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THE NEW COVENANT RATIFIED
“He is
not here; for He is risen, as He said,
Come, see the
place where the Lord lay”
(Matthew
28:6).
Before that glorious
blessed-hope-of-all-the-ages
proclamation could be made, Jesus had
to die and be buried.
It all began long ago in a place
call “Garden of Eden.”
The exquisitely beautiful world God
had created was
inhabited by more of His creation—Adam
and Eve.
Theirs was a
Paradise perfected for their enjoyment
and God’s pleasure.
The invasion of evil brought drastic
changes. Satan’s lies
led to the disobedience of Adam and Eve and their expulsion
from the
lovely Garden; but not before God had
begun
to reveal His ultimate plan for their
redemption
and restoration.
“And I will put enmity between you and
the woman, and
between your seed and
her Seed; He shall bruise your head
and
you shall bruise His heel”
(Genesis 3:15).
This was pronounced
to Satan by God.
A fatal “head” wound was his future.
Move ahead with me to Genesis 15.
Here we find Abram whom
God had called
out from among his kindred and
homeland to a new
place of promise.
Many things have taken place since the
expulsion of Adam and Eve from
Paradise, but God has
not for
one moment forgotten his
redemption plan. God came to Abram
in
a vision with the comforting words,
“Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your
shield, your exceeding great reward”
(Genesis 15:1).
God, using parabolic
imagery which would have been familiar
to
Abram, began to unveil His
prophetic blood covenant which
would
bind Abram and all of us to Himself
forever.
Abram would have been familiar with
the custom of his day
of “cutting a
covenant,” and he would have
recognized this
unfolding scene—
Two men have decided to cut a
covenant. They have chosen
a meeting
place and time. (Many other
symbolisms would have
been included
besides the ones here. I have chosen
a few to
show the parabolic base.)
These are some of the things the
friends who have decided to bind
themselves together in a
blood
covenant would have done:
Exchanged weapons
– This was saying, “Your battle is
mine.
I will protect you and fight
for you. Your enemies are my
enemies.
You will never face them
alone.”
Exchanged clothing
– Each said to the other, “What I have
is yours.
I own nothing that you
can’t have. Whatever you need that I
have is yours.”
Innocent animals were slain—The
animal or animals would have
been
slain and divided, each piece placed
on opposite sides. The covenanters
would have walked through and around
the animals
in a figure eight while
stating blessings for keeping the
covenant
they were making and curses
if they should break it.
Exchanged parts of their names—each
would have taken a
part of the other’s
name.
Exchanged bread/covenant meal
– Each would have given
the other his
piece of bread, thus saying, “I will
share with you
what I have for
sustenance. I will never let you go
hungry or
be needy.” They would have
shared a covenant meal.
A look at the incidents in Genesis 15
will indicate that God was
using this
pattern, with which Abram was
familiar, to cut a covenant
with him.
In the first verse, God told Abram “I
am your shield.”
He was saying, “You
need not fear. I will protect you
with my shield. You can give Me your
inadequate protection and I will give
you
Mine which will take care of
you.” Verses 9-10 record the dividing
of the animals, but an awesome thing
happened at this point!
Normally the
covenanters would both go through the
animals
indicating that they would
receive either blessings or curses and
penalties depending on whether they
faithfully kept the covenant.
These
were lifetime covenants and could not
be broken. If broken, curses and
penalties would follow the one guilty
the rest of his life.
Look at what God did at this point!
He caused Abram to fall into
a deep
sleep and God Himself went between the
cut animals—alone! (Verse 17) as a
“smoking oven and a burning torch”
thus saying,
“Abram, you may break the
covenant but I will hold Myself
responsible for your unfaithfulness.
All the penalties and the curse
will
rest upon Me. I will pay for your
unfaithfulness rather than
place the
penalty on you.” God knew Abram could
not keep the
covenant perfectly and
would fail as would all his
posterity.
How Gracious! How
Merciful! God would pay the penalty
for Abram’s failure!
God has always pursued man, desiring
intimate relations; and
from the
beginning, man has walked away from
the covenant.
Man is the destroying
factor in the covenant; God is the
faithful, restorative partner in it,
always upholding His end, never
wavering nor breaking the covenant.
If maintenance of the
covenant
depended on us, it would be hopelessly
broken. But
our faithful God has
never, nor will He ever fail on His
part. If
He should fail, then a new
covenant would have to be cut; but
He
has only one plan for man’s
redemption. It will not fail—ever!
Let’s move on to Genesis 17:2. God is
reminding Abram of
the covenant. “And
I will make My covenant [notice it is
God’s covenant] between Me and you…”
God is ready to give Abram
part of His
name: “No longer shall your name be
called Abram,
but your name shall be
Abraham…” (Genesis 17:5) From
Jehovah,
God added “h” and changed
Abram to Abraham. “As for Sarai
your
wife, you shall not call her name
Sarai, but Sarah shall be
her name”
(Genesis
17:15). The “h” from God’s name is
added
to Sarai’s who will now be known
as Sarah. We are in a name
exchange
with God Who has cut covenant with us
through
Jesus Christ. “…To him who
overcomes I will give him a
white
stone, and on the stone a new name
written which no one
knows except him
who receives it” (Revelation 2:17).
James alluded to this when he wrote
“Do they not blaspheme
that noble name
by which you are called” (2:7).
Come with me now to
Calvary. An innocent
man is dying; His
life substituted for
ours, just as God prophetically took
the penalty
in His
covenant-demonstration to Abraham.
