Power of the Blood Covenant: Uncover the Secret Strength of God's Eternal Oath

by Malcolm Smith

  Is it possible that these people have not grasped what the Gospel is really about? Is it possible they have heard only parts of the Gospel, while missing the vital ingredient?

  When I was speaking in a church in Hong Kong, the pastor asked my advice. He told me that so many of the church members who regularly attended the Sunday services and midweek Bible study also would go to the Buddhist temple during the week. Whatever he would say and teach made no difference. He was frustrated and asked if I had an answer.

  During the week, I went to the temple to see if I could find out why these believers would go there. The answer was in the vast courtyard filled with little tables of fortune-tellers. Each table had a line of men and women seeking an answer to a problem, advice on business or marriage, direction for the best time to take a journey, and so on.

  I questioned the pastor regarding the subject of his sermons. There was a great emphasis on heaven, the second coming, hell and judgment, as well as teaching concerning the Trinity and the work of Jesus on the cross.

  His people came to church to be taught about the transcendent God who had worked in history, far above them, far removed from their daily grind. Salvation, as the congregation had been taught, focused on a Jesus who would save them from hell and take them to heaven and the fine-print details of the events that would herald the end of the world, but they went to the fortune-teller for advice on living today! They needed to know the God who walked through life with them and in them, the source of wisdom and the power to live.

  Returning to the United States, I realized that it was much the same situation here. The weekly diet of many Christians is a call to escape hell and get to heaven after death, and many of the best-selling Christian books deal with the intricate details of end-time prophecy. But how to live in the power of the Spirit, to walk as Jesus walked, and to love as He loved are questions rarely talked about.

  This book is my answer to the many believers who are asking the same questions Bob did. I am seeking to introduce many believers to a Christianity that works in the here and now, that empowers us to live in heaven on the way to heaven.

  The answer is to be found in understanding that the Gospel is the announcement of God’s covenant and how we can walk in its authority and power in the midst of the darkness of the world’s system. Let me warn you: It is possible that what I am about to share with you may turn your present understanding of the Gospel and the way the Christian life should be lived on its head. If your present understanding of the Gospel is not producing fruit in your life, then it is time to say, “Maybe I have missed something, and it is time to radically reexamine my faith.”

  Chapter 2: Welcome to the World of Covenants

  This book unfolds the amazing story of the Gospel, looking at it through the eyes and ears of those who first heard it. Words that we are familiar with through reading the Bible were pregnant with a meaning to the original audience that we who live in the twenty-first century are ignorant of. They understood the Gospel as the working out of a covenant.

  Through my years of studying the Bible I had missed it, mainly because the concept of covenant is almost unknown in the Western world today. However, this concept of covenants is known and documented in ancient societies and among peoples of the Third World to this day.

  The people who populate the pages and stories of our Bible lived in the atmosphere of covenants as the air they breathed. All relationships were linked in some way to covenant, whether in the union of nations or clans or individuals. The family unit was understood as a covenant, each family member being tightly knit to the others with a sense of covenant responsibility.

  The Bible contains two documents that have been unfortunately named the Old Testament and the New Testament. The word “testament” is not adequate to describe what these two documents are. The correct naming of these two documents is the old covenant and the new covenant.

  The old covenant is the covenant that was made with Israel at Mount Sinai through Moses, their representative. It was the covenant of the law of the Ten Commandments, the sacrificial system of offering up lambs, bulls, and goats to cover the sins of the people; the mark and seal of membership in the covenant was the circumcision of the male.

  The new covenant is called new because it made all that went before it old and of no more use as a means of salvation. It was not just another covenant that improved on the previous one, as this year’s automobile model is an improvement over last year’s. The word “new”1 means new in kind, that which has never been thought or dreamed of before. This covenant is mediated by the Lord Jesus and established in His blood. Membership is in being sealed by the Spirit of God, who writes the law on the heart and in the desires of men and women. He is the power of the covenant enabling those within it to live its promises.

  A Binding Obligation

  The English word covenant comes from the Latin con-venire, which literally means “to come together or agree.”2 The Hebrew word is berith, which literally means “to bind or to fetter; a binding obligation.” In the Scriptures, it is the ultimate expression of committed love and trust and was usually made to define, confirm, establish, or make binding a relationship that had been in the making for some time.

