It’s been a bit of a break, but I’d like to finish out the discussion on covenants. The first two parts were on unconditional covenants. This post will cover conditional covenants, one in particular.
Just a quick definition:

• Unconditional covenants are made from God to man with no terms. These are promises given by God that can’t be negated by anything man does. Examples we covered are the Abrahamic and Land Covenants.
• Conditional covenants, on the other hand, depend a great deal on our willingness to step up and meet those conditions. There are examples all through the bible and I’ll cover a few later, but the main one is the promise of salvation.

So, what exactly is this covenant? In short, it is way in which we can go to Heaven. Easily said, but what does that mean? What is Heaven? Are we all just going to sit around playing harps like in the movies? Why would I want to do something for eternity that I don’t want to do now? How boring is that? It’s sad to look at our world and see how the media has sculpted our beliefs. I’m not talking about violent, slasher or sex films. Those are easy to dismiss as “bad”. The biggest problem is the films and tv programs that seem to be religious in nature that, by trying not to offend anyone, give the viewer a skewed idea of what life, death and salvation is really all about. Even “The Passion Of The Christ”, which I really liked, never explains what the reason behind all that suffering really was. TV programs have portrayed friendly angels helping people in times of need, but never explain man’s greatest need. The best way to destroy your enemy’s credibility is to pretend you are one of them.
If we were to base our beliefs on what we’ve seen in the media then we don’t really need any “saving”. After all, good people go to Heaven and bad people go to hell, don’t they? If that’s all there is to it, then hell would be pretty empty. Even the worst of us will tell ourselves that we’re really a good person. After all, isn’t hell just for murderers and rapists? (Enough of my opinionated ranting, back to the subject)
The subject of hell is too big a subject to cover here, maybe I’ll do another post on it later. But let me say this, hell was not created to punish man. It was created as a prison for Lucifer and his followers (angels that fell with him). Unfortunately, if you aren’t spending eternity in the presense of God, there is nowhere else for you.

So, what does it mean to be in the presense of God and how do we get there?

I don’t think we really have a firm grasp on what it means to stand in the presence of God. The Bible paints an amazing picture of just what that means. Look a Psalm 68, especially at verse 2.

Psalm 68 (New King James Version)

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. A Song.
1 Let God arise,
Let His enemies be scattered;
Let those also who hate Him flee before Him.
2 As smoke is driven away,
So drive them away;
As wax melts before the fire,
So let the wicked perish at the presence of God.
3 But let the righteous be glad;
Let them rejoice before God;
Yes, let them rejoice exceedingly.

Notice it didn’t say God did anything to “melt” the wicked other than just being there. Psalm 68 shows that the earth, itself, is effected by His presence.

Psalm 68 (New King James Version)

7 O God, when You went out before Your people,
When You marched through the wilderness,  Selah
8 The earth shook;
The heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God;
Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel.

Psalm 5 (New King James Version)

4 For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness,
Nor shall evil dwell with You.
5 The boastful shall not stand in Your sight;
You hate all workers of iniquity.

Psalm 5 says that even the boastful can’t stand in front of Him.

What I see from the descriptions in the Bible is a being so powerful, so pure and so righteous that nothing can stand to even be in His presence without self-destructing, unless… that person is as pure and righteous as God, Himself.
But, according to Jesus in the sermon on the mount, that’s not possible. The law said that it was a sin to kill. Jesus said that if you hate you have committed an equally serious sin. I think I can be pretty safe in assuming that if ANYONE looked at the list Jesus gave us, and was honest with himself, that nobody could ever claim to be righteous enough to stand in the presence of God.

Matthew 5 (New King James Version)

20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

In Matthew 5 Jesus doesn’t say “as righteous as”. He says that unless your righteousness exceeds the Pharisees…

The Pharisees were obsessive in the way they followed every single nuance in the law that Moses passed to them. And, yet, Jesus says they will “by no means enter the kingdom of heaven”.
So, bottom line is… No matter what you do, no matter how good you are, there is absolutely no possible way that any of us could survive standing in the presence of God. Except one.

