LESSON TWO THE PURPOSE OF COVENANT
Table of Contents LESSON TWO: THE PURPOSE OF COVENANT ............................. 2
The Purpose of Covenant ............................................................... 6
Components of Covenant .............................................................. 12
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LESSON TWO: THE PURPOSE OF COVENANT We are studying about God’s covenant and this lesson will teach us the purpose of covenant. We begin at Jeremiah 32:40: “And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.” Once you are in a covenant, you stay in that covenant or you die. It is just that simple; you are either in or out. God says that he has made an everlasting covenant with them, that He will not turn away from them. This statement is directed towards us. Do you realize that God has covenanted to do you good? That is exciting! God has covenanted an everlasting covenant to do you good. He said, “I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me.” That is part of His will. All that God has ever done for His people in making a covenant, is always to bring them to Himself. We are talking about the purpose of covenant, so all that God has done for us, His people, in the Old and New Testament was always to bring us to Himself. He is our chief good, our only good. He teaches us to trust Him, to rely on Him, to be one with Him. 2
In the Lord’s prayer, He states, John 17:11, “And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me that they may be one, as we are.” This is the Lord’s prayer and He is speaking about us. “I come to thee holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me.” Now, take a close look at this as it is covenant language; that they may be one, as we are. We are going to talk more about covenant language in the next lesson, but this is just an example of Jesus speaking covenant talk here. This is the purpose of covenant, to be one with HIM, God almighty. God instituted it, orchestrated it and planned it; we didn’t. This is the purpose of covenant, for God to bring mankind into one with Himself. In entering into covenant with us, God’s own objective is to draw us to Himself. So, the primary purpose of covenant is to draw you and I to God. To render us entirely dependent upon Himself, bringing us into a right position. The position in which He can fill us with Himself, His love, and blessings. That's good news! When God created man in the beginning, Adam and Eve, He made him in the image of Himself, to be like Him; God-like in every way. In Genesis. 1:26-28 God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion (authority) over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, 3
and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” In whose image was man made? God’s image, the trinity, and he gave dominion, that is authority here, to rule and reign “…over everything that creepeth upon the surface of the earth…” This was to be accomplished by God living and working in man and he (man) yielding himself one hundred percent to a loving God. When man sinned, this relationship was broken; we all know the story of Adam and Eve. Man no longer trusted God, but in fact feared Him and could not save himself from this terrible predicament. And as such, God had to do it. Man blew it but God came to pick up the pieces and fix it. I don’t believe it caught God off guard when Adam sinned. Before He created Adam, He knew Adam would fall, because God knows everything. He had already made the plan to bring about the new creation through this. The new creation was the ultimate aim God purposed from the beginning. To have people that will have complete fellowship, dependence, and love for Him, with unreserved, unbiased and unflinching submission. That is the Church, the real Church. Not the denomination, not the name, but the actual church itself. Just as man willingly betrayed God, he must be brought to the place where he will once again choose God. He chose to give up on God during temptation. Now, he must be brought once again to a point where he will choose God. Not that he will be made to worship God as a robot, but in fact choose Him. To choose here means to yield his 4
willing consent to the will of God, and once again entrust himself to God. There is but one way to this, to get man to believe in God. What one believes governs his entire life. You are a product of what you believe, thus God’s desire is for man to exercise faith in His salvation, His grace. God restoring the life man had lost. Man, in faith yielding himself to God’s word and His will. The first great work of God was to get mankind to believe. Mark 9:23 Jesus said unto him, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” How many things? All things. How many things are excluded? Nothing. Jesus said that, because that was the challenge to God to get man to believe in His grace, His salvation, His love, His redemption. The one thing sought to be awakened in men, by promise and consequence, by mercy and judgment, was faith. In other words, God was seeking to awaken in mankind, (we are talking about covenant here), by promise, which is a condition of the covenant, and consequence which is another, by mercy, and merciful in judgment. The reason for this was to induce faith, to bring up people that will believe in Him, that will see Him, and realise that He is God. So, where He found faith, He can do anything. That’s pretty outstanding. Unbelief, being the root of all disobedience, makes it impossible for God to do His work. You can relate that to your life. You can have symptoms come up in your body, and you can choose to exercise your faith in a loving, merciful and caring God, who knows all, and has healed your body and delivered you according to the word. Or you can choose to believe the symptoms just like Adam ate the fruit. You 5
can choose to believe the symptoms which put you in unbelief of God’s word and then you stop the hand of God from having His perfect will accomplished in your life. I am just trying to share this so you can understand it in your everyday life. It’s not just healing, or your finances, or your relationship with other people, we are talking about everything. One of the ways God’s grace may be utilized to strengthen and stir up faith, is the covenant. In other words, the main benefit of grace is to strengthen and stir faith by the covenant.
The Purpose of Covenant 1. Covenant is always a revelation of His purposes, holding out
indefinite promises that God is willing to work in those with whom the covenant was made. In other words, there are promises and there are consequences. The divine pattern of the work God was intending to do on their behalf, that they might know what to expect, even though, as yet unseen, that their faith may be strengthened. Let’s break that down a little bit more. God’s covenant is a revelation of His purpose, what He is going to do, what He is doing. So, by holding out the promise of this, the word is the promise. What He is willing to work, what He is willing to do in some covenant partners life, then a pattern is 6
established. Something substantial is seen here, from the unseen, we see what the word of God says. It says, “By His stripes we are healed”. What God is intending to do on your behalf, so that you and I might know what to expect from God, in other words, His Covenant. “I don’t understand why God doesn’t do this. Is it the will of God to do this?” all these phrases come from people who don’t understand c-ovenant, and they don’t understand God. Even though it is yet unseen, the bible says, “I am healed” I don’t see that am I healed in the natural, if sickness is attacking my body. But when I hold on to the covenant promise of God, then I see that turn around and my faith is strengthened. That is Romans 4:17 manifested “As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations, before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were”. This is the way God operates, calling those things which be not as though they were, this is the definition of faith. Hebrews 11: 1 also defines faith and goes hand in hand with it.
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2. The covenant was meant to be a security and guarantee that the
very thing which God has promised to His covenant people will surely be brought to pass. 3. The covenant is to be the anchor of the soul, pledging the divine
veracity, faithfulness and un-changeableness for the certain performance of what has been promised. Anchor of our soul, that is our emotions, laying hold on the word and bringing our mind into submission to the word. The covenant is to be the anchor of the soul. To anchor down, even though when you anchor a ship out there, and there comes some rough weather, that anchor holds the ship. No matter how violent it is tossed the ship stays in place. The covenant keeps you in place, no matter how violent Satan rages against you. This was also established in 2 Cor 1:20 “For all the promises of God in him are yes, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.� 4. The covenant is above all to give man an understanding and
knowledge and insight into God as the covenant keeping God in expectation of hope; to bring man to the place of making God his only portion and the strength of his soul. Above all, in this lesson on the purpose of covenant, it is to give you an understanding and knowledge and insight into God as a covenant keeping God, a promise keeping God. You find the promise, you are in covenant with God, it is yours, it is done, it is signed, sealed and delivered. The design of this is to bring us to the place of making God, our all in all, the strength of our soul. In other words, that’s like saying 8
that God supplies all of my needs according to His riches. He is all I need, He is there, and He never forsakes me. Isa 54:10 says that “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee.” Look at that, the mountains will go. That’s some kind of violent action; bigger than hurricanes or tornadoes as they do not move mountains. It has to be ground shaking, earth moving actions. But God says, look at the correlation between a covenant keeping and a natural man’s vision here. What we can see and relate to the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; “but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee”. Thank you for your mercies Lord. The mountains can move in front of me but I know I am well with God. Even though the mountains and the hills may be removed, the covenant of God will stand forever. Psalm 89:34 “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips”. Jeremiah 33:20 “Thus saith the LORD; If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season”; 9
What He is saying here is, if daytime is not going to come in the morning, then the promises of God will not be fulfilled either. Because the promises are covenant. Just as sure as daylight coming out in the morning are the surety of God’s promises in our lives. 5. Covenant brings us into right relationship with God and brings
the benefits of His kingdom and all that it contains into every facet of our present-day life. Benefits come from a covenant relationship because God is a covenant God. Every benefit He has for us is based on covenant relationship, and anything outside the terms of blood covenant is outside the bounds of what God will do. That is a strong statement. 6. One of the surest cures for our unbelief is the covenant into
which God has entered with us. The whole dispensation of the Spirit, the whole economy of grace in Christ Jesus, our entire spiritual life, our health and prosperity, the growth of the church as one. It is all provided for and provisioned and secured in the new covenant. 7. Covenants are God’s means of communication to a lost world
whereby they would immediately understand. What I am saying here is, if you study history, if you read about blood covenant, you will see that historically blood covenants and covenants in general were practised all over the world. People lived by them. So therefore, God used this as a means to communicate, because they will be immediately recognised and understood. 10
8. Making covenant would be a way God could demonstrate His
love for humanity and His deep desire to have fellowship with individuals after the fall of Adam and Eve.
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Components of Covenant There are three primary components of covenant. The primary component is blood. 1. In Lev 17:11 “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul.� The reason for this is when you mingle blood or, mix blood to blood, or eat or drink it, you are combining as one the two lives. We will discuss this in more details later. This is why Jesus talked in covenant, make them as one like we are one, blood covenant, make one, two becoming one. 2. The second component would be words. We are going to get into more of this as we go on. This will be the promises, terms, oaths of the covenant, including the name change, remember Abram became Abraham. In Hebrews 6:13-19 “For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by none greater, he swore by himself, saying, surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: 12
Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;” God has given to us His word. Not just vocally, but in the person of the Word made flesh. Rom. 10:9-10 “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” We said the purpose of covenant is to get man to believe. Part of the covenant is the oath. I give myself to you, I am no longer god of my own life, I am no longer in charge of my life nor am I the principal of my life, I am no longer the decision maker of my life, I now believe in you, so much that I say to you, be Lord of every facet, breathe, every cell of my body. This is covenant language. 3. The third primary component of the covenant is the seal. It represents the sign or the token of the covenant. We see this in the rainbow as a token of covenant to Noah, and circumcision in the covenant with Abraham. Gen 9:13 “I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.” Gen 17:11 “And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.” In all, we see seven requirements for establishing a blood covenant, and we are going to add two other ones that come under the gift exchange, making technically nine; Cutting of Blood, 13
Establishing of Terms Covenant Meal Gift Exchange Vow or Oath Everlasting Sign Name Exchange We are going to break these down a lot further in the lessons to come. You should now be able to see with new life many familiar passages of scriptures come to light with new meaning already. Consider the last supper, it is the covenant meal. When we have communion, you are having a covenant meal. Or, how about the vow, or oath before God. He has given us His Word, with all the promises and provisions, and we have given Him ourselves unreservedly, by faith in the heart and confession of our mouth. As in areas of interest in one’s life, for instance, football and soccer, there is a specific language related to that interest. Verbiage that those on the outside don’t know, or recognise. They recognise the word, but don’t know how it relates to that area or its usage. For instance, football has specific words to recognise in the game of football. Like in music and musicians, they have terminologies that someone who is not in that circle, might understand the words, but they don’t understand the relationship it has to that actual practise. This is our next lesson, to discover biblical covenant language specific to covenants that you read in the bible all the time but never understood it to be there. We are going to point it out in the next lesson. 14
For the next lesson contact: He’s Alive Publishing Company PO Box 14931 Bradenton, FL 34280 ficcpastor@yahoo.com www.ficcwordchurch.org
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