May 2001

 

God of the Covenant

 

Covenant”: 298 times in the Bible

(Gen.23 times, Deut.26 times, Josh.21 times, Psal.21 times, Jer.21 times, Hebr.16 times)

 

 

Gene 6:18 (NKJV) "But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall go into the ark--you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you.

 

Gene 9:13 (NKJV) "I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.

 

Gene 17:2 (NKJV) "And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly."

 

Gene 26:28 But they said, "We have certainly seen that the Lord is with you. So we said, `Let there now be an oath between us, between you and us; and let us make a covenant with you, 29 `that you will do us no harm, since we have not touched you, and since we have done nothing to you but good and have sent you away in peace. You [are] now the blessed of the Lord.' "

 

Exod 23:32 (NKJV) "You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

 

Exod 24:7 (NKJV) Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of the people. And they said, "All that the Lord has said we will do, and be obedient."  8 And Moses took the blood, sprinkled [it] on the people, and said, "This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you according to all these words."

 

 

Recognition of family ties in covenant – leads to generational curses

 

Exod 34:6 (NKJV) And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, 7 "keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing [the] [guilty], visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation."

8 So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. 9 Then he said, "If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we [are] a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance."

10 And He said: "Behold, I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among whom you [are] shall see the work of the Lord. For it [is] an awesome thing that I will do with you. 11 "Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.

12 "Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. 13 "But you shall destroy their altars, break their [sacred] pillars, and cut down their [wooden] images 14 `(for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name [is] Jealous, [is] a jealous God), 15 "lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifice to their gods, and [one] [of] [them] invites you and you eat of his sacrifice, 16 "and you take of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods and make your sons play the harlot with their gods. 17 "You shall make no molded gods for yourselves.

 

 

Warnings and change of God’s decrees for man’s repentance

 

Levi 26:14 (NKJV) `But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments, 15 and if you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments, so that you do not perform all My commandments, [but] break My covenant, 16 I also will do this to you: I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. 17 I will set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you.

18 `And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. 19 I will break the pride of your power; I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. 20 And your strength shall be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit. 21 `Then, if you walk contrary to Me, and are not willing to obey Me, I will bring on you seven times more plagues, according to your sins. 22 I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number; and your highways shall be desolate.

23 `And if by these things you are not reformed by Me, but walk contrary to Me, 24 then I also will walk contrary to you, and I will punish you yet seven times for your sins. 25 And I will bring a sword against you that will execute the vengeance of the covenant; when you are gathered together within your cities I will send pestilence among you; and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. 26 When I have cut off your supply of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall bring back your bread by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied.

 

Levi 26:40 (NKJV) `[But] if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, and that they also have walked contrary to Me, 41 and [that] I also have walked contrary to them and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled, and they accept their guilt-- 42 then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember; I will remember the land.

43 The land also shall be left empty by them, and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; they will accept their guilt, because they despised My judgments and because their soul abhorred My statutes. 44 Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, nor shall I abhor them, to utterly destroy them and break My covenant with them; for I [am] the Lord their God. 45 But for their sake I will remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I [am] the Lord.' "

 

Levi 26:8 Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.

Eccl 4:12 Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

 

Numb 25:12 (NKJV) "Therefore say, `Behold, I give to him My covenant of peace; 13 `and it shall be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the children of Israel.' "

 

2Kin 2:15 (NKJV) Now when the sons of the prophets who [were] from Jericho saw him, they said, "The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha." And they came to meet him, and bowed to the ground before him.

 

2Chr 7:14 (NKJV) "if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 15 "Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to prayer [made] in this place. 16 "For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that My name may be there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.

 

17 "As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, and do according to all that I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and My judgments, 18 "then I will establish the throne of your kingdom, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, `You shall not fail [to] [have] a man as ruler in Israel.'

 

 

Recognition of family covenant

 

Isai 6:5 (NKJV) So I said: "Woe [is] me, for I am undone! Because I [am] a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts."

 

 

Recognition of group covenant

 

Matt 18:19 "Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.

 

           

Matt 12:25 But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.

 

 

Recognition of generational covenant

 

Luke 11:47 (NKJV) "Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. 48 "In fact, you bear witness that you approve the deeds of your fathers; for they indeed killed them, and you build their tombs.

 

Acts 7:51 (NKJV) "[You] stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers [did], so [do] you. 52 "Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers, 53 "who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept [it]."

 

 

The effect of sin upon the land and the people

 

Levi 19:23 (NKJV) `When you come into the land, and have planted all kinds of trees for food, then you shall count their fruit as uncircumcised. Three years it shall be as uncircumcised to you. [It] shall not be eaten. 24 `But in the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy, a praise to the Lord. 25 `And in the fifth year you may eat its fruit, that it may yield to you its increase: I [am] the Lord your God.

 

 

The cleansing from sin must be atoned for by blood

 

2Sam 21:1 (NKJV) Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David inquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, "[It] [is] because of Saul and [his] bloodthirsty house, because he killed the Gibeonites."

…14 They buried the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son in the country of Benjamin in Zelah, in the tomb of Kish his father. So they performed all that the king commanded. And after that God heeded the prayer for the land.

 

 

The spirit of intercessory repentance to avert corporate judgment

 

Gene 18:26 (NKJV) So the Lord said, "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes."

 

 

The prayer sequence which led into a higher order covenant

 

Daniel 9:3-19 Intercession for the ending of

 

 

the Babylonian captivity (around 540BC)

Dan 9:20 (NKJV) Now while I [was] speaking, praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord my God for the holy mountain of my God,

Dan 9:24 (NKJV) "Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy.

 

 

Ezra 1:8-9 1st return from the captivity 538BC with Sheshbazzar

Ezra 7:1-6 2nd return from the captivity 458BC with Ezra – skilled scribe in the Law of Moses

Ezra 9:1-15 Repentance on behalf of the people – it led to… (chapt.10) … repentance of the people

 

 

Nehemiah starts again the building of the walls of Jerusalem in 444BC

Nehem.1:4-11 intercession for the people – which led to…

Nehem.2:1-5 the request went up to the King – which led to…

Nehem.9:1-37 public repentance by all the people – which led to…

Nehem.9:38-10:1/29 Covenant!

 

George E. Markakis