Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Ephesians 2:12.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
If you want to understand your relationship with Me, if you want to know how to have the answers, healing, protection, and provision you need, if you want to know why Jesus is the only way to Me, and if you want to know what you must do to have eternal life, you must understand covenant, and not only what covenant is but also the covenants I have made with man, and why they are essential for you.
A covenant is a beautiful and sacred way of living where two become as one in a relationship that enhances the life of each. Covenant makes family. It joins a man and a woman who were not related to each other into a new bloodline and makes them heirs of one another. It makes brothers and sisters out of those who were not born physically as such. It makes child and parent where biologically it was not so. It makes two nations as one in faithfulness to protect one another if an enemy should attack one of them and to not harm but to bless and help each other.
There are a number of reasons people make covenant with one another but primarily it is because a relationship is desired for fellowship, partnership in an enterprise, family, protection, provision, or power, but the highest purpose is for a union of perfect love where for each one all they have also belongs to the other one.
The parties to a covenant have certain rights and duties towards as well as authority over each other that they do not have with those who are not in covenant with them.
There are certain elements that make up a covenant. Covenants require two or more joining together with mutual promises expressed in the permanence of an oath to be faithful and loyal to the relationship, blessings when kept and curses when broken, the shedding and sharing of blood, the reception of a new name, the exchange of gifts, a covenant meal with bread and wine, and a memorial or witness to remind the parties of the Covenant so it will be always before them.
You enter covenant with someone with whom you want a relationship but do not have it already. Parents do not need to enter covenant with their children, the children are already in blood relationship with them and are their heirs. You enter Covenant with one you otherwise would not be related to and would have no obligation to take care of except for covenant, which then creates the relationship, the obligations and the authority.
I made you in My own image and according to My likeness in perfect oneness. I had no need for a covenant at that time with mankind. You were My children, My family, My espoused people and I had authority to bless you, protect you, provide for you, and take care of your needs. I not only had authority to do so but also an obligation to do so. Parents have an obligation to care for their children. And it was My delight. And I still delight in the prosperity of My people. I want to bless, that is who I am.
But Adam and Eve broke that relationship with Me and gave their lives to another. I had no authority any longer to act in their lives in an intimate way. I could generally bless and provide for them but with respect to fellowship they could reject Me or accept Me.
This is like marriage, as you know it in a natural way, if one spouse breaks the covenant and goes with another spouse by divorce and remarriage (I hate divorce), the prior spouse has no authority with the divorced one anymore. And the divorced one loses all benefits he or she would have inherited if the relationship had not been broken. It is the same with children if they are adopted by another. Their natural parent no longer has any say in their life because the adoptive parent has become the legal parent. The adopted child is treated as if he or she is the child of the adoptive parent as far as inheritance and all other parental rights go.
Why did Adam and Eve do this? They thought their best interests diverged from My plan for their lives and that I was withholding information from them that would have made them independent of Me. But this was not true. They were in My image and according to My likeness but their very being came from Me and was sustained by Me. Without Me their lives could not be sustained free from the connection to My life as the source they fed upon for power and sustenance. Like a severed branch they would dry up and die. Like a personal computer that was not plugged in to charge, the power would run down. The devil cannot give life. He can only take it steal, kill, and destroy it. He is a murderer and a liar.
Adam and Eve went from a life of blessing in My rest where all good flowed into them, to a life of painful toil in the confusion and agitation of the world.
They no longer had a master who loved them more than Himself who came to serve them. They had a master who made them his slaves so he could use their dominion authority to destroy the earth and one another. They no longer had a God who made them to be One with Him and gave them all good things and perfect gifts, they had a “god” who hated them and all they stood for. They had exchanged the creator of all for a creature who had given himself to lawlessness.
They severed their relationship with Me and gave their lives to another so that I no longer had authority to enter into their lives in an intimate way unless they invited Me.
I could generally bless and provide for them but with respect to fellowship they could reject Me or accept Me. This is like marriage, if one spouse breaks the covenant and goes with another spouse by divorce and remarriage, the prior spouse has no authority with the divorced one anymore. And the divorced one loses all benefits they would have inherited if the relationship had not been broken.
How did Adam and Eve do this? They got born again into a new family and became heirs of the devil. How did they do that? Just as you are now are born again back to Me by submitting to the incorruptible seed of My Word as truth and rejecting the corruptible seed of the devil’s lies so that you are transferred from the realm of darkness into My marvelous light and are qualified to receive the inheritance of the saints in light, so too, by rejecting the incorruptible seed of My Word of truth and submitting to the corruptible seed of the devil’s lies, Adam and Eve were born again into the realm of darkness and cut off their inheritance with the saints in light. They were adopted by the devil by their choice.
Thus, Adam and Eve had despised their birthright and were “born again” by the corruptible seed of the devil’s lies and became children of the devil rather than God. Children of wrath for they had now become heirs with Satan, and his inheritance is wrath and hell.
Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My Word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me. John 5:43-45.
But I do not desire that any should perish, I want all people to be saved and come to know the truth. I want to take you all back to the blessings and abundance of the Garden of Eden where you have only the Blessing working for you. A place where no curse can abide.
I want to be involved with the ones I had created in My image and according to My likeness for I made you to have a people of My own, a family like Me, with whom I could have a loving relationship of fellowship forever. I made all things for you and I want to enjoy them with you.
And thus came My beautiful and amazing idea of “Covenant.” Anyone who made Covenant with Me though still in the world was no longer just of the world. They had aligned with Me and My Kingdom and Kingdom benefits were now authorized and released in their lives. This was the way I regained access to bless, deliver, heal, and fight for My people.
I sought someone who would make Covenant with Me so I could get back into the earth.
Noah made covenant but it was a covenant for all men and animals that I would never flood the entire earth with water again. There would continue to be seedtime and harvest. The sign was the rainbow and blood sacrifices were offered when Noah came out of the ark.
And then I found a man named Abram, later I renamed him Abraham, and he was willing to make covenant with Me. Because of his faith he was able to enter covenant with, Me. Abraham’s line became the way for My promised Messiah to come into the earth opened up and the Blessing of the Garden of Eden on the first man and woman now became the Blessing of Abraham.
There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of bloods nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1:9-13.
Abraham believed My Words over the lies of the devil and I credited that to him as righteousness. Righteousness by faith.
I love you and want to have you with Me forever. And that is what Covenant is all about. But this is enough for now, but tomorrow we will talk about the Abrahamic Covenant.