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The Covenant Relationship with God

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The Covenant Relationship with God

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The Covenant Relationship with God

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Entering into a relationship with God where we are foremost concerned with what God says, with His commandments, shows God that we are serious about our relationship with Him which is what He desires and it is based upon whether or not we're going to be keeping His commandments.

Transcript

Sermon presented by Bill Bradford on November 2, 2013 in the Brisbane, Queensland, Australia congregation.

Now Elijah was a man of like passions or weaknesses, as we all have them as it says. Yet he said something to the king of Israel that set out the situation that apparently the Israelites and especially the northern ten tribes in this case, had completely forgotten about. It's simply the way things were in their relationship with God and so he is about to tell them something. 1 Kings 17:1.

1 Kings 17:1 And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, "As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew or rain these years but according to my word."

Now he's saying a great deal right here in this one statement, the very first verse and after that he leaves and disappears for three and a half years while there is no rain. Now what was happening? I want to explain it in this way, which I believe becomes rather clear when you understand what was taking place here. God was putting a king, this was King Ahab in this case, and the whole nation, on notice. He was telling them, you are in a bad situation, you have departed from God and you are serving the Baals, you didn't want to be subject or be obedient to God's word, now nothing is going to happen further in the sense of receiving life-giving rain, which if they did not get, they were going to lose everything – their crops, their livestock and essentially their national power, it would simply go down the drain. And there would be only one thing that will save them. Now he didn't tell them when it would end at this point, but only at the word of Elijah, which would be under the direction of God, the rain would be sent.

Now, consider the position God was putting him in – he was saying simply this, In all that you're doing now, you are going to have to turn to God, you're going to have to believe Him and you have to understand that what God says and when He says it, no matter how long ago it was, His word is sure and He is going to make it sure and there is only one word that you can count on that is sure and that is in what He says. He simply put them in a position where no rain until it's said. Otherwise that's it, that's the way it's going to be.

Now he sends here a prophet, we've never heard of him before until now. It's very interesting, everybody wants to be Elijah...I don't want to be Elijah, I don't think you do either, either but there are those out there who do want to be Elijah or at least claim to know him or know who he is and then they put that out there and say, look at me, God's using me more than He's using you, so therefore they want to associate with Elijah or even be Elijah.

In any case, nobody's heard of Elijah until now. Now what God is doing, He is saying, You are going to have to listen to Me, He says. It took 3 ½ years, He just let it go, 3 ½ years, it got bad, I mean they were losing livestock, there was no feed. And then came – we think we have some bad droughts here in Australia, and we do – this was worse because of course where else were they going to go? I mean if there's nothing there, there's nothing there. In Jacob's time or Joseph's time there was a famine for seven years. This is quite amazing, people simply couldn't live there, they had to move out completely. So this is bad.

And then after the 3 ½ years came the confrontation with Ahab and the prophets of Baal. Now let me say this again, that he was putting everybody in the position that the only way you're going to get out of this bad situation is if God does it, no other solution is available or possible, don't even look elsewhere. God was putting everyone in that situation. Have you ever been in that kind of situation? If you were going to be saved or delivered, then God will be the only one who will do it or who could do it.

Now that is a situation where you don't have many options, that's not exactly where we would like to be humanly, we all want options, we all want to know there could be perhaps several ways that we could get out of the situation that we're in. Here, no. There will not be another way you can get out of it.

But God puts us exactly in that situation, in fact we are all there right now. Probably we don't know it or are we aware of it or realize it. But this is what he's telling the people of the nation at that time. So then at the end of the 3 ½ years, he gathers the prophets of Baal together, gathers the king together and all these officials and they're all out there at Mt. Carmel and he says to the people, he gives them this:

1 Kings 18:21 – "How long will you halt between two opinions? If God be God, then serve Him; if Baal (is God), then serve him."

There is no middle ground, you're either going to serve God and listen to what He has to say or everybody is going to be in a lot more serious trouble. He is the one who will make it happen for you or it won't be done, it's going to come down to the choice you make. God will not accept that you dabble in another religion, another philosophy, another idea or teaching or even flirt with sin from time to time. That's not acceptable with Him. Elijah is saying that God is God – not two God's or multiple God's, there's only one. Let's read in Verse 36 and notice the same idea is carried here in the prayer of Elijah when he is now asking for rain.

