Most people other than the legal profession don’t use “covenant” in their speech. A covenant is an agreement between two parties.
We don’t call purchasing a car on credit a “covenant,” but it is an example of one. If I buy a car on credit, the car dealer agrees to provide me with the car I have chosen. My side of the agreement is to make monthly payments until it has been paid for.
God stated His part of the covenant with Abram. Then he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess” (Genesis 15:7).
Abram was very bold and asked for more information about the covenant. But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” (Genesis 15:8).
The language of covenant-making in the Old Testament is “cut a covenant.” My guess is that the next verses are where that terminology originated.
He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other, but he did not cut the birds in two (Genesis 15:9-10).
Victor Hamilton describes “cutting a covenant” like this: “The biblical world offers widespread evidence that animals were slaughtered in treaty contraction ceremonies.
“It suggests that the two parties to the treaty walked between the rows of freshly killed animals and placed a curse upon themselves if either party should prove disloyal to the terms of the treaty.”
What is awesome and interesting is that God binds Himself to the covenant. In effect, He places a curse upon Himself if He doesn’t perform His part of the covenant.
Not a Walk in the Park
We have the privilege of walking with God. However, walking with God is seldom a walk in the park.
Abram did as God commanded and this is what he experienced.
And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.
And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:11-16).
When I purchase a new car, at the very least, I get to enjoy the new car smell for a few hundred miles. Not so Abram.
God initiated the covenant, but Abram had to drive away birds that wanted to eat the sacrificial meat. In a dream, God revealed Hebrew slavery in Egypt for 400 years before the covenant was completely realized.
The Rest is History
The historical record reveals that things worked out as God had described to Abram.
The question for us is whether we know we have a covenant with God or not. You may know that the New Testament could easily be called the New Covenant.
You may also realize that during the Lord’s Supper, Jesus described our relationship with Him with the words, “blood of the covenant.”
Like the patriarchs of the Old Testament, we have an agreement with God. He invites us to live with Him, follow His direction, and partner with Him in the redemption of a broken world.
YouTube Discussion
Rudy Ross and I discussed this passage on YouTube today.
Real Voices 