robe” and is translated as such in the KJV, RSV, NASB and others. The coat was not just something Jonathan wore. The coat represented his identity. Remember, that was the problem with Joseph and his so-called coat of many colors. It was really a long coat with long sleeves—the kind of coat that only those in authority or royalty or rulers wore. This was the main issue, not the colors. As soon as his brothers saw the robe, they immediately knew that he was set apart by their father, and they envied him. Clothes may not make the man, but to the Hebrews, clothes 84
were the man. Read these verses that use clothes as symbolism. First, Isaiah 61:10: “I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness.” And also Zechariah 3:4: “The angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Take off his filthy clothes.’ Then he said to Joshua, ‘See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.’” What a beautiful illustration! God took Joshua’s filthy garments and said, “I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes” (nasb). This is such a wonderful symbolic picture of God sealing the covenant. Here’s one more illustration of the exchange of clothing. We all know the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. He had been ruining his life in the far country. For a while, he was having a great time. But it didn’t take long until he had spent everything he had. He was up to his ears in corn shucks and pig manure. There was nothing but the stench of the pigpen on him until he finally came to his senses. How tragic that it takes us so long to come to our senses as well! Usually, we do not come to our senses until we are just about to go under in the mire and the muck of our own disobedience. The first thing the father did as the son returned home was instruct his servants to bring the best robe. The son took off the filthy robes and the father put on the royal robes, reestablishing his son as a part of his family. This is pure grace! The son did not deserve it. He deserved to come back only as a lowly slave. But the father reinstated him as a son and as a “co-heir,” as Paul referred to those in Christ in Romans 8:17. God doesn’t leave our filthy garments on us. Atonement doesn’t mean putting clean clothes over filthy undergarments. God takes away the filthy garments through the blood of Jesus 85
Christ. He cleanses, and then He imputes to us the perfect righteousness of His Son. Thus, the Lord has wrapped us in His robe of righteousness. As we’ve mentioned, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). See also Romans 1:17, 3:22, and Ephesians 4:24. There is a very precious verse in Romans: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (13:14 nasb). Do you see the symbolism? And Colossians 3:9–10: “Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.” In both instances, we see this beautiful symbolism of taking off, just as we take off an old, dirty, filthy, soiled coat. We lay it (representing the flesh) aside and we put on the Lord Jesus Christ. We are clothed in His righteousness. All of this is exquisite symbolism of God cutting a covenant with us. In Philippians 2:6–8, Paul said that Jesus Christ even though fully God with all His rights and prerogatives, thought it robbery to be equal to God and did not cling to the rights and prerogatives of God, but laid them aside and became as one of us. He became man and lived among us. He stripped Himself, not of His deity, but of the rights and prerogatives of being God. He took upon Himself our nature, our image, our likeness. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. In John 13, He did that again with His disciples just before His Passion. He stripped Himself of His outer garment, and He girded Himself with a towel. This was covenant action taking place. Jesus was stripping Himself of His rights and authorities and exchanging them for the garments of a servant. Now, back to our main covenant story. Jonathan was 86
clothing the man who was going to take his rightful place on the throne. Jonathan was the heir designate to his father’s throne. This is why Saul hated David and feared him. And so, it was not a flippant, easy thing for Jonathan to do. He was literally putting his robe of royalty on the man who was going to replace him. This was a very costly thing for Jonathan to give up. Not only did they exchange robes, but they also exchanged belts, or girdles. All their armor was attached to this large leather belt, and on that belt hung their saber, sword, or dagger. He gave to David his armor, including his sword, his bow, and his belt. Jonathan had the best armor because the king’s son and successor would have worn it. Similarly, we know that God wants to fight for us. He said to Abraham: “I am your shield” (Genesis 15:1). There are many other verses that reflect this covenant understanding, such as Exodus 15:2, where Moses said, “The Lord is my strength and my defense.” And 2 Samuel 22:33: “It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure.” And David in Psalm 18:2: “The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” What did Paul say in Ephesians 6:11? “Put on the full armor of God.” This really means putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. The only reason we have the privilege of putting on the Lord Jesus Christ is simply because He has cut a covenant with us. See also 2 Corinthians 6:7, 10:4, Romans 13:14, and 1 Thessalonians 5:8. When Jonathan gave David his robe, it meant his salvation and his spiritual security. When he gave David his weapons of war, it meant his strength and safety. 87
12 Between Two Houses We’ve already examined four aspects of the covenant between David and Jonathan. Now let’s look at four more features of this covenant. PROSPERITY David went out wherever Saul sent him. He acted wisely and, as a result, prospered (1 Samuel 18:5). This principle had also been true for the Jewish people: “Carefully follow the terms of this covenant, so that you may prosper in everything you do” (Deuteronomy 29:9; see also Joshua 1:8). Similarly, when we act in wisdom, it results in prosperity, doesn’t it? God is able to prosper us only when we are acting not in the energies of the flesh, but through His wisdom. I recall John’s desire for the recipients of his third letter: “Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2 nasb). There is a spiritual richness that fills our spirits when we appropriate the Lord’s kindness and wisdom to our lives: we have access to “the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). Paul admonishes his readers to “be rich in good deeds” (1 Timothy 6:18) and that 89
they will be “enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God” (2 Corinthians 9:11). PRIORITY As we have seen, when two people had cut a covenant, exchanged coats, and exchanged their weapons of warfare, they also made vows or oaths to each other that nothing would ever separate one from the other. Spiritual bonds are greater than natural bonds! Let us now look at a couple examples. In 1 Samuel 18 and 19, Saul hated David. He had commanded his secret police, his servants, and everybody else to find David so he could kill him (19:1). But Saul had a problem. He knew there was one from his own family who had cut a covenant with David. Saul knew that Jonathan’s loyalty to David was greater than to him, which only further ignited his anger and jealousy. So, he kept pursuing David. Since Jonathan had vowed to lay down his life to save his covenant friend, he told David he would speak to Saul on his behalf (19:2–3). Covenant people were not supposed to have secrets from one another. Jonathan vowed not to withhold any information from David about Saul’s intentions. Time after time, Jonathan looked out for David and hid him from his father’s wrath. In 1 Samuel 20:30, Saul became so angry with his son that his anger burned, and he said to Jonathan, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman!” Jonathan was willing to lose his father’s respect and the throne to protect his covenant partner, even though the throne was rightfully his. Similarly, we are reminded of the cost of following Jesus: “For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a 90