1 Kings 18:36It came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and of Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant and that I have done all these things at Your word." This is what he was saying, it wasn't his idea, this was God's Word and God was doing something with the nation at this point. "Hear me O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God and that You have turned their heart back again."

It wasn't because he was so great; he was nothing to look at it, if you hear his description of how he was. He was a person who in one sense perhaps lived much of the time in the wilderness and a rather rangy sort of individual. So it wasn't as if he was well-known, recognized or an important person, he simply wasn't.

1 Kings 18:38Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice and the wood, stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench.

1 Kings 18:39 - And when all the people saw it they fell on their faces and they said, "The Lord, He is God, the Lord He is God."

So God made His point very clear and they were convinced after this. Not Baal, not any other god who was out there that came along, not any other idea or whatever, what God said was the way it is and they were brought right back to God. Now for how long, I don't know. But anyway, there seemed to be something of a very powerful and strong reformation, where they were brought right back to God Himself. Now God is not going to come off second best, you can ignore God for a while but in the end, if you are God's people, you will have to make some choices. You're either going to serve Him and obey Him because He is God and you believe Him, or not at all. Again, no middle ground. Couldn't be any other way with God, after all, this is who He is.

You know God has the most marvelous way of engineering circumstances to where you will have to believe who He is and you have to believe what He says. He's doing that with people here, we've all been in that situation. I hope we understand the better situation that we're all in now. He is who He is and He means everything He says. And when He chooses to enter into a relationship with you, He won't back down on what He says nor will He change. We have the statement by Paul in Romans 11, the gifts of calling are without repentance. That is, God does not change His mind, He calls a person, He calls a person. Now they may not accept everything He says right then or at this time or maybe even in this age. But He still calls a person. We then would have some choices. His word is truth, the word of the Lord is sure, we're told.

Entering into a relationship with God where we are foremost concerned with what God says, with His commandments, shows God that we are serious about our relationship with Him which is what He desires and it is based upon whether or not we're going to be keeping His commandments. Now there's a lot of ways out here that relationships with God are described but the most basic, the most fundamental that you're going to find in the Bible, throughout the entirety of the Old Testament, on into the New Testament for that matter, you're going to find it has to do with a person's willingness to agree, not only just agree with God but to obey God. This is what He's looking for. You step outside of that, all of these ideas about what Jesus Christ might do for you and how much He loves you, and how much grace there is out here, does little if anything, if we're not going to be serious about keeping His law and keeping His commandments. This is at the very basis of it.

Now there are too many experiences with people in the hospital who, while they are in the hospital, learn to pray and even begin to make promises or even bargain with God about what they will do now. So all of the neglect of the past comes to play about what they will do if only God will fix this and get them out of there. Now God may or may not get them out and God may or may not do it because of what they say, God may just simply have mercy on them because He knows humans, He knows how frail and weak they are and how they cannot keep their word. Not so with God as we're going to see.

There is pain in their faces, you can tell, you can see the sense of fear, it is the only time sometimes they speak to God because their future is uncertain, this happens. Their relationship with God has not been developed or nurtured through obedience to God over a period of time so they begin to ask for miracles when a long-standing relationship with God could have provided, if they would have had that long-standing relationship, could have provided the comfort and the strength necessary to deal with their illness and their fears.

Our relationship with God, like any other healthy relationship must be predicated on the idea of mutuality and obligation. It's not one sided, it's not a matter of what God can do for us or because in our self-absorbed manner of living today we tend to want God, we bring this right on over to God, well You need to do this for me and do that for me and they look for God to do this for me. You will find this a lot of the preaching of the churches today and they don't seem to ask, well what is it that I should be doing for God? This is a relationship that is in every sense reciprocal and we're going to talk about this covenant relationship in just a moment but I want to first of all just show you in Matthew 7:21 that in some ways this is what Christ is referring to.

Matthew 7:21 – "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven."

What is it that God is looking for? What is it that He respects? He was respecting those who are going to follow and do the will of God. Not just use the name, "Lord, Lord" gives the impression that they are really followers of the Lord. Not in the same sense that Evan mentioned it of course, but this is what they want to feel in their own minds, that they are following the Lord because they can use His name.

