It is
vital that every believer understand the truth about covenant.
Kay Arthur calls the truth of
covenant the "crimson
thread" that God's Spirit
has woven in His Word from Genesis to Revelation.
Larry Richards writes that
"The notion of a covenant is
unfamiliar today. But the concept of covenant is utterly basic to our
understanding of Scripture. In Old Testament times this complex concept was
the foundation of social order and social relations, and it was particularly
the foundation for an understanding of humanity's relationship with God." (Richards, L: Expository Dictionary) (Bolding Added)
Dennis Rainey a well known
Christian family life speaker writes that
"For the past two years I have had a
growing concern that the Christian community has passively watched the
"dumbing down" of the marriage covenant. Marriage has become little
more than an upgraded social contract between two people—not a holy
covenant between a man and a woman and their God for a lifetime. In
the Old Testament days a
covenant
was the most sacred and solemn of
pledges. When two people entered into a
covenant
with one another, a goat or lamb
would be slain and its carcass would be cut in half. With the two halves
separated and lying on the ground, the two people who had formed the
covenant would solemnize their promise by walking between the two halves
saying, "May God do so to me [cut me in half] if I ever break this
covenant with you and God!" You get the feeling that a covenant in those
days had just a little more substance than today." (from
The Covenant of Marriage) (Bolding and links added)
Jack Hayford writes that
covenant...
"is one of the most theologically
important words in all of scripture, appearing more than 250 times in the
Old Testament....In Genesis 17:7, we see the greatest statement of
the Abrahamic covenant. This is the foundation of Israel’s eternal
relationship with God. All other Bible promises are based on this
covenant God made with Abraham." (Hayford, J. W., & Bauer, R. H. The
Spirit-Filled Family: Holy Wisdom to Build Happy Homes. Nashville:
Thomas Nelson) (Bolding Added)
Andrew Murray writes that
"One of the words of Scripture, which
is almost going out of fashion, is the word 'Covenant'. There was a
time when it was the keynote of the theology and the Christian life of
strong and holy men. We know how deep in Scotland it entered into the
national life and thought. It made mighty men, to whom God, and His promise
and power were wonderfully real. It will be found still to bring strength
and purpose to those who will take the trouble to bring all their life under
control of the inspiring assurance that they are living in covenant
with a God who has sworn faithfully to fulfill in them every promise He has
given." (Two
Covenants)
Murray adds that men made
covenants, because they understood the there were advantages such...
As an end of
enmity or uncertainty,
as a statement of services and benefits to be rendered,
as a security for their certain performance,
as a bond of amity and goodwill,
as a ground for perfect confidence and friendship,
So valuable and so solemn was the
truth of covenant, that the ancients
would cut the covenant with the spillage of blood! (cp Lu 22:20)
In a frequently quoted verse, the Lord
Jesus Christ said
to those Jews who had believed
Him, 'If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine and you
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:31, 32)
Applying the principle inherent in
Jesus' teaching to our study of God's covenant, if you make a sincere effort to understand
covenant,
you will come to know the truth about this great divine transaction and this
"truth will set you free". How so?
Andrew Murray writes that...
"Covenant was above all to give man a hold upon God as the Covenant-keeping
God, to link him to God Himself in expectation and hope, to bring him to
make God Himself Alone the portion and the strength of His soul."
He goes on to add
I feel confident that if I can lead any to listen to what God has to say to
them of His Covenant, and to deal with Him as a Covenant God, it will
bring them strength and joy. (Two
Covenants)
Kay Arthur adds that
by the grace of God's Spirit
(you will) experience...a security you have never known, as you realize
that everything God does is based on covenant. Your discoveries will unlock
a very old truth-a truth once understood, valued, and lived by in the
Semitic world of the Bible. It is a truth that will forever change your
understanding of God and what it means to be His child." She goes
on to add that "Once you understand and embrace the reality that God is a
God of covenant, you will experience a peace, a strength, a security you
have never known. The Word of God will take on a whole new dimension -
delighting you with wonder as you explore the height, the depth, the breadth
of what it means to be in covenant with God. The words lovingkindness and
friend will take on new meaning and become so precious as you identify them
as covenant terms. You will never read the Bible the same way again. For
covenant takes the veil off the truth. Freedom from bondage will come as you
comprehend - from the perspective of covenant-the relationship of law to
grace. Peace will invade your soul, opening the gate into His pleasant green
pastures of rest as you explore the everlasting love that keeps and guards
you-and never abandons you." Study of covenant will uncover "buried
treasures that, once unearthed, will reveal to us our rich heritage as the
people of a Covenant God....(Covenant) the missing piece to the
puzzle of God's Word will slip into place, and your eyes will sparkle with
delight as you get the full picture ... the picture of our Covenant God
Whom
you can trust so explicitly." (Arthur, Kay:
Our Covenant God)
(Bolding added)
In
Psalm 105:1 the psalmist exhorts us to
give thanks to the LORD, call upon His name (and) make known His deeds among
the peoples.
