Friday, January 7, 2011

Cut a Covenant

Genesis 15:18 - On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land...

God is a God of covenant. The Hebrew meaning of covenant is to cut. In the ancient days covenants were cut between two people. Animals were used to solidify this deal. They were cut in two and placed opposite each other and each man walked between the cut pieces. There was an understanding that if either one broke that covenant they would end up like the animal.

God told Abram, as we saw yesterday, that the land he saw would be his and all his descendants'. Abram asked how he would know that it would be his. This was the beginning of this covenant.

God asked Abram to bring him two of three types of animals and birds (even the number and types of animals have rich meaning). The animals were to be cut in two. Abram was probably beginning to get the picture. As Abram fell into a deep, God-induced sleep, a smoking oven and burning torch passed between the pieces of meat. The oven and torch were God Himself. I'm assuming the deep sleep was because Abram would not be able to survive the very presence of God. "You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live”(Exodus 33:20). Note, though, that it was customary for two to walk through the sacrificial animals. Only God walked through, making the covenant His covenant with us. It will never be broken because God never changes. We are the ones who will so choose to break it. Also...wasn't Jesus the only one who died for our sins?

So God's covenant was made. Yet there's more! Abram had no offspring. He reminded God of this (like He needs it), I'm sure, when he heard the words "you and your descendants." Thus the LORD had to let Abram know that He would produce those offspring. Never fear.... And that's where a bit of trouble comes in. Abram has his first son, not through his wife Sarai, but through her handmaiden, which was not what God had in mind. Although God honored this firstborn son in one way, it was not the honor that was initially intended.

After the birth of Ishmael (and the link to the Islamic nation) God spoke again to the covenant that He had with Abram and how he would become the father of many nations, with arai. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you (Genesis 17:7). In verse 8 God says again that the land he is in would be part of that inheritance.

Oh, how deep this gets! Just as God covenants with Abram so He covenants with us as we receive Him, as we sacrifice our lives for Him, as we separate (divide) from the old person to the new and from the world to become strangers in this world, set apart as children of God, children of the inheritance, children of the promise or covenant, not the world.

So it continues, Sarai bore Isaac, the true son of the inheritance. There is one more cutting that needs to take place. The ritual of circumcision. It was as a sign of the covenant. Genesis 17:10 - This is My covenant which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: Every male child among you shall be circumcised. It was a sign that separated the Jews as well as those bought as slaves then from the non-Jew. I look at this as a type of difference between the believer today and the non-believer. Our hearts have been circumcised to the Lord. Romans 2:29 - ...circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter...

Interesting to note that Ishmael was also circumcised as one within the household. I wonder if this was to maintain some relationship, as it were, with God? There is no one not invited into relationship with God, and even back then, God honored Ishmael. The Muslims are invited yet today.

We as Gentiles are grafted into the heritage and inheritance through Christ. Grafted...isn't that another form of cutting? Romans 11:17 gives us hint about this: And if some of the branches were broken off [Jews], and you, being a wild olive tree [Gentiles], were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree...  When we choose Christ we are like of the wild olive stock that is grafted in. 

An interesting verse shows a type today for non-believers: Genesis 17:14 - And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant. The covenant with God is out there for all people. If it is presented to us and we do not want a part of it, we will, in the end, be cut off. Cut off. More cutting.

There are numerous scriptures in reference to cutting. Anything that causes us sin should be figuratively cut off. Branches that do not bear fruit are normally pruned or cut off...that also means Christians whose lives are not lived in a way to bear fruit...they are removed. Our hearts can be cut by the Word of God, which is a good thing. We begin to realize the truths that lie there and they pierce our souls, laying bare our wrong thinking, our sin, our weaknesses.

God desires to cut a covenant with all mankind. He did that through Jesus Christ who became the Savior of all. When we enter into covenant with Him, He does as He did with Abram. We have made the sacrifice of our lives like Abram did. God has honored that with the sacrifice of His Son. God will not walk out on that covenant. 

Colossians 2:11 - In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ...



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