Matthew 7:22 – "Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name and done many wonders in Your name?"

Why do people want to do this? Why would people say, I want to go down the road of having a great show of spiritual power, as it were, casting out demons, doing wonders, prophesying, that is wonderful and great, outstanding preaching that takes place, you know? Why is it, in the various ways, preaching is more theatric than anything else. A lot of people go for that, let me tell you why – it's more about them, it's not about God and God knows this. He said, They're not interested in obeying Me, they're interested in using the good name of God or Jesus Christ to get a name for themselves, this is what's behind it. Because He goes on to say then:

Matthew 7:23 – "I will declare unto them, ‘I never knew you...ooh that's pretty tough...depart from Me you who practice lawlessness.'"

What is the most important thing to God? What's the question He's going to ask in the end? It's not going to be how great a crowds do you have, how much of show did you put on in the name of Jesus? He's not going to be asking that. How many people were healed, how many demons were cast out? This and that and everything else.  He will say, Well, did you keep My commandments? Now this is what He is going to say, so departing from Him means, get out of my sight, don't come here and tell Me this, because I don't believe it.

So the relationship then that anybody has with God, basically is, are we going to listen to Him and are we going to take note of what He says, keep His commandments, put them into practice in our lives because we understand He is God, He's got a right to tell me what to do, He's got a right to formulate what's right and wrong. He knows what is right and wrong and I cannot determine right and wrong for myself nor can I assign to myself or for myself a great and wonderful purpose, that I think, well, this is God's purpose for me. Do you know how many times I've heard this from people? I think God's purpose for me is this and God's purpose for me is that. I said, how about let's use the Bible and see what God's purpose is? That kind of slows them down right there! What does God say?

So God defines the purpose, God gives the commandments, let's get this straight, turned around the right way! Now God wants to know, Look, I'm giving you an opportunity to have a relationship with Me, God is saying, so here's how you're going to have a relationship with Me, as a matter of fact this relationship can grow and it can develop and it can be greater or wonderful things that can happen later on down the line. If you understand what that is, understand what that relationship is and you're going to stay with it.

A covenant is an agreement, this is the title of the sermon, took me about fifteen minutes to get to it! The covenantal relationship with the one God. A covenant is an agreement that both parties enter into freely and there is an understanding to that agreement that both parties are bound to it.. Now, is God, once He says something, is God not going to back up what He says He will do? Is there ever a time when He will not do that? Never! But He is willing to put this in the form of a covenant and in the case of God, a holy covenant.

I think most people kind of sense this and they know then, to make a decision that to accept what He says and to turn to Him and ask Him to forgive you of your sins and for Jesus Christ to die, to pay the penalty for those sins and to make the application, to ask for that to happen is quite a big ask. That's what He said He'll do. It's a covenant, God says I'll do this, your sins can be forgiven, we can take it from here. Do you understand you've got to come out of sin, do you understand you have to change your life? Do you understand that if I do this, and you want to have a relationship with Me, you're going to have to listen to what I've got to say and you're going to have to continue to change your life, continue to grow and obey Me.

I think most people in the Church, as they have come to baptism, understand that basic idea and so it is a serious matter and this is why we say that if a person has had a baptism before, some time ago and they didn't understand what was involved in it, they ought to recommit themselves through a fresh baptism and say, yes, now I understand, now I'm ready and willing to make this kind of a commitment based on what I now know is true and right and what is expected of me in this relationship.

Let me turn to a few points here and we'll get on into the covenant idea. Numbers 23:19. Now this is a very interesting statement here and of all the people who said it, it was Balaam, that's why God was so hard on the guy, because he should have known. He says this:

Numbers 23:19 –"God is not a man that He should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent. Has He said, and shall He not do it? Or has He spoken and shall not make it good?

God just doesn't say something and He, well, I didn't really mean that, you know, I've changed My mind, let's rethink this. That's not God! Humans do that, men do that, that's understandable even, but with God, no way. Psalm 89:34, He says this:

Psalm 89:34My covenant I will not break, nor alter the thing that has gone out of My lips.

Well I've had to do that a lot of times, lot of times! That is, alter the thing that has gone out of my lips! But God doesn't have to because He is God and what He says is right, as we'll read on. He said:

Psalm 89:35I have sworn by My holiness that I will not lie unto David...

Now this was in respect to the covenant that He made with David, so it was a covenant, He put it in the form of a covenant for David's sake. As we're going to see, covenants are made for our sake. Does God need a covenant? No, God is God, that's who He is. But a covenant then is made for us and we agree to enter into it and we are assured that God will carry out the terms of that covenant, we know He will. It is, and if there is such a thing as a legal matter in the spiritual realm, this is it. Think about it.

Where both parties then are subject to the terms of what they agreed to. God's not going to change He says, whatever He says this is the way it is. He says, I will not lie to David.

Psalm 89:36His seed shall endure forever, his throne as the sun before Me; and it shall be established forever as the moon...well you know the moons going to be there for a while...and as a faithful witness in heaven.

He says, look up at the moon when you can see it, when there's a moon out and say, that tells me that God meant what He said and He's not going to change it, with respect to the Davidic covenant.

Isaiah 14:24The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying, "Surely, I have thought, so shall it come to pass, as I have purposed, so shall it stand."

There's not a man alive who could say this – God can. He puts it in the form of an oath, this is very interesting, now we'll read that later on in the book of Hebrews but He wants us to get the point that when God says something, when He comes into an agreement with you, He means it.

Where are we going with this sermon today by the way, I should interject here? Where's this all going? Jesus said to ask and it shall be received and He said if you ask for gifts, will not God give them and so on, I'm not going to turn to those scriptures, I think we're familiar with. We tend to jump right into those particular scriptures but that's based on something, it's based on who God is as to what God will do. And so if you're in your relationship with Him, if you're into a relationship here that has been developed over a period of time and you understand perhaps your own failings in that relationship and you repent of that and you change and you're still in that relationship, God's able to do that, He promises that, then can you utter a prayer and expect it to be granted in full accordance with His will, that's what He says, you ask according to His will, but it's almost like a sure, it's a done deal, it's going to happen. That's how the Bible speaks of it.

Isaiah 14:24The Lord of hosts has sworn....that I will break the Assyrian in My land and upon My mountains tread him underfoot. Then shall his yoke depart off them and his burden depart from off their shoulders. Now this was when Assyria was a threat, this is the purpose, purposed upon the whole earth. And this is the hand that stretched out upon the nations, for the Lord of hosts has purposed and who shall disannul it? And His hand is stretched out and who shall turn it back?

Now these are only some of the scriptures, I could spend the rest of the time reading scriptures where God says, I have a plan, I have a purpose, it's not going to change, I am God, I am who I am. Isaiah 40-49 are just full of those statements similar to that so He's answering critics who say, who is God, we don't know, nobody knows, you can't be sure.

Psalm 19:7The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. God gives testimonies and witnesses about what has been done in the past, that's what testimony is, it's His witness and when He describes a situation, He says, take note how He describes it because you can learn from it. Making wise the simple.

Psalm 19:8The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Now He's saying, you're a lot better off listening to what God has to say, doing what God says and as a matter of how you're going to live your life and accomplishing His purpose than you are, than anything else that's going to come along.

Psalm 111:7The works of His hands are verity...or truth...and judgment...everything He does is right...all His commandments are sure.

Psalm 111:8They stand fast forever and ever and ever and are done in truth and uprightness.

Psalm 111:9He sent redemption unto His people, He has commanded His covenant forever. Holy and reverent is His name.

You know, nobody can have that title, no person should assume that kind of a title of reverend because it implies that a person is capable of doing something that can only be attributed to God. It is very interesting, He swears, it says the Lord of hosts has sworn.

Now why can He swear and you can't? Did you ever think of that? Matthew 5:14 – swear not at all. Do you know why? God can say this is going to happen, there's no question it's going to happen and a long penalty, you might want to say, what kind of penalty is God going to have? But you cannot carry it out, you do not have the ability sometimes to carry out what you say, so don't swear, just let your yes be yes and your nay be nay and in that sense, take on the character of God. As a matter of fact that's what God wants us to do, that's how He wants us to live. That is, if we say we're going to do something or say we're going to be in something, or say we're a part of something, this is what you do. This is what He's looking for, it's a part of living in that covenant with God.

So, how sure is your relationship with God? What do you expect out of that relationship, do you know what your obligation is in that relationship? How does God understand that relationship and do you properly understand it? So God here was putting people and their leaders in the situation to understand that relationship, that's why Elijah was sent. What's the real situation? What was the original relationship then that He established with Abraham and later the Israelites and then later David? What was that covenant and that relationship and He was putting them in a situation where it was just them and God. Remember, that was the original covenant, them and God, to the exclusion of all else. Does that sound like the words used in a marriage ceremony sometimes? Yes it is, that's right, you don't include anybody else, marriage is also a covenant. So we have covenants then that are to be taken very very seriously once we commit to them, once we agree to them, once we sign our name as it were, it's a very serious matter but what it's also doing is this – it is binding all the parties involved, in this case there are two, in this case there is nobody else involved between you and God.

Then how God answers, whether He answers, what you understand that relationship to be is well, this is something you have to work out with God. So your relationship with Him then is developed over a period of time.

Now let's contrast that with this – the relationship with God is not to make you feel good. You've heard me say that so many times, you'll be saying, oh there he goes again! But I just want to draw the contrast between true religion and false religion. The object to feel good about yourself is the object of pop psychology and evangelical churches, to make you feel good about it. They don't bind you, they don't say, this is what God says, here's what God respects, here's what God is looking for, they don't say God is the great God and everything He says is true and He has so ordered a great purpose for us and He is prepared to reveal all things to us.

In spite of the lies of the devil that tells you that God's commandments are not necessary and that is said, it keeps coming across to us, which tries to get you to water down any kind of a good solid purposeful agreement that you can have with God, therefore God's great purpose then is far less than what it really is in a lot of people. So people are changeable and people WILL change.

Now if we're going down the road of being a victim, having every thought in the world like it's too hard, wondering whether God is with you sometimes, then you don't know God, you don't understand the current relationship, you don't even have a definition of God for that matter. You have to know who and what God is and you know that we're listening to somebody else when we have those kind of thoughts. So I do give a lot of messages asking you to examine your walk with God, if that is what you're doing. Do you have confidence in His purpose? Do you have confidence in Him? The devil wanted Adam and Eve to doubt the character and the nature of God, His word doesn't count, you can't take God seriously he says. Isn't this what the thoughts of the world are? And it is rife in the very churches who claim to be doing God's work. How many take the Bible, how many people take the whole Bible for what it says, not just part of it but the whole Bible? Do we want to go down the track of creating a different theology for ourselves to satisfy our inner needs; is this what we're doing?

Believing in God, believing in what He says, believing who He is and being more concerned with whether you're obeying God and therefore satisfying His great purpose that He has assigned to you is the very thing that will deal with your fears and your doubts, your feelings of insignificance and the respect and the so-called love that you might seek from other which many times is not forth coming. Simply obey God is going to go so far to dealing with all the things people tend to grasp for and strive for in their lives and they don't find it, it's not there. That relationship with God is what makes it all different and then your obedience to God then gives satisfaction. It satisfies not only what you should be doing in your own psyche but it also then helps you in that very direct relationship that you have with God. You can proceed without guilt, you can proceed without doubt, you can make your request known to God without fear and in total and complete confidence. You can walk in that confidence because you say, I am within Your covenant. And then you know you're going to get the best possible response because God is also doing His part in that covenant. See how important that covenant relationship is, this is what we're saying here.

God has designed us to be rid of a lot of the toxic emotions, reactions, feelings about yourself, your past, the past abuse, the bad deals you've had in life. If you are in God's purpose, if you are part of His plan, if you are in the safe and secure environment of that covenant relationship. You won't find that in a psychology book. But we tend to struggle with this quite a bit. Now Jesus says:

John 5:24 – "Verily verily I say unto you, he that hears My word and believes on Him that sent Me has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation but has passed from death to life." Is that where you want to be? Absolutely! "Verily, verily, I say to you, the hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live." Answering the greatest question in life, what's going to happen to me after I die? We can be absolutely secure in that.

Now I'm putting this in the simplest terms as I can when we talk about a covenant relationship. Let me go through some things real fast here with you and just show you what God says about covenants or the emphasis He places upon it. And He didn't have to do it, but He wanted to, for you and to give you the kind of faith, confidence and assurance that you need to continue in this world.

Genesis 6:17 – (Covenant with Noah) – "Behold, I, even I,  do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life from under heaven and everything that is in the earth shall die. But with you I will establish My covenant and you shall come to the ark, you and your sons and your wife and your son's wives with you."

He says, I'm going to establish a covenant with you, here's the way it's going to be. I think Noah would have taken a great deal of comfort and reassurance in this and begin to set about building the ark.

Genesis 9:9 – (After the flood) "Behold I establish My covenant with you and your seed after you." This is not the Abrahamic covenant, this is a little bit of a separate thing or something that He's doing with Noah.

Genesis 9:11 – "I will establish My covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off anymore by the waters of the flood, neither shall there be any more be a flood to destroy the earth."

Well that's OK, that's fantastic because you would kind of wonder wouldn't you?

Genesis 9:12And God said, "This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you, of every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations." So this goes on for a while.

Genesis 9:13"I do set My bow...that is, rainbow...in the cloud and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and you." Every time you see a rainbow, what should it remind you of? Never going to be an another flood. You say, well it's back in Noah's day – that's forever. God says it, it's good.

Genesis 9:15 – "I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the water shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. He's telling us that Noah who is now representative of the head of the clan and over all flesh, animals too at this point. No more flood, I will remember this.

Genesis 9:16 – "And the bow...that is, the rainbow...shall be in the cloud, I will look upon it that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘This is the token of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is upon the earth.'"

God does not enter into an agreement lightly, He is the initiator of covenants as He was here. Can you count on this? You can absolutely count on it. Now Abraham:

Genesis 15:18In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: "Unto your seed I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates..." God makes a covenant with him, I'm giving this to you. Wow, O.K., this is extraordinary, the God of the universe says this to him.

Genesis 17:2 – "And I will make My covenant between Me and you and I will multiply you exceedingly."

Genesis 17:4 – "As for Me, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations."

Genesis 17:7 – "And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your seed after you, in their generations, for an everlasting  covenant to be God unto you and to your seed after you." He just continues to say wonderful things about this covenant, now He says an everlasting covenant and I'm going to be a God to you. Absolutely wonderful!

Genesis 17:9God said to Abraham: "You shall keep My covenant, therefore you and your seed after you in your generations."

Genesis 17:19Then God said: "Sarah your wife shall bear you a son indeed and you shall call his name Isaac;  and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and with his seed after him."

And before that, Abraham was saying, what's wrong with Ishmael? God says, it's not going to be that way, He said, here is the way it is going to be done, I will make My covenant with him. It's up to God, He'll make the covenant with the person He wants. And with his seed after him. And He goes on to say:

Genesis 17:21 – "But My covenant I will establish with Isaac which Sarah shall bear unto you at this set time in the next year." Wow, they couldn't have children, it was clear, not only that, they were too old at this point, both of them.

Now how did this come about? I don't mean, how they had the baby, I don't mean that! I mean, how was it done? This was done by grace, very simple. Seed, chosen, not by merit or the custom that they were the first born, but by the choice of God, it had to be done this way. Was it last week I said, sometimes we think grace or being choice through the fact that a person is not merited or deserved to be chosen, is not just New Testament, this is old Covenant. Or this is back before then, this is what God is working out for a plan long before it began to really get going but this is how He said He wants to do it.

It had to be done this way, to give confidence that this is God's doing and that He would establish it and that He would see it to its end. If it were left up to Abraham and his choice or to Isaac and his choice – remember he was choosing Esau over Jacob, remember that, it would not have the endurance as a covenant; it could not be an everlasting covenant if this was their doing. If they made the choices then God cannot say this is an everlasting covenant. He's starting it, He's going to see it through, this is what He is saying. This is an everlasting covenant as He said in verse 19. Let's look at the obligation. Obligation on Abraham's part, also Isaac and later Jacob.

Genesis 26:1 – (He's speaking to Isaac) And there was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines, in Gerar. That's where he went.

Genesis 26:2And the Lord appeared to him and said, "Go not down to Egypt...he apparently thought he would go to Egypt...dwell in the land which I tell you of. Sojourn in this land and I will be with you and I will bless you; for unto you and to your seed I will give all these countries and I will perform the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. He wanted to let Isaac know this is an oath that I took.

Genesis 26:4 – "And I will make your seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, I will give unto your seed all these countries and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because Abraham obeyed My voice, kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws."

Why is He going to do this? Why is going to continue with a covenant on to Isaac? Why would the covenant be continued on to Jacob and so on? Because they obeyed His voice. There was a mutuality and there was an obligation – this is what a covenant is.

Genesis 26:6And Isaac dwelt in Gerar.

So in this way, God supported Isaac to back up His covenant with Him so that the outcome of the covenant, which was to be far down the line to the complete fulfillment and outcome of it, would still be certain. And God reassured Isaac with a covenant, called it an oath, what God would do, He would remind him of his obligation to God, the same obligation that Abraham himself understood. Now Isaac, it's your obligation too, you understand what this covenant is about. Isaac gets the point, he said, I'll stay in Gerar. O.K., it's very clear! You might say I'm simplifying it, well, yes I am, I'm trying to help you understand this is not complicated. You have an arrangement with God, it's not some nebulous thing out here that you don't know where you stand, you don't know what's going on, you don't know what comes next, you don't know if God's going to rescue you, deliver you, help you or what, you don't know. It's not that way.

Now God is bound by a covenant, this is one of the huge points of the message today. When you enter into that covenant, you have to understand that God is bound. You must also understand that you are bound, you agreed to it, this is a good thing, best thing that could ever happen to you to be invited into a covenant now with the Eternal God! This is extraordinary! We've got people sitting here in this room; have been given the opportunity to be in a covenant with God where He will do what He says.

So how are your prayers lately? Of course, you didn't know I was going to ask you that did you? But that's what it means, this is what it gets down to, what is this relationship about?

What is important here is not that you have a famine that could be seen as a threat, but that you have a further establishment of a covenant with Isaac and that God is telling him His intentions of carrying out and then how God Himself would be bound by His own words to support then that covenant and then later the people of the covenant. Which here at this point was Isaac.

Let's go to Israel – this is the same covenant by the way, you say, this is the old covenant – no, it's the same covenant, it's an extension. It is with Abraham's children, several generations down the line, a number of generations as a matter of fact. In the mind of God, it was a good covenant because it was His word.

Exodus 2:24 And God heard their groaning and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Well did you expect Him to forget it? He remembers it, that's God, He doesn't forget what He says.

You know, you could go before God and you could say, in making your request to be made known to Him, that's one of the things we should do, is to thank God. What do you thank Him for? A lot of the things that took place in the past, He remembers every one of them because God doesn't forget, He knows what He said, He knows what He promised, He knows what He meant, He knows exactly what He's going to do, knows what He intended.

Exodus 6:4 – "I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers." He says, I remember that, hundreds of years ago from this point, He remembers this.

I can remember as a kid, my brother and I were traveling with my dad and we were traveling all over the place and we finally wound up at the Feed and Seed store about three miles from where we lived and we wanted something to eat so bad and so we hit up this guy who worked there and he said one time he would buy us an ice cream. He didn't remember it, we remembered it! And we reminded him the whole time we were there. Well the guy was having us on, just the thought that came to my mind at the time. We are men, God is God. Verse 5, He remembers His covenant.

Exodus 19:5 – "Now therefore, if you will obey My voice indeed and keep My covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people for all the earth is mine." So now He's saying this to the people of Israel – this is what's going to happen. I will make you this way.

Leviticus 26:44 – "And yet for all of 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."

They sinned, He says, if they sin, this is Leviticus 26, you ought to read Lev. 26, very interesting how many times the word "covenant" is there and how they departed from the covenant and God says, He says about them when they do this, He says, "I will not abhor them, I will not destroy them utterly, I will not break My covenant with them." Why? "For I am the Lord your God." Can He ever go back on that? Never! Now we're going to see that the covenant is going to be made with Israel and Judah in the future.

Now there's a lot of misunderstanding about the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. God understood the weakness of men as He noted here in Leviticus 26, He understood the weakness of men but He did not break the covenant and He's not going to break it, as we find in Hebrews 8:6. He's not going to break His covenant in spite of the whole history of them breaking it.

Hebrews 8:6But now has He obtained a more excellent ministry by how much also He is the Mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. So something was going to happen.

Hebrews 8:7For if that first covenant had been faultless then no place would have been sought for the second.