man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:35–37). And in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters— yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” Just a word of explanation here. Jesus was not saying that you are to willfully hate your family. Hate was a comparative word. He was explaining that all relationships must be secondary to your relationship with Him. If a test ever comes between your relationship with Him and your relationship with any other person, your highest priority is your relationship with Jesus. PRIVILEGE First Samuel 20:1–2 records that David had to flee from Saul again. Jonathan vowed to keep David informed. Then he renewed his covenant with David: “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do for you.” So David said, “As for you, show kindness to your servant, for you have brought him into a covenant with you before the Lord” (20:4, 8). (Notice a parallel for you and me from John 14:13–14: “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”) David continued, “If I am guilty, then kill me yourself! Why hand me over to your father?” Jonathan replied, “Never! If I had the least inkling that my father was determined to harm you, wouldn’t I tell you?” (1 Samuel 20:8–9). Then, they went out to once again ratify the covenant that they had made earlier. Pay close attention to the oath they spoke. I’ve already stated that when two people stood between the walls of flesh, 91
they pointed to heaven with one hand and to the wall of flesh with the other and said (my paraphrase), “May God do so to me and more if I break this covenant. I am willing to die for you and nothing, life or death, will cause me to break this covenant.” Here is what happened with David and Jonathan: “If my father intends to harm you, may the Lord deal with Jonathan, be it ever so severely, if I do not let you know and send you away in peace. May the Lord be with you as he has been with my father” (1 Samuel 20:13). He clearly knew that David was going to take the place of privilege and succeed his father on the throne. PERMANENCE We come now to verse 14 and following: “But show me [Jonathan] unfailing kindness like the Lord’s kindness as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family— not even when the Lord has cut off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.” So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord call David’s enemies to account.” And Jonathan had David reaffirm his oath out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself. . . . “Remember, the Lord is witness between you and me forever.” In essence, Jonathan was saying, “David, the Lord will watch between us now that we have sealed this vow. It is for me and you and our houses forever. And the Lord will watch between us, and if either of us ever breaks this covenant, may God do so to us and more.” Jonathan and David made a permanent vow of faithfulness 92
to each other and their families through all generations. We know from the intervening verses that even as this discourse was going on, Saul was planning all the more to kill David (verses 34, 41–42). In the next chapter, we will see a thrilling example of how David maintained his fidelity to the house of Jonathan. It was long after God had used the Philistines to destroy Saul for his disobedience and covenant breaking. Sadly, Saul and his three sons died on the same day. Before this chapter ends, let’s look at Hebrews 2:16–18. It is the story of Jesus coming to cut a covenant with us, exchanging His robes of righteousness and all His weapons of warfare. These beautiful words tell of the One who was born as man. He was not God just playacting. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us: For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. It is not angels He helps. Why? They don’t need any. I do! So, He gives help to the descendants of Abraham. Who are they? “If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). Paul clearly told us that we who believe are the seed of Abraham; we are the seed of promise, we are the children of promise, and we are the children of Sarah. All of us are the descendants of Abraham. As such, we have a precious promise because Jesus has cut a permanent covenant with us. 93
Hebrews 4:15–16 further assures us: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” He took upon Himself our infirmities, our likeness, our full condition, but without sin. He was tested and tempted at all points such as we are. He felt our hurts, our pains, and our struggles. He made available to us His robes of righteousness and all of His strength, so that we may come with confidence and may receive mercy and grace and help in our time of need. What a glorious reality!
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13 The Next Generation We have looked at 1 Samuel 18 and the beautiful covenant that Jonathan cut with David. Now, I want you to see how the covenant was extended through the next generation and to a new person to our story, Mephibosheth. Jonathan told David, “Do not ever cut off your kindness from my family—not even when the Lord has cut off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth” (1 Samuel 20:15). This is crucial. Notice that Jonathan is saying that their covenant was not only between the two of them, but also between their houses. David could never cut off his unfailing kindness from Jonathan’s family—ever. Jonathan made David vow again to seal his commitment so that generations to come would be permanently under the covenant: “About the matter you and I discussed— remember, the Lord is witness between you and me forever” (1 Samuel 20:23). The parallel of this covenant relationship with the one God cut for us is obvious. There is incredible security when we understand the permanency of the covenant God has cut with us. Many people live in tremendous spiritual insecurity, as if the covenant is dependent on their efforts. Some may feel 95
that the benefits are going to run out, or, if one partner fails, it nullifies the whole agreement. Realize the permanency and eternality of God’s covenant with you through Jesus Christ. It is irrevocable. It is as permanent as God, and that fact is our incredibly great security. After all, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So are His promises. After David and Jonathan’s agreement, tragedy struck while Israel and Saul were battling the Philistines. Saul and three of his sons, including Jonathan, died on the same day, leaving David to ascend the throne as Israel’s new king. He subjugated his enemies, peace ruled throughout the land, and God gave him instructions about building the temple. Yet the covenant was still intact. MEPHIBOSHETH On the day that Jonathan, his two brothers, and his father died, a runner brought news from the battlefront to David that they had been killed. You can just imagine the panic and hysteria that erupted in Saul’s palace at this incredible turn of events. The king—and his son, heir to the throne—had fallen in battle! They panicked because they feared what the victor would do to them. Everyone had to flee the palace to avoid being slaughtered by the conquering army, including Jonathan’s five-year-old son, Mephibosheth. His nurse feared that the new king would kill him, so she picked up young Mephibosheth in her arms and fled. As she hurried to leave, he fell and became disabled (2 Samuel 4:4). For the first five years of this little boy’s life, he knew nothing but the luxuries, accoutrements, attentions, and pampering of the palace. He was the grandson of Saul, the son of Jonathan, and one day, perhaps, the king of Israel. 96
He was treated as royalty is always treated. All his needs were met. Everything his little heart could desire he would receive. You can imagine that Saul might have been a doting grandfather who gave this little boy everything he wanted. Now he was suddenly exiled and unable to use his legs. We do not hear anything about young Mephibosheth for a number of years. David had come to the throne, and “the Lord gave David victory wherever he went. David reigned over all Israel, doing what was just and right for all his people” (2 Samuel 8:14–15). Meanwhile, the little boy lived in obscurity in the desert. SAUL’S HEIR David now ruled the kingdom. All the enemies of the people of God were defeated. He administered justice and righteousness, and for the first time there was peace and prosperity in Israel. Seated on his throne, David began to muse over his past life. Years had transpired between the days he and Jonathan had entered into the covenant. Now that the wars were over, David had the luxury of thinking about the past. No doubt every time he washed his hands or put on his royal chains or royal robe, he saw that scar on his wrist that reminded him of the covenant. One day, he asked aloud, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” (2 Samuel 9:1). There is great power in making a covenant, because its permanence propels the partner to follow through on the vow. What did David want to do? He wanted to show kindness for Jonathan’s sake, just as he had promised. God does the same for us. He comes to us and says, “I am showing you kindness, not because of you, not because of anything you are or anything you have done, I am doing it because of Jesus.” 97
The servants of Saul and Jonathan had fled because they had bought into the rumor that if David ever got his chance, their lives wouldn’t be worth a shekel. All had run away except for one. So, the word went out that David was looking for anyone left of the household of Jonathan. A servant of the house of Saul named Ziba was called to David, and the king asked him, “Are you Ziba?” He replied, “At your service.” The king asked, “Is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?” And Ziba said to the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet” (2 Samuel 9:2–3). You can just imagine David sitting on his throne with great alertness. And so David asked Ziba, “Where is he?” Ziba said to him, “He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar” (verse 4). DOWN AND OUT IN LO DEBAR Mephibosheth was lame in body, confused in mind, and confined in a place called Lo Debar. The name Lo Debar means “without pasture.” Lo Debar was a desert place. It was a godforsaken outpost on the backside of nowhere, and that is exactly where Mephibosheth had fled. We do not know how he got there. We do not know if the servants originally took him there or he went there after he had gotten to be a little older. It was an arid wilderness fit only for scorpions and snakes. However, the greatest Lo Debar that Mephibosheth was in was not geographic. The Lo Debar that he was in was probably also a spiritually and emotionally barren place. It was a place where all the envy, bitterness, and hatred he was storing up for David seethed and smoldered. I counsel with a lot of people who are living like they are in Lo Debar, without pasture emotionally or spiritually. Many have been reared on the lies of the world about God, that He 98
is not a good God. He doesn’t want to show us kindness. If we give our life to God, He’s going to take away all the fun, all the enjoyment, all the adventure, and all the excitement. Do we really want that kind of life? So, we banish ourselves into self-imposed exile in our own Lo Debar and live in the fear and lies of Satan. Jesus said that Satan is a liar, and the oldest lie in the universe was the one that Satan told the woman. It was designed to poison her mind about the kindness of God. “Eve, has God said . . . ?” He planted doubt that this was not the kind of God she wanted to serve. He was just taking away all the joy in her life. Man cannot give himself to a God that he does not know, and man will not give himself to a God he fears. Satan will poison our minds with negative lies and untruthful statements about God. So, we flee from God and banish ourselves to Lo Debar to die in resentment. Let’s keep reading and see how God kept the covenant through David. In this story, God sent David to find Saul’s heir. Imagine this with me as I see it in my mind (not as stated in the Bible!). Here Mephibosheth was, in Lo Debar, barely existing. A neighbor came by and said, “I see a cloud of dust rising from the horizon. Someone’s coming!” Fear struck his heart. Suddenly, the chariots of the king arrived and encircled that godforsaken little barren house. Mephibosheth got on his rough-hewn crutches, looked out, and saw that he was completely surrounded with no escape. “It’s finally happened,” he thought. “I knew it would come. I knew my life wasn’t worth anything as long as David was alive. He’s found me; somebody told him, and now he has come to kill me to secure his position.” Mephibosheth was escorted to a chariot and quickly transported back to the palace. Now we come to 2 Samuel 9:6: “When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed 99
down to pay him honor. David said, ‘Mephibosheth!’ ‘At your service,’ he replied.” David really wanted to know if this was the son of Jonathan and grandson of Saul. Mephibosheth had believed so many lies all his life and he knew that at any moment the word was going to come from David for him to be killed. So, Mephibosheth might have thrown his crutches away and fell down prostrate before David, waiting for the word of execution to come. DO NOT FEAR David was motivated by a completely different heart than Mephibosheth. David looked down on Mephibosheth and saw him, perhaps trembling, lying there prostrate on the floor. David told Mephibosheth, “Don’t be afraid, for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan” (2 Samuel 9:7). God’s passion for us, and David’s for Jonathan, are the same: to extend lovingkindness. Why does God always have to say that to us when He comes to us? Because mankind, outside of a covenant relationship with Him, is motivated by fear. In fact, our oldest emotional enemy is fear. We are all afraid. What is the fear that possesses your life? And what did we say earlier was the only antidote to fear? Perfect love casts out fear. The heart of the God who is seated on the throne is not that of anger. Jesus said, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17).
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14 The Covenant Stays Intact Often things happen in our lives that are outside our control. Mephibosheth was a five-year-old little boy when, fleeing from the Philistines, he fell and injured his feet so he could no longer walk. He had no control over the war—but God, in His sovereignty, had allowed for those circumstances to happen in Mephibosheth’s life to show His glory. God is God even over our circumstances. PROVISION God is also a God of Restoration. This is why the Gospel is “Good News.” You see, Satan says that God is going to take away everything. It is true that with sin there always comes forfeiture. There are some things that we can never call back. We cannot call back those years, and we cannot call back those lost opportunities. But God can still bring restoration. David said to Mephibosheth, “I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table” (2 Samuel 9:7). Mephibosheth’s ears probably could not believe what he was hearing. You can imagine him looking with absolute incredulity at David, who was basically saying, “Not only is the estate yours, but you’re 101
