THE COVENANT STORY
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Covenant - A formal relationship between to parties who agree on working together for a common goal
Covenant - A formal relationship between to parties who agree on working together for a common goal
What are they?
What are they?
ABRAHAM & ABIMELEK ...make an agreement about access to wells for watering animals.
GENESIS 21:22-34
ISAAC & ABIMELEK ...make an agreement to have peaceful relations and not attack each other.
GENESIS 26:25-32
DAVID & JONATHAN ...make an agreement to protect each other from Saul.
1 SAMUEL 23: 13-18
DAVID & THE ELDERS OF HEBRON ...make an agreement that they will follow David and acknowledge him as king.
1 CHRONICLES 11:1-3
SOLOMON & HIRAM ...make an agreement to keep their kingdoms in a peaceful and productive relationship
1 KINGS 5:10-12
These stories show how covenants can fulfill many different purposes, but they all involve some greater goal that the two parties will work towards. The Covenants theme video traces the 4 covenants God makes in the Old Testament and how all those agreements are fulfilled in Jesus and the New Covenant he initiates.
PART 1 -
The Garden
The Garden
While the word “covenant” isn’t used in Genesis 1-3, the relationship God initiates with humanity in the garden is very similar to a covenant:
GOD’S PART
God provides the world-garden as a gift to humanity, and appoints them as divine image-bearers who will oversee it. GENESIS 1:26-28
Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”
So God created human beings in his own image.
In the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”
HUMANITY’S PART
Humans are tasked with caring for and cultivating the garden and to trust God’s knowledge of good and evil over their own attempts to define right and wrong. GENESIS 2:15
The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.
Humanity fractures the relationship by suspicion that leads to rebellion, which results in exile from the garden into a world where work and family are as much a burden as a blessing.
Genesis 3
PART 2
Noah
Noah
After purging his world of humanity’s evil, God makes a covenant with Noah and all creation, opening up a new future for God’s good world based on his promises. Genesis 8,9
GOD’S PART
God promises that despite humanity’s continued tendency towards selfishness and evil, he will not destroy them or his world like this ever again. Rather the earth will become a reliable place where God will work out his purposes to rescue everyone and everything.
GENESIS 8:18-21 AND Genesis 9:8-11
NOAH AND CREATION’S PART
Nothing. God doesn’t require a darn thing. He just states his promise, and signs it with a rainbow!
GENESIS 9:12-17
As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”