Enter the Covenant

I don’t have time to go into what it meant when Jesus went to the cross. After all, 95% of the Bible talks about just that. Forget for a moment the whole issue of original sin. Forget about Adam and Eve. These are important parts of the price paid on the cross, but just for now put those issues aside and think about yourself. Unless you are as pure and righteous as God, Himself, there is no way you can stand in His presence.
So how do you become as righteous as God? I don’t know about you (although I bet I could guess) but there’s no way I could.

The righteousness of God had to be given to man. He couldn’t become righteous enough on his own. Here are just a few verses that show that the righteousness of God is given to man through Jesus Christ.

Philippians 3 (New King James Version)

8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith

2 Corinthians 5 (New King James Version)

20 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Matthew 6 (New King James Version)

33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness

So what does that mean? Man is able to stand in the presence of God because he is made as righteous and pure as God through Jesus. This is not just a New Testament idea. There are many places in the Old Testament, but Isaiah is especially clear. Notice the wedding reference.

Isaiah 61 (New King James Version)

10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, My soul shall be joyful in my God; For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Okay, so righteousness is transferred to man from God. This makes it possible for man to enter Heaven and live in the presence of God. But there’s a catch. Remember, this is a “conditional” Covenant. That means there must be something WE have to do be able to receive God’s righteousness. We’ve already seen that no matter how hard we try, there’s no way we can make ourselves clean enough through our own thoughts and actions. What kind of impossible hurdle has God put in front of us to earn His righteousness?

Romans 10 (New King James Version)

8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”[a](that is, the word of faith which we preach): 9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

It’s as “simple” as that. Believe it and speak it. I put “simple” in quotes, because this is the hard part. You have to actually believe. But it all comes down to believe it and speak it. The most impossible feat since the creation of the universe is accomplished by believing and speaking. But the key is the believing part. You can say it all you want, but if you don’t believe it, it’s meaningless.

Randy Reed Bible Covenants, Faith

Then second unconditional Covenant I want to talk about is the Covenant for the Land. This is called, by many people, the Palestinian Covenant, however this is a bit misleading. The area wasn’t called Palestine until the Romans gave it that name in defiance of the Jewish people that lived there. They named it after their enemies, the Philistines, in an effort to irritate the Hebrew population.

This Covenant goes back to Abram (later called Abraham) and the day the Lord made the first Covenant with him.

Genesis 15 (New King James Version)

¹⁷ And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. ¹⁸ On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying:
“To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates— ¹⁹ the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, ²⁰ the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, ²¹ the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”

Although this covenant was made the same day and followed immediately after the first covenant, it is entirely separate. This, by no means, means that it was any less binding than the Covenant that promised Abraham that his descendants would be as the stars in the heavens. Notice that verse 18 says:

“… the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying:”

This was not just an idle promise. It was a covenant with the same strength and binding power as the first. Notice, also, that there were no conditions set on this Covenant. Abraham had to do nothing to earn it and, therefore, could do nothing to lose it.

Here is a map of the area promised:

Map of the Promised Land. This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.

This land remained unclaimed by the rightful owners until Joshua led the Hebrew nation out of the wilderness across the River Jordan. The twelve tribes divided the land up and each settled in a different area.

The Division of the Land by the Twelve Tribes.

Throughout the history of the Bible these borders changed, but this is the original layout of the settlements. In

70 AD the Romans decimated Jerusalem and most inhabitants fled the area. This was the beginning of the Dispersia. For nearly 2000 years the Jewish nation lived in various parts of the world, although a small contingent remained in Israel. It’s amazing to think that the culture was preserved without a homeland. I don’t think any other culture can make the same claim. When a group is scattered the culture will decline as it is absorbed into the existing culture it finds itself. However, the Jewish culture survived and in May of 1949 they were reunited in the land promised to them by God.

Since 1949 there have been several attempts to drive the people from their land, but all have been complete failures. God’s people are home and will remain there until they recognize their Messiah and He returns.

I’ll cover more and talk about modern Israel and their role in the last days in my next post.

Randy

admin Bible Covenants, History Of The Text Abraham, Covenant, Palestinian Covenant, Philistines

The Jewish Bible, or Tanakh, contains four main unconditional covenants that the Lord made with His people.

