Covenant Keepers, Pt 1 - No. 66

Judges 2:1 “I have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.” Read also Joshua 21:45; 23:14; 2 Chronicles 6:14; Nehemiah 1:5 and Psalm 89:33-35.

God is a covenant-maker and a covenant-keeper. He makes everlasting covenants. Here are a few of many verses that tell about His everlasting covenants: Genesis 17:7,19; Deuteronomy 7:8-9; 2 Samuel 23:5, 1 Chronicles 16:15-18; Isaiah 55:3 and Jeremiah 32:40.

Every covenant He makes He keeps. God says that He would have to do away with the laws of nature – day and night would have to cease and the waves of the sea no longer roll before He would break His covenant. The mountains would have to depart and the hills be removed; in fact heaven and earth would have to disappear before His words could fail! Read these wonderful promises: Isaiah 54:10; Jeremiah 31:35-37; 33:20-21; 25-26 and Matthew 24:35.

Let’s read another utterance from the mouth of God – Psalm 89:34, “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.” Because we are His people, God expects us to have this same covenant-keeping attitude. Because covenant-keeping is part of God’s character, He notices when covenants are broken. We see an example of this during the reign of King David. 2 Samuel 21:1 tells us, “Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David inquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, ‘It is because of Saul and his bloodthirsty house, because he killed the Gibeonites.’”

Many years before, Joshua and the elders of Israel made a covenant with the Gibeonites. After the great victories of Jericho and Ai, the Gibeonites feared for their lives and so thought of a way of deceiving the Israelis. They sent ambassadors to Joshua wearing worn-out clothing and patched shoes, and carrying old cracked wineskins and dry moldy bread to make out they had come from a far distant country.  The trick worked. Joshua forgot to ask the Lord about it and they signed a peace treaty. Three days later Joshua and the elders of Israel found out that the Gibeonites were actually close neighbors! But they had made a covenant and it could not be changed.

Years and years later, when Saul became king, he slaughtered some of the Gibeonites. God took notice. He didn’t do anything about it then. God always does things in His own time. But the breaking of this covenant had to be avenged.  When David went to the Gibeonites, they demanded David give them seven descendents of Saul who they hung before the Lord. Only then did the famine cease.

We see another example of covenant-keeping in this same chapter of 2 Samuel 21. When David gave Saul’s descendents to the Gibeonites to be hung, he made sure that he spared “Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the Lord’s oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul.”

It is interesting that David and Jonathan’s oath was called “the Lord’s oath.” It not only belonged to David and Jonathan, it belonged to God. 1 Samuel 23:18 says that when David and Jonathan covenanted “they two made a covenant before the Lord.” (1 Samuel 18:3, 20:8,14-17,42) God aligns Himself with covenants.  When we break a covenant with people, we break the covenant with Him too. 

Marriage could also be called, “The Lord’s oath.” It is a covenant that we make before God and before witnesses “until death do us part.” It is made in the name of the Lord. God sees it, He hears it and He takes note. And He also takes note when it is broken.

In Malachi 2:13-16 God tells the husbands that He no longer regards their offerings. When they asked, “Why?” He replied, “Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, although she is your companion and your wife by covenant.”

Proverbs 2:17 talks about the wife “who forsakes the husband of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.”

God reminds the husband and the wife that marriage is a covenant. In Proverbs 2:17 He reminds the wife that her covenant is not just between her and her husband, but it is also a covenant with God, a God does not forget covenants.

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL

PRAYER:

“I thank you Lord, with all my heart, that you are a covenant-keeping God. You are true to all your promises. You never fail. Please give me your strength and enabling to also be a covenant-keeper. Amen.”

AFFIRMATION: