NOTE: This is the third in a 6 part series of articles I will be posting based loosely off
of a book I almost wrote which was based loosely off of a class I almost
taught. Please stay tuned for the entire 6 part series. Part one is available here and part two is available here:
"Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;" Romans 9:4
Moving
on down through the Romans 9:4 list we arrive at ‘covenants’. By my
count, there are seven of these agreements between God and the nation. Some of
these covenants are conditional, and some are not, as we will detail here
shortly, and a careful student of the Bible will acknowledge the particulars of
these covenants as carefully as he would read the ‘fine print’ of a contract.
Covenant
#1- The Land
The
great promise of the Bible, aside from the promise of the seed of the woman, is
the promise of Genesis 15:18. It is an unconditional covenant that God makes
with Abraham that his descendants will always have a place to live on the
earth. This land grant is a real
physical piece of property, with borders spelled out in Genesis 15. 1 Chron.
16;15-18 says “Be ye mindful always of
his covenant; the word which he commanded to a thousand generations; Even of the covenant which he made with
Abraham, and of his oath unto Isaac; And
hath confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting
covenant, Saying , Unto thee will I give
the land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance;“ Leviticus 26: 42-45
reiterates that, no matter how little
they deserve it, God will honor his word. “Then
will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and
also my covenant with Abraham will I remember ; and I will remember the
land. The land also shall be left of
them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and
they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because
they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes. And yet for all that, when they be in the
land of their enemies , I will not cast them away , neither will I abhor them,
to destroy them utterly , and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD
their God. But I will for their sakes
remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land
of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the
LORD.” That promise is so large in scope and such a part of world history,
that we will be revisiting this in detail as we move through the promises, but
suffice to say that, from God’s perspective, the ownership of the land and the
freedom to live there were two different issues. The land is theirs whether
they are actually living there or not, as it is an unconditional promise, but
there were stipulations for actually being able to use and enjoy their
inheritance. This
promise is also the pivot point for most of the promises that follow since most
of them are only applicable when the Hebrew people are “in the land”.
Covenant
#2-A Seed
This covenant, also unconditional was made
with Abraham and renewed with Isaac in Gen 17:2. No matter what the world may do to them, the
seed of Abraham cannot be wiped out. The
family tree of Abraham will always bear fruit, and it’s that promise that has
saved them from extinction. Pharaoh
drowned their babies and yet they prevailed.
Herod tried the same tactic to get rid of the Messiah and failed. Hitler
gassed them and put them in ovens by the millions, but he couldn’t get rid of
them. History is full of ethnic groups that endured far less affliction and
were either slaughtered or bred out of existence, but not so with the seed of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
It’s an everlasting covenant that eventually
produced their Messiah, fulfilling the promise of Gen 3:15. The covenant also extends out past the
earthly ministry of Jesus Christ, and into the future.
Covenant
#3-The Sabbath
It is intriguing to the author that the
Gentiles seem so intent on being part of this particular covenant, when it only
puts an unscriptural burden on them and is
not connected to any promise given to New Testament believers. The 7th day Adventist will run you to Matt
5:17-19 and then tie it to 1 John 2:3 and Ezek 20:20. The modern-day Sabbath
observer (who in practice only observes
part of the Sabbath) will make the case from those scriptures that Sabbath-observing
is a legitimate New Testament practice and some will even say that a failure to
observe the Sabbath proves you aren’t saved.
But a closer look will disavow us of this notion.
In Exodus 31:13-17, the Bible says “Speak thou also unto the children of
Israel, saying , Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep : for it is a sign between me
and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that
doth sanctify you. Ye shall keep the
sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall
surely be put to death : for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall
be cut off from among his people. Six
days may work be done ; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the
LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to
death . Wherefore the children of Israel
shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations,
for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign
between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made
heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested , and was refreshed .”
The Sabbath was a sign, and specifically a
sign unto Israel as a nation. Unless you’ve ever had manna land in your front
yard, that verse isn’t written to you. It is the sign of an everlasting covenant
according to Lev 24:8. This was not
merely God’s admonition to ‘take a day off’ or a day to ‘honor God by going to the
church of your choice’. A man could be
killed for picking up sticks on the Sabbath or kindling a fire. It was extraordinarily serious business with
God. Failure to observe Sabbaths as a nation led to slavery in Babylon. The
covenant was a promise of a day in which their Messiah would take them unto
himself and fulfill the promises he made to Abraham ( Heb 4:1). They were to
observe this day of rest as a reminder to them as a people of the period of
rest yet to come.
Since God ties the Sabbath to the creation
week, it behooves us to take a look at the creation week before moving on. In
Genesis 2:14-16, the Bible says “And God said , Let there be
lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let
them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of
the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater
light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the
stars also.”
According to the Bible, the lights in the
firmament of the heaven have 3 functions. One is to divide the day from the
night. One is to be for signs, seasons,
days and years. One is give light upon the earth.
This is the only part of the creation week
that takes place off of the surface of the earth. It’s also the only part of
his creation that is assigned some sort of time-marking duty. The trees are
never told they would be a sign for anything, the ocean was never told that it
would be used to mark off years.
Well we do know a couple of things. For
example in 2 Peter 3:8 it says: “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one
thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years
as one day.” We also know that at the end of time as we understand it,
there will be a 1000 year reign of Christ. (Rev 20:4). This period is described
as a period of ‘rest’ for Israel (Is 14:3) In addition, God tells Israel during
this time that they will be the head of all nations ( Deut 28:13, Ps 18:43).
God rested on the seventh day, (which would
be Saturday, not Sunday) and “sanctified it”. Much has been made of
sanctification, but simply put, to sanctify something is to designate it for a
particular purpose. I have a hoe that I have sanctified for use in the garden. I don’t use it to shoot pool or as a pogo
stick. I didn’t do anything magical or
mystical to it; I simply sanctified it.
Armed with this definition, we can see that, back in Genesis God rested,
but he didn’t tell anyone else to rest.
There is nothing in scripture to indicate that Adam, or Abel, or Noah or
even Abraham ever observed the Sabbath. Neither Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any of
the entire generation that went into Egypt, as far as we can tell, observed the
Sabbath. No one is told to observe the Sabbath, and nobody is penalized for
failure to observe the Sabbath, until Exodus 20 when the newly formed nation is
still fresh out of Egypt.
Not
only was that promise not given to me as a Gentile, I didn’t inherit that
promise when I received Christ. Nowhere
is the church commanded to observe the Sabbath, and nowhere in Scripture does
Sunday become the ‘new Sabbath’. As a
matter of fact, Romans 8:2 and Galatians 5:1 indicate that I am free from all
the trappings of the Old Testament law.
The last mention of the Sabbath in your Bible
is in Col 2:16 when the commandment is to let no man judge you regarding your
Sabbath observance.
Covenant
#4-Signs
In Exodus
34:10, the Bible says “And he said ,
Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels , such as
have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people
among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing
that I will do with thee.“ God used
signs to communicate with the Hebrew people, which explains the importance of 1
Cor 1:22: “For the Jews require a sign,
and the Greeks seek after wisdom:”.
Gentiles may prefer a sign, but the Jews require it. Moses performed signs before the people so
that they would know he was from God.
Elijah and Elisha both performed signs and wonders to prove they were
from God. Then after 400 years of
silence from God, Jesus Christ (who cited Moses and Elijah) shows up performing
signs and wonders. This covenant of
signs and marvels becomes especially interesting when we look to the future and
God’s dealings with Israel.
Covenant
#5-The Law
According to Romans 1, the Gentiles have the
law of God written on their hearts, but the only nation on earth to receive
direct written revelation and laws from God are the Hebrew people. When God wrote with his finger on tablets of
stone, there was only one family present; the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. Exodus 34:27 reads “And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou
these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with
thee and with Israel. “
What
follows is literally hundreds of rules and regulations that nobody else on
earth received. The larger purpose of these rules will be covered later.
Covenant
#6-The Priesthood
Numbers 25:11-13 says “Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned
my wrath away from the children of Israel, while he was zealous for my sake
among them, that I consumed not the children of Israel in my jealousy. Wherefore say , Behold, I give unto him my
covenant of peace: And he shall have it,
and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because
he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel.”
I feel I must be honest here and say that
many of the implications of this particular covenant may be outside my
understanding. It appears that God is promising to always have a priesthood and
that priesthood will always contain the descendants of Phinehas. It is an
everlasting covenant and appears to be based, not on what future descendants of
Phinehas will do, but what their patriarch already did.
As I speak, there is no Levitical priesthood,
along with no temple and I personally don’t know any of Phinehas’s kin, so my
best educated guess is that on the earth right now his descendants are still
around and will someday be reassigned back to the job their ancestors had. I see no way you can make a modern day church
member one of Phinehas’s family. The text simply does not allow it.
Covenant
#7-David’s Covenant
2 Chronicles 21:7 spells it out this way “Howbeit the LORD would not destroy the
house of David, because of the covenant that he had made with David, and as he
promised to give a light to him and to his sons for ever.” Psalm 89:3-4 says “I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my
servant, Thy seed will I establish for
ever, and build up thy throne to all generations. Selah.” Verses 34-37 of
the same chapter really nail it down, saying “My covenant will I not break , nor alter the thing that is gone out
of my lips. Once have I sworn by my
holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne
as the sun before me. It shall be
established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven. Selah”
No other
ruler in history received such a promise. No king, president or premier has
ever been promised by God that one of their descendants would always be in
power, with the promise being backed up by God’s holiness. This is a very
specific promise that it would be David’s throne occupied, not some throne in
heaven. Here we run into an interesting problem though; there are currently not
any of David’s descendants sitting on a throne in Jerusalem. In fact, by the time of Jesus’ birth,
the kingly line had fallen to decay and
then foreign subjugation. The only way
this promise could come true is if God
intends to revisits the house of David and re-establish that throne at some
point in the future, essentially picking up where he left off.
