Then I will take you as My people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the labors of the Egyptians. Exodus 6:7.
And as the groom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you. Isaiah 62:5.
Have them construct a sanctuary for Me, so that I may dwell among them. Exodus 25:8.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God says:
Covenant. I am always seeking Covenant with you. Do you know what that means? In a Covenant relationship each has complete access to the other, joined as one in companionship, loyalty, and love. Complete openness to the other. It is a giving of oneself to the other in complete willingness and freedom. A bond that cannot be broken except by death. When you bond in Covenant with Me, we become one spirit and there is no death in the spirit, so it is forever. When you bond in covenant with a person of mortal flesh and blood there is death to break it asunder. But I do not ever break Covenant. I hate divorce. Malachi 2:16.
Covenant is the power of oneness. One can put a thousand to flight but two can put ten thousand to flight. But it is much more. It is being with Me always where everything I have is yours. You become My responsibility, My joy, and My crown. I cherish and protect you as the apple of My eye. My life becomes yours and yours becomes Mine. And together we bear fruit that endures.
As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your Maker rejoices over you. Why does a bridegroom rejoice over his bride? Because he has found his life companion who will give herself totally to him and be his joy and his partner in the adventure of life. Together they will have the fruit of children and the comfort of growing old together. He has found someone who will give her heart, her trust, her loyalty, and her friendship to him and he can entrust her with his heart and his well-being. He is no longer alone. She is a living spring to him and he to her. And he watches over and cares for her more than any other for she is the apple of his eye. He becomes a husband to her and she becomes a wife to him. She is his and he is hers. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise the husband also does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 1 Corinthians 7:4.
Now, take this out of the physical realm to a higher realm, that of the spirit. For I am Spirit and you are also, though you do have a body that now houses your spirit and your soul to live in the physical realm of the earth. But when Paul spoke of the beauty of the marriage covenant, he told you that he actually spoke with reference to Christ and the church. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are parts of His body. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.” Ephesians 5:25-32.
This is tremendous and I can only touch the edge with you to the deepness of being in Covenant with Me, your Maker, means to you and what it means to Me. I seek Covenant with you. I finally had to do it through Jesus so it would never be subject to the fickleness of mankind. At first, I made Covenant with Adam but he broke Covenant, and then Noah, but his sons did not all keep it, then Abraham and his descendants, but that too was constantly subject to their wandering to other gods.
I then made it with the people of Israel and Moses in the wilderness and dwelt among them. But they turned back to the wrongdoings of their ancestors who refused to hear My words, and they followed other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah broke My covenant which I made with their fathers. Jeremiah 11:10.
But I kept seeking to make an everlasting Covenant where I would be your God and you would be My people. I told Jeremiah of this, “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD: “I will put My law within them and write it on their heart; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.” Jeremiah 31:31-34.
And how would I do this? I will tell you in one word: Jesus. I sent My Son as one of you, representing you as your great High Priest, and I made Covenant with Him and then I invited you all to the wedding feast of My Son and gave you all to Him as His bride and in Him you joined in the everlasting Covenant of love that will never be broken.
When you heard the good news of your Salvation and took Jesus as your Lord, I sealed you in Him by the Holy Spirit, I gave you to Him cleansed of all sin and blameless in My sight as a chaste virgin, 2 Corinthians 11:2, and you became one spirit with Him and I commanded Him to lose nothing of what I had given Him but to raise you up on the last day. John 6:38-40. He became a husband to you and you a wife to Him.
And what did He give you the night before He died to seal that Covenant where He gave Himself for you and you in turn gave yourself to Him? It is so important I showed it to My servant Paul who was not there that night but to whom I later revealed the secrets of Christ’s Body, the church, “For I received from the LORD that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.
Do you see? The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise the husband also does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 1 Corinthians 7:4. He gave you His Body. And what do I tell you? It is written: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. And again, “Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discover what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect.” Romans 12:1-2.
And My servant Paul wrote more on this, “Or do you not know, brothers and sisters (for I am speaking to those who know the Law), that the Law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? For the married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he is alive; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, if while her husband is alive she gives herself to another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress if she gives herself to another man. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in regard to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were brought to light by the Law, were at work in the parts of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.” Romans 7:1-6.
Covenant love is the most beautiful love. It is commitment forever to Me, that I am your God, and My commitment forever to you, that you are Mine. Yes, Covenant with Me is forever. I am yours forever. It will never be broken. When you believed I sealed you in Christ. I gave you to Him as His bride and then He presented you to Me holy, blameless and without reproach to be Mine forever.
Isaiah knew of this Covenant I would make with you in Christ. He wrote, “Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; and do not feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced. But you will forget the shame of your youth, and no longer remember the disgrace of your widowhood. For your husband is your Maker, whose name is the LORD of Hosts, and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, who is called the God of all the earth. For the LORD has called you, like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, even like a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,” says your God. “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In an outburst of anger I hid My face from you for a moment, but with everlasting favor I will have compassion on you,” says the LORD your Redeemer. “For this is like the days of Noah to Me, when I swore that the waters of Noah would not flood the earth again; so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you nor rebuke you. For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but My favor will not be removed from you, nor will My covenant of peace be shaken,” says the LORD who has compassion on you. “Afflicted one, storm-tossed, and not comforted, behold, I will set your stones in antimony, and I will lay your foundations with sapphires. Moreover, I will make your battlements of rubies, and your gates of crystal, and your entire wall of precious stones. All your children will be taught by the LORD; and the well-being of your children will be great. In righteousness you will be established. You will be far from oppression, for you will not fear; and from terror, for it will not come near you. If anyone fiercely attacks you, it will not be from Me. Whoever attacks you will fall because of you. Behold, I Myself have created the smith who blows on the fire of coals and produces a weapon for its work; and I have created the destroyer to inflict ruin. No weapon that is formed against you will succeed; and you will condemn every tongue that accuses you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their vindication is from Me,” declares the LORD.” Isaiah 54:4-17.
This is Covenant talk. I defend you, protect you, vindicate you, and I am your righteousness. If you are in danger, I must go after our enemies. Do you remember Joshua and the Gibeonites? He made covenant with them and when they were being attacked by enemies that outnumbered them, they relied on that covenant. They sent word to Joshua, “Do not abandon your servants; come up to us quickly and save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites that live in the hill country have assembled against us.” Joshua 10:6. So, because of the covenant the Israelites had to go to their defense and protect them. So Joshua went up from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the valiant warriors. And I honored that covenant, I told Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have handed them over to you; not one of them will stand against you.” And Joshua defeated the armies of all five kings that came against Gibeon, and as they fled from Israel, I hurled large stones from heaven on them and more died from the hailstones than those whom the sons of Israel killed with the sword. And as the sun begin to set, Joshua was not quite done fighting the Amorites and he did not want them to escape in the darkness of the night. So Joshua spoke to Me about it. And I told him what to do. He then said in the sight of Israel, “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, at the Valley of Aijalon!” So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies. Yes, the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hurry to go down for almost a whole day. I listened to the voice of Joshua and I fought for Israel. I had Covenant with them and they had made covenant with the Gibeonites. Do you see? I have Covenant with Jesus and He made Covenant with you. So now I fight for you in Him.
And this Covenant is forever. You know that, just read the book of Revelation. “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be their God, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Revelation 21:2-5.
I love you. You are Mine. I have called you by name and espouse you to Me forever. Your life matters.
I will espouse you to Me forever; yes, I will espouse you to Me in righteousness and in justice, in favor and in compassion, and I will espouse you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD. Hosea 2:19-20.
And I will say to those who were not My people, “You are My people!” And they will say, “You are my God!” Hosea 2:23.