- Jeremiah 31: 31-33
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COVENANT:
A covenant is a solemn agreement between people or between God and a person or persons. A covenant is different from a contract which focuses on keeping an agreement regarding an external object, like a home or property. In a covenant the two parties, through mutual promises, pledge themselves to each other in order to become one entity. Christian marriage is a covenant between the spouses because in a real sense the two have become one. The ‘I’ is subordinated in the development and growth of the ‘We.’ Such a ‘death’ brings new life.
THE COVENANT WITH ADAM AND EVE:
There is no explicit mention of a covenant in the creation story. However, the context suggests that God desires a covenant relationship with our first parents. God makes a free and loving offer to share the divine life with Adam and Eve so that they (and we, I might add) would understand themselves as God’s image and likeness. God promises Adam and Eve that they will live in bliss and harmony with God in the garden of Paradise. All their needs will be satisfied and they will experience no shame or conflict. Further they will share in God’s loving dominion over all the other creatures. On their part they are to promise to live in accordance with God’s desires for them. Refusing to do so will result in empty futility, resulting in their identity as God’s image and likeness being jeopardized. They renege on their promise, succumb to the serpent’s temptation, disobey God and find themselves in shameful nakedness. Sin and evil have now entered their lives. Adam and Eve’s failure to keep their promise does not lead God to sever the covenant once and for all, a decision God could have made. Rather, God enforces the bonds of the covenant through mercy and compassion, by promising a Savior.
THE COVENANT WITH NOAH:
Early in the Bible we are beginning to notice a familiar pattern in the dynamics of covenant-relationship. Human beings are unfaithful to God and God responds with compassion and invigorating commitment. It is evil dwelling in the human heart that breaks the covenants with God. There is the heart-rending verse in Genesis 6 which captures God’s grief and seeming regret for having created humans. Given the context of God’s unremitting commitment to us, these moments reveal more the intense depravity of evil rather than any regret on God’s part. “When the Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved (verses 5-6).” The great flood is the story of the consequences of sin: evil is incompatible with God, and un-repented evil brings ultimate destruction.
God then enters into a covenant with Noah: “See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you: all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals that were with you and came out of the ark. I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth. This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you: I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth (Genesis 9: 9-13).”
THE COVENANTS WITH ABRAHAM AND MOSES:
We will look at these two covenants in greater detail in the next four weeks when we look more closely at God’s call to Abraham and Moses. For now it is important to appreciate the fact that the covenants tell us a whole lot about God’s constant faithfulness to us and our own ingratitude and tendency to thwart and even abort God’s deepest desires for communion with us. With Abraham God begins small, but this small family grows into a big clan, and through his grandson Jacob, multiplies into the twelve tribes of Israel in the land of Egypt. Through Moses God then enters into covenant with the Hebrews and over the course of forty years in the desert are formed into a nation. This people have originated from Abraham and they now become as numerous “as the stars in the heavens.” As I said, we will look into these covenants in more detail in the next four weeks.
COVENANTS AMONG THE PROPHETS:
The mission of the prophets was to call God’s people back to their covenant relationship with God. This appeal was made because the people had chosen to worship other gods, to allow and encourage sinful practices among them, and to strike up alliances with foreign nations who worshiped false gods, thereby placing their reliance on these foreign gods than on Yahweh, the God of Israel. Following a familiar pattern of succumbing to sin and rebellion against God, the Israelites were forced into exile by the Assyrians and Babylonians. In these dire circumstances God reinforces His profound love and compassion for Israel. The new element in the prophetic preaching regarding the covenantal relationship is that it will no longer be limited to Israel alone. In fact God desires a covenantal relationship with all of humanity and this divine desire will be fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Micah for instance challenges the corruption among priests and prophets, and condemns the fraudulent merchants and unjust judges, holding them to the standards of the covenant relationship with God. Yet he speaks of the restoration of Israel in the midst of these condemnations: “But you, Bethlehem-Ephrathah too small to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel; whose origin if from of old, from ancient times… for now his greatness shall reach to the ends of the earth; he shall be peace (Micah 5: 1, 3).” Jeremiah offers the same message of hope in the midst of doom and destruction. The opening Scripture passage voices God’s plan for a new covenant. The prophet Ezekiel became a prophet in Babylon. His first task was to prepare his countrymen for the final destruction of Jerusalem which they believed to be inviolable. After that his message changes to the promise of salvation in a new covenant: “For I will take you away from among the nations, gather you from all the foreign lands, and bring you back to your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will clean you. I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees. You shall live in the land I gave your fathers; you shall be my people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36: 24-29).”
The prophet Isaiah probably has the most hopeful message. The Servant-of-the-Lord oracles say it all. In the first oracle the Messiah will bring forth justice to the nations through compassion and mercy: “A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench, until he establishes justice on the earth (Isaiah 42: 3-4).” In the second oracle the messiah will bring about the conversion of the whole world: “It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth (Isaiah 49:6).” In the third oracle the redeemer submits willingly to insults and injury on our behalf: “I gave my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who plucked my beard; my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting (Isaiah 50:6).” In the final oracle, Isaiah 52:13-53:12, the suffering servant atones for the sins of his people and saves them from divine retribution. These prophecies find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ.