Parables of the Kingdom Covenant

Within the generations of a covenant with God there are many parables of people's experience with that covenant. In the Abrahamic covenant there are many "stories" of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as they met covenant challenges and gave covenant responses. In the kingdom of Israel we have numerous kings and their responses or failure to make any response. But the most we learn is from David who went through the testing before a lasting covenant could be made. His experience of testing and responding confirms the lesson we learned from Abraham that human response is necessary before God can make an everlasting covenant with man. Saul failed to give the response of obedience and deliberately took the control into his own hand. So David had to meet many hard tests and respond to the heart of God. Because of the failure of man to give the response of perfectly fulfilling the Law of the Abrahamic covenant, Jesus had to walk out the Law and fulfill it to the satisfaction of the heart of God for our sake. Because of His covenant response, the covenant of Abraham could be enlarged and we can be the righteousness of God in Christ. One covenant is not finished, it is swallowed into a larger covenant.

God made David a warrior even though it was in David's heart to build the temple. God's purpose for David was best served with him as a warrior because he was the one to be the recipient of the Kingdom Covenant. This fact, though widely known, is seldom associated with the kingdom covenant that was to be enlarged into the kingdom of heaven for the church and enlarged again when God's Kingdom would come into this realm to rule the earth. It is the warrior David that I want you to see as the parable for the Kingdom of heaven, the Kingdom covenant we are in now.

David had many types of battles. Some with the army of the nation Israel in which he gained much honor. But there were battles he fought as the head of a rag-tag army as he was exiled from his home land that are the types of battle we now face as a Church of Jesus Christ. Most of the nation did not even know of the battles David was fighting. We are not fighting as a united church (I am speaking of all the churches in the religious realm in our country) and gaining honor with our nation. Rather we are in battles that most know nothing about. The main army of Israel and most of the nation were following Saul who was out for his own honor and cared nothing about giving a covenant response to God. David was carefully asking for guidance from God and following His command. God led him into one battle after another and each was a testing of David's submission to God's leading.

The greatest response we can give to the Kingdom covenant we are now under is to carefully seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit Who will reveal to us the commands of the Head of this army. "We have not been this way before" and need desperately to hear from God and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. We do not know what battles lie ahead before the Heart of God is satisfied and we can go on into the enlarging of this covenant into the final Kingdom covenant. We repeat the words of Joshua, there is still much land to take.