  We need a working definition of a covenant that we can explain in detail as we proceed through our study. So here is our definition of a covenant that we will use throughout the book: A covenant is a binding, unbreakable obligation between two parties, based on unconditional love sealed by blood and sacred oath, that creates a relationship in which each party is bound by specific undertakings on each other’s behalf. The parties to the covenant place themselves under the penalty of divine retribution should they later attempt to avoid those undertakings. It is a relationship that can only be broken by death.

  In the Bible, we see covenants that for the most part are unequal covenants. That is, they are made unilaterally, initiated by a person who is vastly superior in power and authority, and graciously imposed on a person of lesser power and position for one’s greater good.

  In the making of covenants between clans and tribes and people, certain ingredients were always present. We will see that in making covenant with us, God used the pattern of human covenant-making. By having a working understanding of the ingredients that made human covenants, we can better understand the covenant that God has made with us in Jesus Christ.

  The Representative

  When a group of people prepared to enter into covenant with another party, they selected a man from among themselves to represent them in the covenant-making. The word “represent”3 means to present again, to re-present the will of another, to speak and act with authority on the part of another; to be a substitute or agent for. Knowing the needs and desires of those he represents, the representative re-presents their case, speaking as and for them to the other party of the covenant.

  The representative had to be of the same blood and family as those he represented. As representative, he gathered the tribe, clan, or family into himself and made the covenant as and for them. The representative is also known as the guarantor of the covenant, the one in and through whom the covenant is made and who is the guarantee that its terms and promises will be kept.

  This can be difficult for us in the West to understand, for we think of life as beginning and ending with the individual. The Bible introduces us to a different way of thinking, in which people are “in” a representative person whose actions and achievements become the actions and achievements of the whole family, clan, or tribe.

  The familiar story of David and Goliath from 1 Samuel 17 perfectly illustrates this way of thinking. The Philistine armies had declared a war of aggression on Israel, and King Saul mustered his troops to halt them. The Philistines were a tall people, trained warriors striking terror in their enemies’ minds. They wore brass armor and tall-feathered headdresses atop their helmets that made them appear taller than they really were. There were some among their ranks who were massive, gigantic men toweri
ng up to nine feet tall. Goliath of Gath was such a giant and was the hero champion of the Philistine army.

  Before the fighting began, Goliath stepped out and bellowed a challenge across the valley. It sounds strange to our ears, certainly unlike we conduct our wars today!

  Then he stood and cried out to the armies of Israel, and said to them, "Why have you come out to line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and you the servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us." And the Philistine said, "I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together."

  1 Samuel 17:8-10

  He was saying that he represented the Philistines, in a sense had become them, so that their history was wrapped up in him. When he would fight a similar representative of Israel, it would be the end of the war. The whole issue would be settled in two men who embodied their people.

  Saul was the tallest man in Israel but secluded himself to his tent and offered prizes to the man who would accept the challenge that Goliath reissued every morning and evening. But no one accepted the giant’s challenge or the prize of the hand of the princess in marriage or lifetime freedom from taxes.

  As the weeks passed, the monstrous man became bold and lumbered across the valley to hurl his challenge in the faces of the cowering Israelites. The Israelites had lost the war by default; all they had to do was to formally surrender and get out of their shameful position.

  After six weeks of humiliation for the Israelite army, back in Bethlehem, old Jesse, father of some of the soldiers at the front, called for his young teenager David, who was too young to be called to the army and was left at home to care for the sheep. He instructed David to find out what was happening in the battle and gave him some gifts to give to his brothers.

  David arrived in time to hear the morning challenge along with oaths and curses directed at the men whom Goliath called the yellow cowards of Saul. David did not know this had been going on for six weeks and looked expectantly at his brothers to see who would be the first to answer the challenge. Then they reluctantly told him the shameful story of their army that did not have a representative champion.

  David immediately volunteered. King Saul could not really refuse. David was an Israelite and therefore was qualified as one who could take the place of Israel. He was given permission to go and fight the monstrous man.

  Understand how the army of Israel looked at this when the news was shouted through the trenches that a representative had been found and Israel had a champion. He didn’t look like much of a threat to Goliath: a slip of a shepherd lad without armor and with only a slingshot in hand. But he exuded a notable confidence in God.