Just as God knew
that Abraham could
not keep the covenant nor pay the
penalty
for breaking it, He knew that
we could not be good enough to be
in
unbroken covenant relationship with
Him and were under penalty
for
breaking it. Jesus hung there clothed
with all of our spotted
garments of
brokenness, failures and sin, paying
the penalty for
every time we broke covenant. In
exchange, He gave us His robe
of righteousness and purity not
available to us by any other means
or any other source.
His Word tells us that the battle is
His, therefore He will supply
the
amour and arsenal we need to fight in
His war. We surrender
our feeble
weapons of self-sufficiency and
self-righteousness
in exchange for His
protection and victorious means.
Jesus told the querying Jews, “I am
the bread of life. He who
comes to Me
shall never hunger, and he who
believes in Me
shall never thirst”
(John 6:35). At
the last Passover Jesus ate
with His
disciples, He broke bread and shared
it with them,
representing His body
soon to be broken for them and us. He
shared wine with them which
represented His blood soon to be
dripping from His body hanging on the
cross for their cleansing
and ours.
Remember, Paul said when we kept that
sacred meal
we refer to as “The Lord’s
Supper” or
Sacrament we were
“proclaiming
the Lord’s death” (1 Corinthians
11:26). This was reminiscent of
Jesus’ words to His disciples at their
last Seder meal together. “This is My
body which is given for you; do this
in remembrance of Me…This cup is the
new covenant
[emphasis
mine] in My blood, which is shed for
you”
(Luke 22:19-20). His body and
His blood. A covenant meal
to which
we could bring nothing worthy to be
accepted. It was
served by Jesus to
them and now offered to us. All we
have to
do is accept it and give ours
to Him. “I beseech you therefore,
brethren, by the mercies of God, that
you present your bodies
a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
which is your reasonable service”
(Romans 12:1). It is an uneven
exchange in our favor!
Then he added in Revelation 2:7,
“To him who overcomes, I will give to
eat from the tree
of life [covenant
meal].”
At Calvary, on
the cross, Jesus fulfilled and
ratified the
covenant God had
initiated and executed symbolically in
the blood
covenant
cut between
Himself and Abraham. Jesus paid the
penalty for every time we broke
covenant with Him, every
time we
walked away leaving Him alone to hold
up the covenant.
God will never break
the covenant nor be unfaithful to
uphold it.
It is securely in His
care. He will be there maintaining
the
covenant when we come back to
Him. The penalty for
breaking it has
been paid for all time for everyone.
Jesus told his followers that they
must “eat My flesh and drink
My blood”
(John 6:53-58)
in order to have life. When animal
sacrifices were made, the blood was
not to be eaten, but poured
out on
altars. The life is in the blood so
spilled blood of the animal sacrifices
represented death (vicariously, the
death of the one
offering the
sacrifice). Jesus is our sacrifice
and His blood was
spilled, but it
brought life, not death. So eating
His flesh and
drinking His blood
represented His life, not His death.
Being
in covenant with Jesus,
accepting the blood He shed and the
life He gave brings us life. He
overcame death, so His
blood
represents life—eternal life—for
us—with Him.
The covenant has been instituted,
ratified, and secured eternally.
But
it would not have been complete if the
verse we began with,
“He is not here;
for He is risen, as He said,” were not
part of it.
A dead person can no
longer be part of a covenant. If
Jesus
had not risen from the dead, He
could not have held and
maintained the
covenant. It would have been
irretrievably
broken and the awful
penalty would have fallen upon us
without remedy.
But now we have—not death, but
life—
eternal life, living in us
through Christ who is our life.
“…As long as we have the slightest
idea we can achieve holiness
on our
own, we’re still living under the Old
Covenant’s ministration
of death.
God’s whole idea behind implementing
this [new]
covenant is to send us to
our death…It has put me on my
face—empty, helpless, wounded,
weak—and now it can fade
away. I’m
fully persuaded I cannot by human
strength and will
obey or please God.
..All I can do now is cry, Abba,
Father…
God said to his people, ‘I’m
going to make a new covenant
with
you—a new agreement. It won’t be like
the old one
that I made with your
fathers. This covenant will be
better,
because it will be based on
better promises.’
“
(See Hebrews 8:8-9)
From “The New Covenant Unveiled” by
David Wilkerson.
“And this is the testimony; that God
has given us eternal life,
and
this
life is in His Son
[emphasis mine)” (1 John
5:11).
“I have been crucified with Christ; it
is no longer I who live,
but Christ
lives in me…” (Galatians 2:20).
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he
is a new creation;
old things have
passed away; behold, all things have
become new” (2 Corinthians
5:17).
Rejoice! The covenant is alive and
well and its Initiator, Creator
and
Keeper sees us as worthy
participants. The empty tomb
is the
star witness to the eternal covenant
and the Holy Spirit
came and confirmed
our inclusion.
“He’s not here”—He’s there – at the
right hand of God,
maintaining the
covenant He ratified and keeping us
securely in the covenant. What we
received for what we gave is
“Heavenly”!
Delores Adams
Copyrighted. All rights reserved.
March 8, 2004
Alice's
Legacy
Remembering Alice
The
"Handkerchief" has been anointed and
prayed over by
several believers who care about you
and want to help you
realize your full potential in Christ
Jesus Our Lord.
~The
Ten Commandments~
New
Covenant Ratified Notebook
 
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