Spurgeon Comments:
O give thanks unto the Lord. Jehovah is the author of all our
benefits, therefore let him have all our gratitude.
Call upon his name, or call him by his name; proclaim his titles and
fill the world with his renown.
Make known his deeds among the people, or among the nations. Let the
heathen hear of our God, that they may forsake their idols and learn to
worship him. The removal of the ark was a fit occasion for proclaiming aloud
the glories of the Great King, and for publishing to all mankind the
greatness of his doings, for it had a history in connection with the nations
which it was well for them to remember with reverence. The rest of the psalm
is a sermon, of which these first verses constitute the text.
Beloved, let me share a personal experience that will
make known His deeds, the benefits and blessings that await you as you
learn the truth
about God's covenant.
Approximately 10 years
ago my marriage of 25 years was in serious jeopardy. My wife and I were
unbelievers when we married but by our 25th year of married life we had by
grace through faith both become born again believers (during our 15th year
of marriage). But as
I stated, our marriage was in deep trouble. My wife, a committed believer,
told me one day that she no longer had any feelings of love for me. I was
shocked, stunned, hurt, frustrated and ready to dissolve our covenant vows
(see topic The
Covenant of Marriage). We were both "doctrinally" opposed to
divorce and yet that option was clearly knocking on the door of our minds
(cp Phil 4:8, see
note).
We agreed to see a Christian counselor, but were disappointed when he failed
to utilize the living, active, sharp sword of the Word of God to pierce into
our innermost spirits and to discern the evil thoughts and intentions of our
hearts (cf Heb 4:12, 13 - see note
Heb 4:12;
4:13) About that same time, a
friend of ours had begun leading a study on God's Covenant, Precept
Ministries International's most popular course worldwide. (Click
to see lesson 1 of Precept course on covenant).
My wife began to study the Precept course on
Covenant
in a morning class and I took the same course made available in the evening
class. I cannot remember the exact sequence of events, but I can state
without any reservation that God's Spirit took the truth (cp Jn 17:17) that we were both
beginning to learn about God's covenant and He convicted us (cf 2Ti 3:16, Pr
6:23) and literally set us both free from our deceived, distorted thinking about the significance
and solemnity
of our
marriage
covenant. What was the result? We immediately terminated our
sessions with the
Christian counselor and God used the remaining 6-8 weeks of the Precept
study to completely revive our marriage and restore (cp Ps 19:7, see
Spurgeon's Note) the years that the locusts
("the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust,
and the gnawing locust") had eaten (cp Joel 2:25).
I love the
psalmist's words describing sinful Israel (but applicable to sinful
believers) in which he records that
Then (Click
Psalm 107 and read the
context to understand
what happened before "then", always an important
expression of time
to note and
interrogate) they cried out to the LORD in their
trouble (Hebrew = sar = refers to a narrow space and
figuratively describes a person’s pain and distress; oppression, a feeling
of being hemmed in - this is how we both felt in our
marriage
covenant) He saved (Hebrew = yasa = conveys
the idea of bringing to a place of safety or broad pasture as opposed to a
narrow strait, symbolic of distress and danger) them out of
their distresses. He sent (Hebrew = salah = describes God’s sending forth in
a providential manner or purpose) His Word and healed (Rapha = describes the
process of healing, being restored to health, made usable) them, and delivered
(Hebrew = malat = rescue; LXX =
rhuomai [word study]
= rescued from great peril) them from their destructions (Hebrew = pit,
pitfalls; LXX = diaphthora = decay [decay aptly describes what was happening
to our marriage covenant], ruin [which is the direction our marriage was
headed]). (Psalm 107:19-20)
Spurgeon's Comment He sent his word and healed them. Man is not
healed by medicine alone, but by the word which proceedeth out of the mouth
of God is man restored from going down to the grave. A word will do it, a
word has done it thousands of times. They escape though dangers had
surrounded them, dangers many and deadly. The word of the Lord has a
great delivering power; He has but to speak and the armies of death flee
in an instant. Sin sick souls should remember the power of the Word, and be
much in hearing it and meditating upon it. Spiritually considered, these
verses describe a sin sick soul: foolish but yet aroused to a sense of
guilt, it refuses comfort from any and every quarter, and a lethargy of
despair utterly paralyses it. To its own apprehension nothing remains but
utter destruction in many forms: the gates of death stand open before it,
and it is, in its own apprehension, hurried in that direction. Then is the
soul driven to cry in the bitterness of its grief unto the Lord, and Christ,
the eternal Word, comes with healing power in the direst extremity, saving
to the uttermost.
The same expression occurs in Psalms
147:15,18; compare Isaiah 55:11. We detect in such passages the first
glimmering of St. John's doctrine of the agency of the personal Word. The
Word by which the heavens were made, Psalms 33:6, is seen to be not merely
the expression of God's will, but his messenger mediating between himself
and his creatures. It is interesting to compare with this the language of
Elihu in the parallel passage of Job 33:23, where what is here ascribed to
the agency of the Word is ascribed to that of the "mediating angel, or
messenger." --J.J. Stewart Perowne.