• The Abrahamic Covenant      Genesis 12

• The Land Covenant                 Genesis 15

• The Davidic Covenant            2 Samuel 7

• The Everlasting Covenant     Jeremiah 31:31

I’m going to approach each one of these in a separate post over the next few days, but first, let me talk about the idea of a covenant. We, as a culture, don’t really have a clue as to what a covenant means. The level of commitment is an alien concept. We live in a world where marriage is no more that a temporary arraignment, like going steady. Where “borrowing” money means it never has to be paid back and a legal contract is more of a guideline.
This has not always been the case. There was a time when a person could give his, or her, word and it was binding, never to be broken. The idea of breaking that word couldn’t even be considered.
I heard a great example of what a covenant meant. In some ancient cultures a situation would arise where a village of farmers was at the mercy of bands of marauders. They couldn’t defend themselves against outlaws that would descend on them killing and stealing. A neighboring village might be a culture of warriors. They were powerful and proud, but they couldn’t feed themselves.
A covenant between the two villages worked to the benefit of both. The warriors defended the farmers and the farmers fed the warriors. But the strength of the covenant was the most important part. A warrior would die defending a single farmer before he would allow any harm to come to the person he protected. Likewise, a farmer would starve to death before one of the warriors went hungry.
It is in this light we should look at the covenants the Lord has made with us. He has made a covenant, a vow, with us and given His Word. Did you get that? He gave His Word. When we refer to the Bible as His Word we should understand that it’s not a collection of words. It’s His WORD, His promise, His Covenant that CANNOT be broken.

The Abrahamic Covenant

The first Covenant I want to talk about is the Abrahamic Covenant. This Covenant, from Genesis 12, was made between God and Abraham. It actually is in two parts, one about Abraham’s descendants and the other concerning the land. It’s the first part we’ll look at here.

Genesis 12 (New King James Version)

1 Now the LORD had said to Abram:

“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
2 I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
In this promise God told Abraham, then called Abram, that he would be the beginning of a great nation.

Genesis 15

5 Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
When this happened, Abraham had no children. Yet, God told him that his descendants would be counted like the stars.

There were no conditions made on this promise. There was nothing Abraham had to do in order to get God to make good on His promise. Many years later, when Abraham had a son, God told him to take his son to a certain place and sacrifice him to the Lord. Many commentaries have made a lot out of the idea that Abraham loved God enough to sacrifice his only son to Him.
I have never liked this account in the Bible. Besides sounding incredibly cruel, I was led to believe that Abraham had little concern for his own son. But if you look closer the story is really completely different. Abrahan already had a promise from God that his descendants would be numbered like the stars. This couldn’t happen unless his only child, Isaac, grew up and had children. But now, God tells him to kill Isaac. Abraham knew that God would not, and could not, break His Word. There was only two ways this could play out.

1.    God would prevent him from killing Isaac.
2.    God would raise Isaac from the dead.

Either way, Isaac would live on. It’s interesting to note that Isaac asked his father where the sacrifice was. They had everything they needed, except the lamb.

Genesis 22

8 And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.”

I don’t believe Abraham was trying to throw his son off by lying to him. I think he knew that the event would foreshadow the lamb that God would provide as a sacrifice for us.
Abraham knew that for God to make a promise and break it would be contrary to the very character of God. He would cease to be God.

How many times have we come across promises God made in the Bible and passed them off as being for a different time, a different people? There are some incredible promises in the Bible, but they don’t fit in with our world view so we deny that they could actually be for us. It never occurs that maybe it’s our world view that’s the problem, not the promises of God.
There are several unconditional covenants in the Bible. These promises will come to pass no matter what people do. Most, however, are conditional. But the most incredible covenants only have one condition. You have to believe the promise. This is the condition attached to the most incredible promise of all… salvation.
There are many others that we ignore that deal with the quality of life here on the earth. But the one that really counts is the one that gets ridiculed the most. It somehow makes sense that the world would do it’s best to minimize the most important covenant of all.

I’ll talk about the second unconditional Covenant, The Covenant of the Land, in my next post. Until then, I pray that none of us takes the Word of God lightly. That is what He meant by “taking it in vane”.

Randy

admin Bible Covenants