2011-10-28
Good Morning Treasured Ones,
We continue with the Our Covenant messages, this time, as last, about how “Covenant Is Universal.” Last week the Holy Spirit directed me to write about author, Andrew Murray’s, theories about why covenants are made. He suggests they end uncertainty, give a statement of services to be rendered, give a bond of amity (good will), and act as a ground for confidence and friendship. And then, there is the covenant of unspeakable value, the Covenant of Grace, into which every true believer enters with God. Now, I am led to return to H. Clay Trumbull’s The Blood Covenant, which gives an overview of the rite of blood covenanting.
The act of establishing a covenant is indeed universal to every culture. That is because every culture is born with a God-consciousness. RO 1: 18-20, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-His eternal power and living nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” This paragraph of long sentences here is vitally important for us to understand. Two factors actually lead all cultures to recognize God, even if He is known by different names. First, we are all born with a consciousness of something or Someone greater than ourselves Who brings everything to be. He is Who we call God. Secondly, every human is born with the ability to perceive what God has created. I’ve often used the example of Helen Keller, a lady who lived without sight, speech, or hearing. Most of us know the story of how a teacher, Anne Sullivan, put Helen’s hand under a stream of water from a pump and, with God’s help, taught the young Helen to recognize it as something different that other things around her. With the help of vibrations from her speech, Anne showed Helen each thing had it’s own word. And thus began an intellectual and eventually, a spiritual explosion of talent Helen had for writing about the things around her- things which she never saw or heard in her life! When you read the beautiful descriptions in Helen’s books, which she wrote later in her life using Braille, and then having it translated, this magnificent heart, which could have been lost had it not been for God’s will, was unleashed from its bonds for our edification.
Getting back to Trumbull’s points, blood covenants are a way for mankind to satisfy their yearning for this Greater Power, this Creator. Each culture has expressed this yearning in one way or another. Obviously, the sinful nature of some people has led them to sway others away from the truth of the Creator toward worshipping what is created, rather than the Creator Himself [RO 1: 23]. That’s how paganism got its start, and how it branched out to such abominations as Baal worship in the early days surrounding Israel. It’s how religions that worship many gods spread all over the world, and it prompted God to want to call a unique man, Abram, out of Ur of the Chaldeas [what is modern day southeastern Iraq], leading him on a laborious path to what was then Canaan [modern day Israel]. God would establish Judaism through Abram, whom He later called Abraham by adding the first letter of His own name to the end of Abram’s. Abraham was a man of God, created for the purpose of starting a line of people who would be separated from all others by their belief in the One and Only God, Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob [monotheism]. And yes, it would also lead to the establishment of the royal line of David, the Jewish lineage out of which our Lord, Jesus Christ [Yeshua] would arise [2 SAM 7: 12-13; IS 11: 1]. Most of the rules for living that God set up for the Jewish people were designed in one way or another to prevent this unique group of people, the Jews, from tainting their culture and beliefs with the idolatry of paganism, especially polytheism [the belief in many gods]. Idolatry of any kind is the sin which God detests most of all.
The customs connected with covenant-making are learned from God, not just man. The Noahtic covenant made sometime around 2400 BC is an example. GN 6: 3, 18, “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years…But I will establish My covenant with you, and you will enter the ark-you and your sons and your wife and your son’s wives with you.” We can feel through these words Who is in charge, Who sets the limits and practices. Now look at GN 9: 4-6, “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man” [GN 1: 27]. If we look hard into this passage, we can see the establishment of Kosher [Kashrut] practices of not eating meat with the blood still in it, and thus the Kosher method of butchering meat. We can also see the notion, repeated in LV 17: 11 and again in HE 9: 22, that the life of a person is in the blood [LV 7: 22-27; LV 11: 1-47]. Even more germane to what is being said is the establishment by God of consequences for the taking of another’s life. Later in the book of Leviticus and other places in the OT, God outlines situations, each with its own specific consequence for accidental versus premeditated taking of the life of another [LV 19: 18; RO 12: 19-20; LV 27: 29; NU 35: 6-7; IS 20: 7-8, 19, 21-27; DT 19: 12]. It is a code of law being established. This, then, would be the establishment of laws that would eventually evolve into human government and into the sending of a Kinsman-Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, Whose life would one day be sacrificed for the opportunity to save mankind from sure spiritual death and eternal destruction. Essentially, this is the record of the first covenants, ones made by God, not man.
PRAYER: O Lord, not one jot or tittle of what is in Your word is wasteful, unrighteous, in it by accident, or unnecessary. You are doing what Christ described in JN 15: 13-15. “Greater love has no one but this, that he lay down his life for his 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 call you friends, for everything that I learned from My Father I have made known to you.” We bow our heads in reverence to You, and we say, “Thank You Father, for loving us enough to give us Your teaching and a way out of certain destruction by faith in Your Son, Jesus Christ. He is our Savior and Messiah. You gave over His physical life to the cross, so that He would be a Propitiation for our sins, thus giving us a way to salvation, the gift of Your Spirit to dwell in us, eternal forgiveness, and justification in Your sight [JN 3: 16: RO 3: 24-25; 1 JN 1: 9; RO 4: 3]. Today, we have spent time in the OT, so that we could begin to understand the importance of making covenants with You throughout our history. We see that the historical making and keeping of covenants with You is indeed the way to eternal life. The greatest of these is our present covenant, the Covenant of Grace. We thank and praise You for being here to guide us through our earthly lives and give us a way to return to an eternal life of bliss and fellowship with You. This prayer is offered up in the holy/mighty name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: We continue at the behest of the Holy Spirit to delve into the “Freedom That Comes By Truth,” the next segment in this Our Covenant series of messages. In the meanwhile, we need to recognize the love that undergirds everything we can observe about our God and from our God. His forgiveness of a believer’s sin is eternal, i.e. it goes on forever. Any committed sin can be confessed before Him, and He will forgive it, if it is not against the Holy Spirit, heinous, or repeated. That’s real freedom, like a huge weight lifted off the shoulders of the confessor. As we learned with what God directed Paul to say to the Antinomians of his time, we are not given grace without license. This means that we are held accountable to our living lives “in Christ.” The regulations for such a life bring blessing, not misery. God’s perspective on our eventual physical deaths or those of believing loved ones is so hopeful and different than what a serial rejecter of Christ can anticipate [2 COR 4: 18; 1 PET 1: 4, 6]. We who believe have chosen heaven and eternal life over conscious torment from which there is no escape [hell; gehenna in Hebrew]. Our lives will be filled with challenges and trials, but through Christ, there will be limits placed on them, and we will be given a way out [1 COR 10: 13; RO 7: 24-25; REV 12: 12]. We are truly blessed when we repent and have faith, then actively live “in Christ.” Praise and thanks be to God!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15