Covenants Relationships

This week’s post is meant to help us prepare to move out of the way and allow God to sanctify us. It is our prayer that you will be edified and equipped. We also ask that you share our the posts with others, tweet, repost, email to your friends, or just tell someone about them.  Enjoy the read!

Read & Meditate

Gensis 15:17-21:"When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi[e] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

Read & Meditate

There are at least two different views of marriage. Only one of these views reflects the Biblical model for marriage, the Covenantal View. The dominant view in our culture, popular marriage literature, as well as in the modern church, however, is the Contractual View. This may be one of the significant reasons the divorce rate is so high among Christians. 

Contracts are based on protection and mistrust. Contract (n) - an agreement between two or more parties, especially one that is written and enforceable by law. They allow the parties involved to look for loopholes and exit clauses and are centered on your rights and protection. In fact, the Bible doesn’t say anything about “contracts” anywhere in scripture! 

A Covenant is not a “Contract”.  A covenant is intended by God to be a lifelong fruitful relationship between a man and a woman. Marriage is a vow to God, to each other, our families, and our community to remain steadfast in unconditional love, reconciliation and sexual purity, while purposefully growing in our covenant marriage relationship. The term “covenant” means “a coming together.” In the Bible, the word covenant is translated in Hebrew over 300 times! 

Where do we learn how to set up and maintain a covenant? The scriptures say that we are to do everything we can to maintain unity. For example, the story of Abraham, God, and the amazing promises God made to him. There is a story nestled in Genesis 15 that paints a powerful picture – to miss it is to miss the core message of the Bible and how as a disciple of Jesus we are to view covenants. In summary, God reinforces His promise to Abram a third time. First God told Abram to cut some animals in half. Afterward, he put Abram to sleep and talked to him about his future. Then God appeared as a smoking fire and passed between the pieces of the animals. This describes a common practice in those days called ‘cutting a covenant.’ Basically, when two people wanted to make a contract or a deal with each other, they would cut some animals into pieces and lay them apart on the ground. A space was left between them forming a sort of path and each party would then state their oaths aloud as they walked down the path. The meaning of the custom was simply this, ‘May I be cut into pieces like these animals if I don’t keep my side the covenant. Normally there were commitments made on both sides, but not in Genesis 15. When God promised Abraham, he basically said that if He broke His side of the covenant he would pay, and if Abraham broke his side of the covenant God would pay!

Respond and Implement 

1) What are you doing on a daily basis to maintain your side of the covenants you have made with others?

2) How are you chasing your comfort and forfeiting your commitments to the church or your home?

Grace and Peace Be With You