Analysing Covenants Throughout the Books
it is important to start with basic book - Genesis. Quote from Genesis: “I establish my covenant with you, that never again will all creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.”
Throughout the book of Genesis we see God start to create our world. We see him make so many wonderful things, including: plants, animals, all of the things surrounding us, and most wonderful, us humans. Throughout Genesis we see God as all-powerful, creating things into existence, everything created in His image, and most importantly the covenant that he makes with his people that are now on this earth. A covenant is a chosen relationship in which two sides make unbreakable promises to one another and work together to reach a similar goal.
There are two main covenants that we see when reading through Genesis. These are: the Noahic Covenant, and the Abrahamic Covenant. Both of these covenants all have something in common, and that is all of their relationships with God. These covenants show the true and powerful greatness that God has. With the Noahic Covenant, God makes a promise that all living creatures despite all of the evil in the world, he will never again destroy them. With the Abrahamic Covenant, He promises that Abraham will have a huge family that will inherit a promised piece of land in Canaan and bring forever blessings to all everyone through his family. Not only is the covenant appear in Genesis, but also many other books.
The nest one ia s quote from Exodus: “Now, if you obey me completely and keep my covenant, you will be my treasured possession among all peoples, through all the earth is mine.”
Exodus opens up with Abraham’s descendants multiplying rapidly in Egypt. This action really starts to worry Pharaoh, so he forces God’s people to become slaves in his buildings in his empire. They cry out to God and He hears them, then He sends Moses to be his other set of true power to lead them out of Egypt towards the promised land. When they reach the foot of Mount Sinai, God shows up in a huge way, more specifically a burning bush to revisit the promises that were made to Abraham and to enter the formal relationship with Israel. The main covenant described in exodus is the Mosaic Covenant. In this Covenant, God saves Israel from slavery in Egypt and he promises to make them his own prized possession, as well as their own nation, which will be known as the promised land. As stated, the Lord will be their God and leader, while Israel will be his people. Therefore, they will end up being a kingdom of priests that help with the goodness and glory throughout all of the nations.
The third quote is from the Historical Books: “When your days are completed and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, sprung from your lions, and I will establish his kingdom.”
In Samuel God establishes David as king over Israel and promises to make his name and basically everything about him great. Yahweh will give David a royal kingdom in which the promises that he made to Abraham and Israel will be fulfilled through his lineage. God will raise up a Davidic descendant who will build a house for the Lord and his throne and kingdom will last forever. God’s love will never depart from him. The quote displayed is just another way that God shows one of His many covenants made with the many different people we see throughout the stories in the Bible. It shows the promise that God made to establish his kingdom forever while acknowledging that its original royal-covenant promise with Abraham. On the other hand, the Davidic covenant establishes David and later, his descendants as the kings of the united monarchy of Israel. We will see God make 2 more major covenants, one in the Prophets, and one in the Wisdom Books.
The quote from the Prophets says: “See, days are coming, - oracle of the Lord - when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors in the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke my covenant, though I was their master - oracle of the Lord. But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days oracle of the Lord. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people”
Jeremiah: “The Lord Will Restore” This meaning of this main character is shown throughout the time of the new covenant, introducing the main theme of a new covenant. The Lord Will Restore shows that even after the Israelites disobeyed God in many different ways and at many different times, that he will always forgive, and continue to provide protection for them. The new covenant is the highest point of God’s saving work and deed for his people. He promises to make an everlasting covenant with his people in which he will write all of his laws on their hearts, bring complete forgiveness of sin and cleanse them, put his own Spirit in them to empower them to love and obey all of his commands, raise up a faithful Davidic king to rule over them, bring them back into the land to reunify them into one people of God, and cause them to be a light to the nations. This is the second to last important covenant that we have seen through reading the Bible.
The last quote from the Wisdom Books: “But the Lord’s mercy is from age to age, toward those who fear him. His salvation is for the children’s children of those who keep his covenant and remember to carry out his precepts”
Lastly, we see our last covenant that we have encountered so far. This Psalm reminds us of many of the benefits that come along with being a child of the one, true, and all powerful God, Yaweh. Because he is a covenant God, we can be assured he will keep all of his promises to those who have and are in covenant agreement with him. Unlike the people that we have seen before, these ones will have to trust God through all of the hard and difficult times, even if there is no reason to or you may feel like you are getting let down. The quote above shows the humble respect given from a created thing to their Creator. Those who fear God actually honor and obey Him. Within the nation of Israel, this meant those who kept the covenant the Lord made with Israel and those who obeyed all of His commandments. This is the last example of God creating a covenant with His own people that we have read so far.
To summarize, the importance of knowing about the different covenants throughout the Bible is because the covenants provide the foundations for how the whole biblical story of God and his people hold together. As the story of the Bible unfolds, we see God is a covenant maker, covenant keeper, and a covenant fulfilling God. Through all of his covenants, we see that most of them have something in common. We see that in most of them, the main people have a hard time obeying and listening to God. This is a very similar thing that happens in our world today. Everyday, we are faced with complications between the good and the bad. Most of the time, we end up falling into the bad side, and break our covenant with God. Being the all powerful God he is, he is always there for us no matter what we decide to do. All of these prove how amazing God is to us, and how we need to always turn to him for our problems. We see so many different covenants throughout the first set of books, that there will be many more similar occurrences. Knowing that God is always there for us will indeed strengthen our relationship with Him.