His word who healed them was his
essential Word, even the second person in the Godhead, our Lord Jesus
Christ, the word who was made flesh and dwelt among us: of this divine Word
it was foretold in the Old Testament, that he should arise with the glory of
the morning sun, bringing healing in his wings for all our maladies; and
accordingly the New Testament relates, that Jesus went about all Galilee,
preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing ALL manner of sickness, and
ALL manner of disease among the people. He healed the bodily disease
miraculously, to prove that he was the Almighty Physician of the soul. And
it is remarkable that he never rejected any person who applied to him for an
outward cure, to demonstrate to us, that he would never cast out any person
who should apply to him for a spiritual cure. --William Romaine. (See
Spurgeon's complete notes on
Verse 19,
Verse 20)
What healed them? His Word
of Truth (Col 1:5 -
see note, 2Ti 2:15
-
see note,
James 1:18 -
see note).
His Word of life (1Jo 1:1, cp Phil 2:16, see note
Php 2:16). In a similar manner,
Jehovah Rapha (Rophe) (see study),
the God Who heals (Exodus 15:26), used the study of Covenant to literally "heal" our marriage and
to make it "useful" to Him (cp 2Ti 2:21 - see
note). Shortly after Covenant
had rejuvenated our marriage (Covenant of Marriage), we both became involved in leading Precept
classes to equip saints for the work of service, a work within which we
have co-labored for over 10 years since we first encountered the life
transforming truth about God's Covenant.
A favorite
reply of one of my old medical school professors
when I would answer "I don't know" the truth about some disease, diagnosis or
treatment, was...
"YOU CAN'T NOT KNOW"!
His point was that as a medical doctor,
patient's lives depended on my knowing the
truth and acting or making decisions based upon that truth. And beloved, I can say without any hesitation, you too "can't not know" the life changing truth about God's
Covenant! (cp Jesus' words John 8:36)
As I alluded to above, my wife and I went on to lead others in the Precept
study of Covenant. Our experience was to see one person after another be set
free by the truth of Covenant. One young man, who had been deeply hurt by
someone, was wrestling with bitterness and unforgiveness and had tried
numerous "Christian remedies" to no avail. I will never forget the day he
came to me after one of our Covenant lessons and shared how his realization
that God was obligated to be his Defender because of Covenant (cf Ro 12:18 -
see
note)
and how God's Spirit used this great truth to completely heal him of his lingering
unforgiveness and set him free so that he was able to press on and utilize
his spiritual gift of teaching other saints, a role he has pursued with passion and
excellence for over 10 years since the truth of covenant "set him
free."
So I encourage you to drink deeply from the fountain of truth known as God's
Covenant. If you come with a tender heart that "trembles at His Word"
(Isaiah 66:2) and a teachable spirit that seeks not just to hear but
to do (obey, cf James 1:21-22, 23-24, 25 - see notes
Ja 1:21;
22;
23;
24;
25),
you will not be disappointed at the transformation wrought by God's Spirit
using God's Word of Truth regarding His Covenant (cf 2 Cor 3:18). You may be surprised to find that the truths
expounded in this study of Covenant are not widely known by believers,
including even many in conservative, evangelical circles.
David records that..
The
secret
(sweet fellowship, intimacy, friendship, secret counsel) of the LORD
is for those who (reverentially)
fear Him,
And He will make them
know (intimately, experientially) His
covenant. My eyes are continually toward the LORD, for He will pluck my feet out of the net.
(Psalm 25:14-15)
Spurgeon comments: The secret
of the Lord is with them that fear him. Some read it "the friendship:"
it signifies familiar intercourse, confidential intimacy, and select
fellowship. This is a great secret. Carnal minds cannot guess what is
intended by it, and even believers cannot explain it in words, for it must
be felt to be known. The higher spiritual life is necessarily a path which
the eagle's eye hath not known, and which the lion's whelp has not
travelled; neither natural wisdom nor strength can force a door into this
inner chamber. Saints have the key of heaven's hieroglyphics; they can
unriddle celestial enigmas. They are initiated into the fellowship of the
skies; they have heard words which it is not possible for them to repeat to
their fellows.
And he will shew them his covenant.
Its antiquity, security, righteousness, fulness, graciousness and
excellence, shall be revealed to their hearts and understandings, and above
all, their own part in it shall be sealed to their souls by the witness of
the Holy Spirit. The designs of love which the Lord has to his people in the
covenant of grace, he has been pleased to show to believers in the Book of
Inspiration, and by his Spirit he leads us into the mystery, even the hidden
mystery of redemption. He who does not know the meaning of this verse, will
never learn it from a commentary; let him look to the cross, for the secret
lies there. (See Spurgeon's notes -
Verse 14;
Verse 15)
Beloved, do you desire a greater level of intimacy with the Almighty?
Then remember that...
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge...
(Pr 1:7, cp John 17:3)