  As he left the ranks of the army to follow the enormous figure weighted with armor, he ceased to be simply a private citizen of Israel. Fully aware of the needs of Israel, he was representing them, as they, because of cowardice, were unable to present themselves. He summed Israel in himself, embodying its people; what happened to him this day happened to the entire nation. His victory or defeat would be felt not only by the army, but also in every village and city of Israel in the lives of people who were not there at the battlefront. At that moment, the history of an Israelite as yet unborn was being decided. In David, present and future Israel went to face Goliath.

  Goliath had not yet reached his own front lines when David danced behind him, issuing his challenge:

  Then David said to the Philistine: "You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand and I will strike you and take your head from you. And this day I will give the carcasses of the camp of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. Then all this assembly shall know that the Lord does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord's, and He will give you into our hands."

  1 Samuel 17:45-47

  He danced around the massive man, his slingshot whirling in his hand. There was a very small hole in Goliath’s helmet that David aimed for, and with his expertise and the grace of God the stone went through it and sunk into the Philistine’s temple. The man staggered and fell, and David took the giant’s own gigantic sword and hacked off his head.

  Behind him, a shout of triumph went up from the watching Israelites. They shouted the victory and poured down the sides of the valley to route the stunned Philistines. They shouted of a victory to which they had contributed nothing except six weeks of cowardice. Yet they were correct. It was their victory, for they had been “in” their representative and shared his victory as if it were their own. But without him there would be no victory, for he was the guarantor of it.

  The Covenant Oath

  We may feel strange with the word “covenant” and the concepts attached to it because the word is rarely used in modern society; and even when it is used, it is confused with a contract.

  Let us get the concept of a contract out of our heads right away. A contract is a vehicle whereby properties and goods are conveyed from one person to another.4 Contracts are negotiable by both of the parties and can be changed or even canceled. In a contract, promises are made that are as good as the character of the contracting parties whose signatures seal the document; therefore, they are easily broken.

  A covenant is totally different. A covenant is far above the exchange of properties and things. It is the giving of one’s whole person and life to another and the wholehearted receiving of that other person and his or her life.

  A covenant is made with an oath. An oath is a solemn affirmation, a binding of oneself to the fulfillment of the words spoken while appealing to God. The covenant partners of Old Testament times called upon God to be the witness of the truth of their words. They also called upon God to be their strength in the keeping of the covenant terms. Finally, they called upon God to keep an ever-present watch over the parties to ensure that the covenant was indeed being kept. By calling on God while making an oath, the two parties made God the third party to the covenant. Once made with the oath, a covenant was nonnegotiable and could not be altered.

  We demand an oath from persons giving testimony in court or those in whom we are placing a great deal of trust, such as representatives entering public office. When such oaths are taken, the expression “So help me, God” is used. The phrase means that if the words given in testimony are false, or if the person betrays them, then God will be the person’s judge.

  The Covenant Blessing or Promises

  Every covenant of Old Testament times contained the promises each party made to the other and the responsibilities each took with the benefit of the other party in view. In 1 Samuel 20, in a covenant made between David and Jonathan, David swore to bless Jonathan.

  "And you shall not only show me the kindness of the Lord while I still live, that I many not die; but you shall not cut off your kindness from my house forever, no, not when the Lord has cut off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth."

  1 Samuel 20:14,15

  Years later, David blessed Mephibosheth with the blessing he had sworn in covenant oath to Mephibosheth’s father, Jonathan.

  So David said to him, “Do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness for Jonathan your father’s sake, and will restore to you all the land of Saul your grandfather; and you shall eat bread at my table continually.”

  2 Samuel 9:7

  Such promises, terms, and responsibilities were often written down and read at certain specified times in remembrance of the covenant being made.

  The Covenant Sacrifice

  At the making of a covenant, there was always the shedding of blood. An animal was slain and its carcass split down the middle into two halves. The parties making covenant
walked through the bloody path between the pieces of the divided animal. In vivid symbolism, they proclaimed that they were entering into a death and were journeying into a new life. They were dying to living for their self-interests alone and passing through that death to a new relationship of union with the other party to the covenant.

  They also shed their own blood, usually drawn from the right arm or hand. They would raise their bleeding right arms, calling upon God to be their witness. The combination of bloody sacrifice and their own bloodshed combined to give the powerful statement that each was implicitly making: “I will keep this covenant even if my blood has to be shed in order to do so. If I break this covenant, may my blood be shed and my dismembered body be thrown to the scavengers.”