Now He's not saying that covenant was at fault, it had some issues, we're going to see this, but it wasn't the covenant itself, it was a great covenant.

Hebrews 8:8For finding fault with them, He says: "Behold the day is come" says the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah – not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt; because they continued not in My covenant...He wasn't going to depart from it...and I regarded them not," says the Lord.

So yes, under those conditions He didn't regard them and a lot of the things they may have been looking for or expecting from God. But doesn't mean He forsook the covenant, doesn't mean that. He didn't regard that.

Hebrews 8:10 – "For this is the covenant that I will make for the house of Israel after those days" says the Lord, "I will put My laws into their mind, I will write them in their hearts and I will be to them a God and they shall be to Me a people."

So now He is going to give them another covenant to make something possible that they had failed in before, to where He would be their God. He said He was going to do this in such a way where I will be their God, they will be to Me a people.

Hebrews 8:11And they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, "Know the Lord," for all shall know Me, for from the least to the greatest they shall know the Lord.

Hebrews 8:12 – "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more." So I'm establishing a new covenant with them.

Hebrews 8:13In that He says, "A new covenant He has made, the first old." Now that which decays and waxes old is ready to vanish away.

Now the covenant with the Israelites was an extension of the covenant with Abraham, the fulfillment of the Seed in that covenant was Jesus Christ, it was through Jesus Christ that the sins of Israel were to be forgiven and also the Gentiles. He's not going to give up on that covenant. So we have something now developing. The Sinai covenant had two problems – the law of ceremonial aspects were only copies, patterns, shadows of what was real, which was to come. And so the mercy seat, the angelic presence, all this is copies, patterns of what really was to come. The main problem was with the people, they broke the covenant.

Now the argument is that, the Lord's intent to replace the Old with the New Covenant but if that was true in every respect, then why does the New Covenant repeat almost three-fourths of what had been in the Abrahamic and Davidic covenant? It does you know, that's in the New Covenant. Rather than superseding, the Covenant's a promise. All of these were covenants of promise, not of merit, not that they were deserving, a promise. That's how it's said, blessing and now promise.

So rather than superseding the covenants of promise that had preceded it, it affirmed them as well as supplemented them. It would be wrong to think that just because the sacrificial system had been replaced therefore the whole law, including the moral law of the Ten Commandments and all of the other holiness laws had likewise been superseded and replaced. That's a mistake people make. You can't imagine God saying, this is My standard, this is the way I am, here is the way I want you to be and then all of a sudden forget about it later on. This is not God. There is a response to this.

Hebrews 11 tells us of the men and women of faith, they are not included here in Hebrews 11 which I will not read because of some quality they exhibit. On the contrary , they are there because of their faith and belief. It is not only the faith that was completed in the past, it is the faith that looks more to the future. In fact, it is through faith and steadfastness that we inherit the promises of God.

I want to conclude with Hebrews 6:9, when he speaks of this and hopefully it will help us then to really understand how we should be living, how we should be thinking, living our life, walking in this covenant.

Hebrews 6:9But beloved, we are persuaded better things of you and things that accompany salvation...which was the better promise...though we thus speak. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love which you have showed toward His name...this is a part of being in the covenant...in that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. You're either in the covenant or not is what He expects.

Hebrews 6:11We desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope to the end. He's putting this in the form of a covenant so that you can have absolute hope to the very end. That you be not slothful...well this ought to just sit us up bolt right in our seats, that we understand this is the way it is...that you be not slothful but followers of men through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Hebrews 6:13For when God made a promise to Abraham because He could swear by no greater, He swore by Himself. Is it sure or not? Saying, "Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you." And so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. That is, it was secured. For men verily swear by the greater and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife.

I hope there's an end of doubt in our lives, I really do, I hope there's an end of uncertainty in the sense that you know God and that you are confident and secure in that covenant relationship with Him, and there should be no more strife.

Hebrews 6:17Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel...or His plan or intention...confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation...I hope that you will have strong consolation over this...who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.

Hebrews 6:19Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters into that with the veil, where the forerunner for us has entered, even Jesus, made a High Priest forever after the order of Melchizadek.

The question then is, how do we live? Within the covenant relationship, very important. Do we understand that's what it is? And do we walk in confidence, in faith in that wonderful relationship that we have been called to become a part of.