going to eat regularly at my table.” David would provide for his every need. Mephibosheth couldn’t believe it. He prostrated himself and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?” (verse 8). This statement is a Hebraism. The Hebrews thought, taught, and wrote in picture concepts, not abstractions as we do. When he used the phrase “dead dog,” what he was really saying was, “I am nothing but garbage.” What do you do with dead dogs? You certainly do not put a gold leash on them. You do not put a jewel-studded collar on them or bring them into the palace. You take a dead dog and you dump its worthless, mangy carcass on the garbage heap. This is what the word literally meant to them. Mephibosheth basically said (my words here), “I am worthless, I am nothing. David, you just do not understand. If you only knew what I have been saying about you; if you only knew the hatred I’ve had in my heart all these years for you. David, you just do not understand. I am unworthy. I am a dead dog. Why, David, are you doing this?” You can just see David leaning over and looking at young Mephibosheth as he said (my paraphrase), “Mephibosheth, I am not doing this because of you, I am doing this because of your daddy. I am doing this because of a covenant promise that your father and I cut with each other and for our households. So, Mephibosheth, it’s not for your sake, it’s for Jonathan’s sake. Because, before you were even born, your father cut a covenant with me, and it included you.” POSTERITY King David then called Saul’s servant Ziba and said to him: “I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. You and your sons and your servants are 102
to farm the land for him and bring in the crops, so that your master’s grandson may be provided for” (2 Samuel 9:9–10). All that belonged to Saul now belonged to his grandson. Similarly, all that belongs to Jesus now belongs to us. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). “You are of Christ, and Christ is of God” (1 Corinthians 3:23). All things are yours. Not because of who you are, but because of Jesus. You see how we have literally become joint heirs for posterity. PERFECTING THE COVENANT Mephibosheth was lame, incapable of cultivating the land and bringing in the produce. So, David assigned the job to Ziba and his sons. The Holy Spirit knows we, too, are incapable of doing anything on our own. So, He comes and cultivates our lives, producing for us what we are incapable of producing for ourselves. Do you think we can produce the fruit of the Spirit on our own? We may be able to produce a counterfeit, but it will not last. Our efforts at love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control cannot last, because they are something we try to produce through the flesh. But, God puts His Holy Spirit, the great Helper, within us. This is why Jesus said to His disciples, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16–17). His Holy Spirit will cultivate within us all of God’s character. I love what David said to Ziba: “Mephibosheth, grandson 103
of your master, will always eat at my table.” The Hebrew is literally translated “eat bread at my table.” It’s that meal where people leisurely reclined and took the time to sit and break bread and fellowship together. “Then Ziba said to the king, ‘Your servant will do whatever my lord the king commands his servant to do.’ So Mephibosheth ate at David table like one of the king’s sons” (2 Samuel 9:11). He didn’t eat there as a servant, slave, or visitor, but as a son. Some of us still have a servant’s mentality. We are just like the prodigal son who came back and said, “I am not worthy.” And it is true, we are not worthy. But, wonder of wonders, He doesn’t send us back out to slop the pigs. He says, “Come here. I have a chair at the table that has been empty all these years. It’s been waiting for you. I want you to eat regularly at My table.” I imagine there were some in David’s household for whom this was a hard pill to swallow. After all, what right did someone from the enemy have to eat at the king’s table? You and I are also here by God’s divine invitation. But we can count on the accuser of the brethren to whisper in our ear too. To see a specific example of this, we’re going to look at a later story found in 2 Samuel 19:24–28. PROTECTION One of David’s sons, Absalom, later tried to take David’s place on the throne. In fear, David stepped aside and went into hiding because he didn’t want to have a direct conflict with his son. At the same time, Mephibosheth had been at the king’s table for a while when his servant, Ziba, became a turncoat. No doubt, Ziba resented what had taken place. In 2 Samuel 16, we see the duplicity of Ziba. He lied to King David, stating that Mephibosheth believed “the Israelites will restore to me 104
my grandfather’s kingdom” (verse 3). So David gave Ziba all that belonged to Mephibosheth. Three chapters later, in 2 Samuel 19:24–27, David finally came back to Jerusalem. Mephibosheth came out to meet the king and had the appearance of someone in mourning, having not washed himself or his clothes. He knew Ziba had deceived both him and David. Mephibosheth wanted David to believe him. After explaining what happened, he said to David, “Do whatever you wish.” What an incredible change in philosophy! Earlier, he had tremendous fear of David. Now, he had tremendous faith in David. “All my grandfather’s descendants deserved nothing but death from my lord the king, but you gave your servant a place among those who eat at your table. So what right do I have to make any more appeals to the king?” (verse 28). When Ziba lied to David, David believed him and said, “You take what Mephibosheth had received through my goodness.” Once he saw Mephibosheth’s humility, he divided the land between the two of them. Verse 30 shows a total change in Mephibosheth when he said to the king, “Let him take everything, now that my lord the king has returned home safely” (verse 30). Mephibosheth realized that his wealth, his source of security and abundance, was not in some land that he had received from his grandfather. His source of everything was a person—David. What a total change! This is what God says to us as well, “All things are yours through Jesus Christ.” MORE PROTECTION There is one final example of the protection that resulted from the covenant between David and Jonathan. Earlier in Israel’s history when Joshua was conquering the land, the Gibeonites 105
came and deceived Joshua. They said, “We have come from a distant country; make a treaty with us” (Joshua 9:6). But, “three days after they made the treaty with the Gibeonites, the Israelites heard that they were neighbors, living near them” (verse 16). Having already cut a covenant, Israel said, “We have given them our oath by the Lord, the God of Israel, and we cannot touch them now” (verse 19). Unfortunately, many years later Saul came to the throne and, in his zeal, he and his sons persecuted the Gibeonites, killing many of them. God had not sent rain for three years, and David knew something was wrong. Somebody had done something to displease God because there was a famine in the land. And so, he sought the Lord, and God said to him, “It is on account of Saul and his blood-stained house; it is because he put the Gibeonites to death” (2 Samuel 21:1). So, David called in the Gibeonites and said, “What shall I do for you?” The Gibeonites said that no amount of money could restore their loss. That is not what they were interested in. The only thing that would restore the covenant was blood for blood. They asked for seven descendants from the household of Saul so they could take their lives for breaking the covenant. And so David said, “I will give them to you” (verse 6). However, “the king spared Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the oath before the Lord between David and Jonathan son of Saul” (2 Samuel 21:7). Jonathan’s son was totally protected because of the covenant. David turned over the other sons of Saul and they were destroyed, but he would not let Mephibosheth be touched. Like Mephibosheth, we are always going to be lame— physically, emotionally, spiritually. Where are you lame? Where do you walk with a dragging, infirmed part of your 106
body—your emotions or your spirit? We are always going to be unworthy, but because of Jesus, we can eat at His table regularly. He who fed the multitudes and turned the water into wine invites us to come and dine. And it’s all because of Jesus and for His sake.
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15 Testing the Covenant Having studied the case of David and Jonathan, let’s now look further at how covenants are tested. The selection of a covenant partner was a serious endeavor. The major characteristic desired was for the potential partner to be faithful under all circumstances. Why? Inevitably, when two people entered into a covenant relationship, a time of testing followed. For this reason, those who chose to enter a covenant relationship had to first count the short- and long-term cost of the relationship. For example, if the covenant was merely between individuals, the effect on each partner would endure for their lifetime. However, if the covenant was between the households of the partners, the long-term relationship and its cascading effects on future generations had to be considered very carefully. God had a twofold reason for testing His people: to reveal to them what was in their hearts, and to reveal to them what is in His heart. Of course, God already knew what was in our hearts, but He also knew that we did not know what was in our own hearts. God is not impressed with our outward appearance. He looks inside us, upon our heart, our innermost being. He knows that we often live in self-deception and fantasize 109
about ourselves. In His wisdom, He has to bring us out of our illusions into a realization of what we really are. When He has revealed to us our own midnight hearts, He drops the diamond-like brilliance of His own heart upon the darkness. The stark contrast vividly shows us just how different His heart is from our own. In Deuteronomy, at the second giving of the Law, God reminded the nation of Israel of the covenant He had provided for them: “Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors [primarily Abraham]. Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands” (Deuteronomy 8:1–2). Even though God provides constant reminders of the covenant He has made for us, we see ourselves over and over again in the children of Israel and their state of spiritual amnesia. We are no different. They forgot the covenant that God had entered into with them, and they had entered into with Him. In the New Testament, we Christians are instructed to remember the new covenant in Jesus’ blood as often as we come to His table. Jesus said we are to do this to remember the covenant He cut for us on the cross. GOD REMEMBERS In Exodus 2 we find the account of the children of Israel in bondage in Egypt. The seed of Abraham, through his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob, about 70 people strong, had gone down to Egypt because of a famine in the land of Canaan. They had been there for several hundred years and had multiplied tremendously. 110
They were God’s people, no longer living in freedom in Egypt, but living as slaves to the Egyptians who feared the Hebrews would side with their enemies and cause their defeat. Therefore, the Egyptian rulers made them slaves. They appointed lords over them and began to oppress the people of God. “The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God” (Exodus 2:23). Is God going to be unconcerned about the plight of His people, or is He going to remember the covenant with Abraham, which He Himself had established hundreds of years before? Watch what is going to be revealed about the heart of God: “God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant” (Exodus 2:24). What does this reveal about the heart of God? God remembers. We forget, but God remembers. And when He heard their groanings, His great heart was stirred as He remembered the covenant that He made with Abraham and reaffirmed with Isaac and Jacob. God saw the sufferings of Israel and God took notice of them. God does not change. Just as He heard their cries and took notice of their plight, so God hears our cries today and He is concerned. He remembers His covenant. As God’s heart is stirred in remembrance, notice that He immediately implemented His plan for the deliverance of His people as He spoke to Moses from the burning bush: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering” (Exodus 3:7). DELIVERANCE It is a great source of comfort to know that when we are in the midst of life’s desert in circumstances or situations that seem unbearable and God seems to have turned His back, He sees 111
and acts on our behalf. “So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). This is the heart of the God we serve. He sees, He hears, and He comes to deliver us from the power of the enslaver. He brings us out of captivity and into a good and spacious place. “And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:9–10). God was put to the test. His people were in bondage and slavery. His people were being oppressed. The question was: Would He be faithful to the covenant He made? Indeed, He would be! God sprang into action on behalf of His covenant people. He sent Moses down to Pharaoh with the message of God: “Let my people go!” When Pharaoh touched God’s people, it was as if he had touched God Himself. These people were the apple of God’s eye, His bride. In God’s covenant heart, these people were not the slaves of Pharaoh, they were His covenant people. When Pharaoh oppressed them, he struck out at God Himself. GOD IS FAITHFUL What we see in this Old Testament illustration is that the heart of God is absolutely faithful to His covenant. As shown in Scripture over and over, God is not only a covenant maker, but He is also a covenant keeper. He alone is able. Our covenant with Him is a diathēkē, meaning He is the greater; we are the lesser. He has the assets; we have the liabilities. He has everything we need, while we have absolutely nothing He needs. He is faithful (Deuteronomy 7:9; Romans 3:3–4; 1 Corinthians 1:9). 112
What a precious promise! He keeps His covenant to a thousand generations. That’s a figurative way of saying infinity! That’s the faithfulness of the God with whom we are in covenant. What great security this is for the life of every believer! As a result of the faithfulness of God, the children of Israel were able to depend upon His promises. He promised to bless them, and He did that. He promised that their wombs would not be barren, their cattle would be very productive, and their crops would be incredibly fruitful. He promised they would have none of the diseases of the surrounding nations. He promised them physical health and prosperity to the degree that they would never have to borrow, but they would always be the lender. And He promised they would have victory in battle. This was a secure promise only because of the identity of the One who made the promise. It was God who was their shield and exceeding great reward, as He had promised Abram. His shield gave them victory in everything they did in warfare, and their exceeding great reward was shown forth in all areas. This is the heart of God. MAN IS UNFAITHFUL Whereas God’s heart is totally faithful, the Bible says that the heart of man is fickle and faithless by its very nature. It is certainly reason to rejoice that the covenant is not based on us! As it says in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” It literally means that the heart of man is incurably ill. It is filled with insanity. “They [mankind] have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:31–32). And Ecclesiastes 9:3: “This 113
is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.” This is the folly of New Year’s resolutions. Our decision to do better next year is utterly futile. When we turn over those new leaves, what we discover is that the leaf is equally rotten on both sides. There is really no such thing as self-help, because the heart of the self is desperately sick. Jesus said the problem is in the heart of man. The heart is filled with sickness because it is incurably ill. It is filled with insanities, and when it erupts, out of it flows the poisonous venom that permeates society. “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person” (Mark 7:21–23). At the time of Christ, the religious people had begun emphasizing the externals of religious behavior. They felt that as long as they were externally good, being careful of what they ate and drank, they were okay. They had to be sure they did not eat unclean things. Jesus declared that it was not what went into someone that defiled them, but it was what came out of them that proved they were defiled. Instead of emphasizing the externals, Jesus boldly scrutinized the internal, the heart. And in so doing, He poignantly revealed the vast difference between the heart of God and the heart of man. It is obvious that there cannot be agreement between two kinds of hearts so blatantly opposite at their very core. This is why when you take two human beings and put them together in a covenant, problems will emerge. They are the kind of problems that we have in our world today—in local, 114
national, and global politics, as well as in marriage and other relationships. Man’s heart is desperately sick. Mankind is inherently incapable of being faithful to anyone or anything. Paul elaborated his own condition: “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (Romans 7:18). Also from Paul, “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:5). After all, what does a sinful human have to offer a holy God? His covenant with us is absolutely humbling to the flesh because we want to believe that we have something to offer. We can see why God brings about a test. He wants to show us what is in our heart by comparing it to what is in His heart, so that we will be driven to trust in His faithfulness as opposed to our faithlessness and our fickleness. Even though we are faithless, He is faithful.
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16 The First Wake-Up Call God is faithful and we are not. What does He use to bring us to a place of personal awareness, to the point of self-revelation and self-understanding? He primarily uses two methods to wake us up. First, God uses the circumstances of life. God is going to use various trials and tribulations that will put pressure on our lives. Then we begin to see how desperately and incurably ill our heart really is. God allows various circumstances to come into our lives to teach us about our fickleness and faithlessness and thus drive us to His faithfulness. LOTS OF DISOBEYING We can see many examples of this in Scripture. Let’s look at Abram for a minute. Why did God not allow him to participate in cutting the covenant, to not allow him to walk through the walls of flesh? Abram had already demonstrated the nature of his commitment. He kept disobeying. Disobedience #1: God had come to him in Genesis 12 and said, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing” (12:1–2). 117
The Bible says Abram left and took Lot! God had not instructed him to take Lot. So, Abram was already off to a bad start by adding to what God had commanded, proving himself faithless and unpredictable. Disobedience #2: God told Abram that if there was a problem, he should look to Him, not at the circumstances. But, when famine came to the land, what did Abram do? He took the first caravan down to Egypt and looked to Egypt as his source. Disobedience #3: Abram knew that he was married to a beautiful lady, Sarai. He also knew that Pharaoh had an eye for the ladies and that his life would not be worth anything once Pharaoh saw his wife. Abram called her aside and said, “Now when we get to Egypt, tell them that you are my sister.” Even though this was a half-truth because they had the same father but different mothers (Genesis 20:12), his intention was to deceive Pharaoh to save his own life, with little regard for Sarai’s. God had said to Abram that anybody who touches you, touches Me. If they curse you, they curse Me. Therefore, I will be your shield and great reward. So, did he trust God to be his protector? No! He immediately failed again in fickleness and faithlessness. This is why, when we get to Genesis 15 and 17, when God got ready to cut the covenant with Abram and began to walk through the walls of flesh, He said (my paraphrase), “Abram, by now you ought to know that you have nothing to offer. You’re as erratic as the weather. You haven’t trusted Me a single time yet. I am going to put you to sleep. This whole covenant is not going to be based on you. It is going to be based on Me. It’s not going to be based on anything you have to offer. It is going to be based on everything I am going to give you. I am the greater; you are the lesser. So, Abram, go to sleep.” God had used circumstances—His command to leave, a famine, and a fear for his life—to reveal to Abram that he had a 118
faithless heart and did not yet trust his covenant partner. Look at the children of Israel. God had said to them that He was going to lead them out and take them to the land that He had promised. They were the very same benefits that He had promised to Abram because they were in the loins of Abram. He would be their shield and great reward. Every time they found themselves in need in the wilderness, what happened? God said if they needed water to strike the rock. If they needed food, He would bring manna. Their clothes would not wear out. He gave them natural air conditioning in the daytime and a natural heating system in the night with a cloud of fire. Everything God promised, He fulfilled. Yet, they were constantly grumbling and looking at their circumstances. Were they trusting God? No. They were constantly murmuring and complaining. So again, He used the circumstances of the wilderness to humble and test them. What about us? We either have a humble heart or we have a prideful heart. A prideful heart says we have something to offer God. He says we don’t. We tell God He needs us with our education, talents, and pedigree. God says He doesn’t. And so, Moses said to the children of Israel, “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands” (Deuteronomy 8:2). But did they do that? No. They were constantly pumping themselves up in pride. They were constantly rebelling against God and all that God was doing. SINCERE BUT WRONG There are also many examples of human unfaithfulness in the New Testament. Look at the disciples prior to Pentecost. In 119
John 11:16, Jesus was getting ready to go over to Bethany. He heard that Lazarus had died, and Mary and Martha had sent for Him. By this time, the Jews were already hostile to Him. The disciples told Jesus He would be killed because the scribes and Pharisees were out to get Him. Jesus said He was going nonetheless, to which Thomas replied, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Thomas was sincere, but you can see how this was coming out of the fickleness of a heart not yet filled with the Holy Spirit. You also remember the situation when Peter told Jesus, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you” (John 13:37). Peter was sincere. Thomas was sincere. They weren’t making idle boasts. But you see, these are the kinds of vain promises that the flesh makes: “God, I promise You I am going to be better this time. God, I am going to be different this year. God, I am never going to do that again. God, I promise You that if You will just give me this one thing, I promise You I am going to be different.” We may be as sincere as we can be (and we often are), but we are just like those disciples before Pentecost. “Lord, we’re ready to die for You,” and then when the test came, they were gone. They all ran away. And, like them, we break the covenant so quickly. God uses circumstances to show us what Paul said in Romans 7. He basically said (my paraphrase), “I may wish it, I may want it, I may desire it, and in my heart of hearts I may be sincere, but the flesh cannot pull it off. It doesn’t matter how sincere I am.”
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17 The Second Wake-Up Call God also brought in the law as a wake-up call. Now this is often a confusing thing because the law came 430 years after the covenant that God had made with Abram. So why, centuries later, did He give the law? Was the Lord saying that the real spiritual zealots come to Him by faith, but the rest can come by the law? If someone obeys the Ten Commandments and fulfills it by their own efforts, can they come to God through the law? Absolutely not! God never nullifies what He says. He did not change the covenant. What was the law designed to do? As Paul said in Galatians, it was like a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. The law was designed to bring us to a new awareness of our desperate need for the covenant. And there is only one way—it is only through faith. God didn’t give ten restrictions, but ten principles of freedom. He was trying to show that it was not external morality or some sort of obedience to works of the law that He was after. If you go through all Ten Commandments, you will probably do all right until the last one. Maybe you can say, “I haven’t committed adultery. I am not guilty of idolatry. I’ve not lied. So far, I’ve not done any of those things.” But then you get down to the last one, “Thou shalt not covet . . .” Covet means to desire. 121
God said that not only did He not want us to do these things, He didn’t want us to desire to do them. Uh-oh. We may not be guilty of killing someone, but, let me tell you, we’ve been guilty of desiring it. This is why Jesus said it was not just the person who had committed adultery in the flesh who broke God’s law. It also included looking on the person and desiring in your heart—coveting. God put coveting last to give interpretation to all the rest. What God was really after was not some sort of conformity to an external religious code, it was to deal with the desires of our hearts. The law was to show us that our hearts are not pure. In fact, what we find ourselves doing is totally in rebellion against the law. The law says “thou shalt”; you and I say “we will not.” The law says “thou shalt not”; we say “watch me, I will.” It says “do not” and we do. It says “do” and we do not. God uses the law as a mirror to show us what the real content of our heart is. And what was the law designed to do? It was to drive us back to the covenant. THE MIRROR One evening we were recording one of my messages. The cameraman looked at me and said, “Did you shave today?” I said, “Yes, I did. I shaved right before I came over here.” I had been studying that afternoon, and when I looked in the mirror, I saw that I had the shadow of a beard—a no-no for filming. The mirror showed me my great need for a razor and shaving cream. It wasn’t so much about the mirror as it was about what the mirror revealed about me. All the mirror did was reveal my condition and what I needed to do about it. It would have been foolish to try and shave the reflection of my beard in the mirror. The law was designed to reveal the condition of my heart, to take me back to the covenant heart of God, and to remind 122
me that it was by faith in what He had done and not by my works. It was not in my outward obedience to the law but in my inward desire to obey. There is great folly when we realize that we cannot keep the law but try all the harder to do so. Yet, as we continue to try and obey outwardly, we add other rules and regulations. By the time Christ came along, not only did the Jews have the original ten principles of freedom, but they also made 2,000 additions to it! Now do you understand why Jesus said to the religious leaders (I’m paraphrasing), “You Pharisees, you are weighing the people down. You’ve missed the whole point of the law. People cannot obey them” (Matthew 23). God did not come along 430 years after the covenant and say He was going to offer a way through works. It is a mirror to show us the great need for Him. And yet, there are scores of Christian churches that are just like the scribes and Pharisees of Christ’s day. They say if you’re really going to be a Christian, you cannot do this and you cannot do that; do not go here or there, do not touch this or that. We have a long list of rules and regulations like modernday Pharisees. If the people of Christ’s day couldn’t obey their laws, do we think that somehow we are more spiritual? Do we think the Holy Spirit was sent to make us able to obey all these other laws and regulations and legalisms? How different all of this is from the gospel of Jesus Christ! God gave the law so that we might be prepared, so that we might see ourselves for who we really are, so that we would quit trying to trust in our works and open ourselves to what He was going to do for us. What was that? God was going to establish a new covenant, and that new covenant was not going to contradict the old covenant because it had the same basis: faith. The difference is we are going to have a new heart because of Jesus Christ. God 123
promised through Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ezekiel 36:26–27). So, God said in Jeremiah 31:31–33 (and again in Hebrews 9 and 10) that there was going to come a day when “I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors after that time . . . I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” Oh, I wish we Christians could learn this! LEGALISM When I was a child, I needed to be under the tutelage of some law. All of us do. But as I began to grow, I did not need to be under the law. Once I was really introduced to Christ, I did not need the schoolmaster anymore. I was now under the tutelage of the King, and I did not need the bondage of law. My parents constantly said to us, “Love God and do what you want to do.” Here is what they meant, because Jesus said over and over again, “If you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15). And in 1 John 5:3, “This is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome.” Because His commandments are not burdensome, I can say with David, “I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8); “I will praise you with an upright heart as I learn your righteous laws” (Psalm 119:7); and “Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors” (Psalm 119:24). They are principles of liberty, not principles of bondage. I can prove my love for Him by obeying His law that is in the new heart He put within me. 124
I went to a legalistic college for my undergraduate degree. As soon as we signed in as freshmen, we were given a rulebook— page after page after page of regulations. We got demerits for every one of those regulations that we broke. It took 50 demerits to get expelled, and I usually kept 49 to 49½ because I tended to be a little bit rebellious. I am not necessarily proud of that, but the point is this: rules and regulations do not make you a Christian. The problem with legalism, rules, and regulations is that I would invariably find myself in a situation where I would get the rulebook and I couldn’t find a rule that would fit. Now what do I do? I would panic because I did not have a rule. God doesn’t want us to live like this. God said He will write these things through His Spirit on our hearts and minds. The Spirit will teach us and guide us in every circumstance, showing us exactly what we are supposed to do. Sure, we’re going to miss it sometimes, but ultimately this brings us to maturity, no longer under an external code. It has now been written upon our hearts and our minds and the Holy Spirit is working within us. This is what Paul said in Philippians 2:13: “It is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” Isn’t this great? He is at work within you both to will and to act. Paul also said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do . . . I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing . . . What a wretched man I am!” (Romans 7:15–24). But, when we receive the new heart and the new spirit, God is at work in us not only to will but to do. As Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5:24, “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” 125
For years I lived my Christian life under the delusion that God called me, and then I had to do everything else. Many of us have been there, haven’t we? God called me and then in the energies of the flesh I had to go out and do it. How successful was I? About as successful as most of you. We just continue to fail and fail and fail. As long as we are trying to do it in our own power, we are going to be just like the children of Israel. God is bringing us this new covenant with a new heart. There is such a great contrast between the old and new covenant. As an old song said, “‘Do this and live’ the law demands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. A better way is what grace does bring. It bids me fly, and gives me wings.” This is what He does for us.
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18 Ultimate Covenant Faithfulness We have looked at examples of God’s faithfulness and our fickleness. Now, let’s look at an example in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament of someone who practiced the principle of covenant—not trusting in their efforts, but trusting in the faithfulness of God. ABRAHAM AND ISAAC When two people had cut a covenant, they were willing to lay down their lives for each other. They were willing to go even one step further. They were willing to give up that which was even more precious than their own life, and that was the life of their only or firstborn son. Abraham and Isaac are the greatest example of this in the Old Testament. God told Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you” (Genesis 22:2). The New Testament retelling of this event is found in Hebrews 11:17–19: “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God 127
had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.” There are two very important points to remember. First, Abram had waited two and a half decades for God to fulfill His promise and bring him a seed. God then tested Abraham when Isaac was grown! Many artistic renditions picture Isaac as a little boy. That is not true at all. “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac.” This is the first mention of love in the Old Testament. Isn’t it appropriate that the very first mention of love in the Bible is the mention of a father’s love for his only begotten son! Abram had waited, he had pleaded, and he had begged God for a seed. God gave him a son, and Abraham began to love Isaac more than he loved God. Remember, once two people had entered into a covenant, no other relationship could take preeminence over it. The covenant relationship was to eclipse all others. Somewhere along the line, the relationship Abraham had with Isaac had become idolatrous, and God was now going to test him. Abraham was beginning to worship Isaac rather than God. “Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you’” (Genesis 22:3–5). Notice already the faith of Abraham. He said they would go and worship and then return. “Abraham took the wood 128
for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, ‘Father?’ ‘Yes, my son?’ Abraham replied. ‘The fire and wood are here,’ Isaac said, ‘but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’” (verses 6–7). All of this was a prelude to what the Father did to His beloved Son. In Abraham’s hand, the symbol of death was the knife, and the symbol of judgment was the fire. There was perfect agreement between the father and the son. In God’s hand, the symbol of death and judgment was the cross. There was perfect agreement between the Father and the Son. Notice the very precious love relationship in both instances: “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering? . . . Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (verses 7–8). With God and Jesus, there was perfect agreement between the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Son before the foundations of the world that redemption was going to take place—not on Mt. Moriah, as it was with Abraham and Isaac, but on Mt. Calvary. “When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood” (Genesis 22:9). I want you to understand that this was not child sacrifice. I used to read this as a young boy and interpret it as child sacrifice like that which was practiced in other pagan religions. No, God forbid that! Isaac was a young man, probably strong enough to overpower his father. He had total trust in his father. So, Isaac allowed his father to bind him. Remember what Jesus said in John 10:18: “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This 129
command I received from my Father.” This is exactly what Isaac did. Isaac so totally trusted his father that he allowed himself to be bound and placed on the altar. Abraham stretched out his hand and took his knife to kill his son. And we know what happened next. God stopped Abraham: “Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son’” (Genesis 22:10–12). Abraham believed that even if God allowed him to slay his son, God would bring him back (Hebrews 11:19). Why? Because God had made a promise when the covenant was cut that he would have a son and many descendants from him. Abraham knew that if God required him to take the life of his only son Isaac, God would raise him up again. JESUS Jesus is our greatest and most preeminent example of what the life of faith is all about, the life of absolute trust. He is our example of One who was sacrificed and was raised up from the dead. We look to Jesus as the supreme covenant-maker. He always and perfectly followed the will of the Father. “Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased.’ Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, O God’” (Hebrews 10:5–7). Jesus said that the only reason He came into the world was to do His Father’s will. The Father is not interested in burnt 130
offerings. He’s not interested in sacrifice, because it can be a cover-up for a disobedient heart, as it was in the life of Saul. In John 4:34, Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” And later in chapter 5, “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (verse 30). And then in 6:38, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.” This is why Jesus could say in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” He lived a life of perfect obedience from the heart and therefore He fulfilled the law for us. He became the end of the law for us, that through Him we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus submitted His body, His desires, and His will to God the faithful Father. That is why Jesus said “a body you prepared for me.” What’s the purpose of the body, our bodies? Through our bodies God might be able to get 100 percent productivity. Our bodies are His temple, and so they are going to be a place for Him to manifest Himself. You and I are going to live in total dependence on Him. I pray that we would be those kinds of living sacrifices for the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 12:1).
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Conclusion You and I have a choice if we have put our faith in Christ. We’ve entered into a covenant with Him through salvation. As a result, God offers us the chance to either let Him fight our battles by the Spirit or go out on our own in the energy of the flesh. Every time we fight in the energy of the flesh, we lose and come crawling back to God with the scars of defeat. We must also make sure that the battles we’re fighting are God’s battles. New Christians are eager to pull out the sword, doing havoc a lot of times because they do not know the difference between God’s battles and the world’s battles. They do not know the difference between fighting in the flesh and fighting in the Spirit. When we are in a covenant relationship, when we are resting in God, then my enemies are His enemies, and He will fight the battle for us. We have the choice to go out in our own energies and in our own name and in our own flesh and be defeated. Or we can rest in the name of the Lord, appropriating all He is, putting on the whole armor of God and allowing God’s infinite strength to fight our battles for us. WINGS LIKE EAGLES What does Isaiah 40:31 say about relying on God’s strength? “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They 133
will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” Have you ever seen an eagle? I was at the beach and saw a bunch of seagulls and pelicans flying. They flapped their wings as hard as they could, landed and rested a bit, then took off again, flapping their wings. It was exhausting just watching them! An eagle doesn’t fly like this. An eagle is able to find the thermal updrafts and fly higher than any other bird. He is an example of not putting effort in the energies of the flesh. This is what many of us do as Christians every Sunday. We try to get a little more birdseed so we can flap a little harder the rest of the week. We need to find God’s thermal updraft and just ride! We have cut a covenant with a God who has inexhaustible strength. He is everlastingly strong. A great exchange has taken place: my weakness for His strength, my inability for His all-ability. Paul said that if we go out in the weakness of our flesh, it’s just going to be one defeat after another. But God told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore Paul said, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10). This is covenant. We will allow the great exchange to take place if we will recognize our weaknesses and not try to cover them up, run away from them, or excuse them. If we recognize our weaknesses, our recognition gives His strength a great opportunity to be manifested. When we are exhausted, utterly spent, and have nothing left, what are we going to do? Are we going to quit? Are we going to become depressed? Are we going to moan “woe is me”? Or, are we going to say, “Lord Jesus, I am at the end of my rope. 134
My strength has been absolutely spent. I am exhausted. I can’t go any further, but thank You that You aren’t tired at all. My weakness gives You an opportunity now to magnify Yourself and Your inexhaustible strength through me. I appropriate my covenant privilege with You, and I exchange my weakness for Your great strength.” EMBRACE THE COVENANT Throughout this study, we have looked at the meaning and significance of covenant. We have seen, in great detail, everything that was involved in a covenant relationship between God and mankind. Now it is up to you to accept the terms of God’s covenant. It is time for you to put your faith and confidence in the Lord, if you have not done so already, and believe that He will do all that He has promised. Think about yourself and your relationship with God. Have you actually entered into this covenant relationship by exchanging all that you are, or ever hope to be, for all that He is? Remember, God willfully and lovingly offers you an irrevocable agreement. He, as the superior Person with all the resources and wealth, has chosen to dispose of His property to you. It is a one-sided contract because He has everything to give. You have no righteousness of your own; it is only through Christ’s death on the cross. The enormity of such an offer almost stretches the mind beyond belief. But it’s true! “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1). God set aside all of our vain attempts to make ourselves righteous, because they are counterfeit currency before a holy and righteous God. He imputed righteousness to us on the basis of what someone else—the Lord Jesus Christ—had done 135
for us. As a result, we have been made heirs alongside Jesus Christ. If God has made us heirs, imagine the richness of our inheritance through Jesus Christ! The richest people are paupers compared to what we have been made: “joint heirs with Jesus Christ.” God gave us, who were totally unworthy and had nothing to offer Him, a diathēkē, a disposition of property. We could neither merit it nor earn it. So, boldly and confidently lay hold of this covenant from the Lord’s hand, offered to you right now. He who promised you will be faithful to fulfill it (Hebrews 10:23). Today is your day and now is your time! It is not complicated. I will leave you with one more promise God gave to Israel that we should also proclaim and embrace: “Lord, the God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven or on earth—you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way” (2 Chronicles 6:14).
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The
Blood Covenant
The concept of covenant is critical to understanding, embracing, and living out our calling as God’s people. Old Testament covenants pointed forward to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and His blood inaugurated a new covenant of grace and redemption for all humankind. This study of biblical covenants focuses on the most solemn of covenants we can enter: the blood covenant. You will gain insight into the practices, symbolism, and benefits of covenant-keeping, including: • Revelation—understanding the Bible more deeply than ever before • Redemption—seeing God’s saving power at work in history • Righteousness—receiving blessings we could not possibly earn • Relationships—experiencing fellowship with other believers and with God • Responsibility—realizing the glorious opportunity we have to serve Christ May this journey through Scripture encourage and motivate you to a deeper relationship with the One who gave Himself for you!
About the
Author J.L. wanted his readers to be challenged to deepen their walk with the Lord and expand their Christian worldview. At the time of his death in 2016, he regularly corresponded with over 60 international leaders in 18 countries. He and his wife, Patt, were married for 52 years (plus one day!) and have 4 married children and 12 grandchildren.