A Covenant Purpose

Covenants do not stand alone.  Each is based on the foundation of the purpose for it.  A man has a desire for a marriage and family.  He meets the one woman with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life.  He approaches her with covenant language:  I love you, will you marry me?  She responds with a yes, I will separate myself from all others and be your wife.  They go for the sanction of God and His joining them together and they take the vows of covenant before witnesses.  The actual rituals of covenant may vary slightly from culture to culture, from time to time, and personal preference, but the covenant stands on covenant meaning and will endure as long as the covenant states.  It may be for several generations or until death occurs.  God's covenants are long term!
God has stated clearly the purpose in His creation of mankind.  God wants man in His image!  Each covenant teaches, reveals and directs man in the steps toward God.  No covenant ever ends but is fulfilledd and contained within the next covenant that moves closer to bringing man into God's purpose for him.  (I am not a feminist and am comfortable in calling all humans "man", and speaking of God as He!)
We see God's purpose for the Church in the covenant Jesus has given us, in Ephesians 1:3-10.                  

Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) ³ Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. ⁴ For He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love ⁵ He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, ⁶ to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved.  ⁷ We have redemption in Him through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace ⁸ that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. ⁹ He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure that He planned in Him ¹⁰ for the administration of the days of fulfillment—to bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him.  Before creation, even before the creation of angelic beings, God purposed our destiny.  Everything has been created to achieve His purpose.  He has revealed His love and care in the creation of our habitation.  This earth is an expression of His love and understanding of our needs.  Jesus is an expression of God's love and we have a High Priest Who understands our needs.

We are not alone on this journey.  God has freely given of His Being for He has provided the way to impart to us of Himself.  But covenant makes everything very personal and individual.  There is a separation that is necessary to covenant.  Jesus prayed that, though we are in this world but not of it, (even as He was not of it!) we be protected from "the evil one."  He has a purpose to use us to reveal Himself to the world, as lights in a dark place.  He answers our covenant response with a deepening measure of His provision to bring us into His glory.  Separated to Him, we do not have a form of godliness while denying the power thereof.  We walk in fellowship with Him, our lives flowing with His and His Life flowing into us.  He sees us, in our response to Him, as holy and blameless!

Growing In Understanding

My life has been spent reaching upward to understand more of the ways of God.  Our feet walk the path of our day and many things happen to every person that cause the question "why?"  Why the wars, why the pain and suffering, why the prosperity of some and the famine that fills so many lives are only a few of the questions that haunt mankind.  So many settle for the opinions that are offered, but I wanted to know what God would answer.  I have been fortunate to know people on the same quest and have rejoiced in having fellowship on the same path.  Pain, rejection and even persecution are wonderful incentives to stay steady on that path.  The cry, "I want to please You!" is a release to increase the speed!  A wonderful release came when messages on the covenants of God came my way.  But that only opened the door to greater hunger for more understanding than just the promises of covenant.  I yearned to know more of God's insight on the very method of His choosing to relate to man.  I will never forget the day that He opened my eyes to His covenant language in the Scriptures.  The Book that has been my companion my whole life, suddenly became new and fresh bread became the incentive to start me on an eating frenzy.   I realized what David meant when he wrote Psalm 31 and 118.  Psalm 31:8  (NASB)  And You have not given me over into the hand of the enemy; You have set my feet in a large place.  Psalm 118:5 (NIV)  When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord; he brought me into a spacious place.   One translation of NIV that I read most often has 118:5 slightly different.  In my anguish I cried to the Lord, and He answered by setting me free."  I liked this, but I had learned it in the King James, and it said, "set me in a large place."  I realize that being set in a large place is freedom indeed.

In the study of covenant, the condemnation of Satan becomes a moot conflict, for there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for through Him, the covenant He made for us delivers us from the law of sin and death.  Guilt, and the withdrawal it causes, separates us from the vitality of the Life Jesus assures us.  Understanding of the method which God has chosen to bring us into Him, sets us into a large place where we can sit at the feet of Jesus and be taught by the Holy Spirit to become like Him.

We can face what Satan devises against us.  We know we are not victims.  We are not to be tossed around in confusion and distress, but rooted and grounded in Him, we stand as overcomers in His victory.  Yes, we are warned in the twelth chapter of the Revelation that Satan comes down to us in a violent struggle to put down the ones who will see his final defeat.  This is accompanied with the joy of the overcoming that is ours by the weapons provided for us by Jesus:  the Blood of the Lamb (that will never lose its power!) and by the word of our testimony: our identification with Jesus in all of His victory!  To understand covenant is to know with surety that God is our Friend and will fight for us and bring us into His joy!