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In my library are numerous books on Biblical Covenants. A common condition inherent with almost all of them is their failure to recognize that God’s Covenants are Eternal and that each successive Covenant given by God chronologically builds upon the previous and should be considered a “continuation” of prior Covenants. In other words they are linked together. Almost lost along with this fact is that the Covenant of Jer. 31, called by most the “New Covenant”, has not occurred yet! These two facts have monumental consequences for the New Testament Christian today who believes he is in Covenant with God through this “New” Covenant.
If it can be shown that Jeremiah’s “New” Covenant has not started yet but is yet future, then the credibility of the New Testament's statement to that event is seriously jeopardized and suspect. Along with that one should then be concerned as to which Covenant does the New Testament Christian find his standing with God today? Is it possible that the New Testament Christian, because of the Gentile Church’s current theological positions and teachings which are inherited over the centuries from the Roman Church, is without a Covenant with God because he denies, refuses to accept, or is just ignorant of the Biblical ways God has given for him to be “grafted” into the Israel of God? Has the Gentile Christian Church, because of the anti-Semitic theologies created by the early Church Fathers, been blinded for centuries to the only way whereby God calls them into covenant with Him? What are the implications for a New Testament Believer to be without a Covenant with God? These are serious questions, possibly the most serious one might address in his life. The answers are forthcoming.
Scholars have written volumes developing the history of the covenants, the meaning of the covenants, the relationships between the covenants, the terms of the covenants, the recipients of the covenants, and the limitations of the covenants. Jonathan Edwards said: "There is perhaps no part of divinity attended with so much intricacy, and wherein orthodox divines do so much differ as stating the precise agreement and difference between the two dispensations of Moses and Christ." In other words there is little agreement between Denominational Positions regarding the Covenants with God! The covenants have been sifted, analyzed, broken down and built up—examined and explicated—but when the question referred to by Jonathan Edwards comes up, no answer seems to come forth, and the world of Christian scholarship falls silent or breaks forth into a confused unintelligible chatter resulting in no constructive progress toward discovery of an answer. The question appears simple enough; but upon closer examination, it reveals aspects of complexity that defy explanation, simply because the investigator usually limits his investigation of the problem to the boundaries of Gentile Christianity. If he is to uncover an adequate answer to his inquiries into the Biblical covenants, he must delve deeper into the history of the covenants and examine his subject from the Jewish point of view.
Imagine my amazement over the years of in-depth study into Judaism and the Jewish Yeshua following Seminary when I found contrary to the multiple theologies in Christianity concerning “covenants” that in the history of Judaism, one finds no controversy at all regarding the covenants, no debate whatever, no subject so plainly expressed, nor issue so clearly defined, as that of the covenants. Judaism deals directly with the origins of the covenants and their entire history is entwined with their development and intimately concerned with their determination.
Before discussing the development of the covenants, it is necessary to define clearly what a covenant is. All that a covenant means is wrapped up in the Hebrew primal root word "Berit". It means simply a contract, a will, a league, a testament, or a bond. It differs distinctly and significantly from a vow. A vow may involve the participation of one party or more. Unlike a covenant, a vow may be broken by certain conditions of revocation.
Now the Christian needs to listen very carefully to the next statement. The covenant differs further from the vow in that the covenant always involves more than one person and is perpetually binding by oath. A Covenant cannot be revoked, altered, or annulled, nor can a present covenant displace a former one. A latter covenant can enhance, extend, or complement the former, but it can never abrogate it. If the terms of a latter covenant should abrogate or interfere with a former covenant, the terms of the earlier take precedence over the latter.
In a covenant relationship, the individuals involved sacrifice the distinctiveness of their own individual identities, much like the members of a modern corporation. This covenant entity, as used in the Jewish scripture, primarily relates to covenants between God and man. In some two hundred thirty occurrences of the word, Berit, in the Jewish Bible, over two hundred refer to the God-man relationship.
In ancient times, everyone took all the covenants very seriously unlike today. A person initiated his covenant with a blood sacrifice, followed by a sworn oath pledging himself fully to his agreement. Such a covenant was so binding that men engraved its terms upon stone or cuneiform tablets. Some have been found which were cast in brass plates. To break a covenant sealed in blood was considered not only a sin but a crime worthy of death.
A covenant had certain definite, distinctive characteristics—its terms always expressed explicitly. It was either restrictive or nonrestrictive, conditional or unconditional. In either case, it could not be both; that is, it could not be restrictive in some parts and nonrestrictive in others. Its terms could not be changed, spiritualized or applied to any conditions other than those plainly stated.
In the Bible there were seven major covenants made between God and man. In all of these covenants, the Eternal One was the party of the first part. Four of these covenants were restricted to Israel, except under particular specified instances. The other three major covenants were universal and applicable to mankind as a whole. It is my firm belief that once you, more than likely a non-Jewish Christian, study for yourself these Covenants and how they yet relate to mankind, your understanding of how you are intended to relate to God will be illuminated and any corrections necessary on your part can be made.
The first covenant was that of Gan Eden, or the Garden of Eden. Its terms are found in Genesis 1:28-30. This covenant gave Adam, a non-Jew, the scepter of rulership over the entire earth, and restricted both man and animal by dietary laws to a vegetarian diet. Under this covenant, Adam had title to the whole earth, which means that all real estate and chattel belonged to him. The restriction related to a single tree, called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which stood in the middle of the garden. Except for this tree, the earth and all therein were Adam's.
According to the Jewish tradition, the very same day that Adam and Eve were created, Eve committed robbery. She took fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and thereby brought death and exile to the human family. The fruit from that tree was the only thing on earth that she could have stolen. Everything else belonged to her and Adam.
In the eschatological hope of Judaism, the religion of Yeshua, that the life in the world to come and the primary function of the Messiah will be to restore the whole creation to the conditions under the Edenic covenant.
The Kabbalists teach:
Somewhere there is an Adam within each of us, in need of restoration—in exile from the Garden. The aim of the Kabbalah is to restore that divine man in the medium of the mortal man. We are the laboratory, we are the workers in that sphere and space. All this is to say that there is an intimate relationship between mortal man and his spiritual counterpart. The mystery of that relationship is to be found in the ten spheres of the Adam Kadmon [the primal divine man after whose image Adam was created]. If one can learn to connect the thread dangling free from the ten spheres with the fiber of his being—if one can discover the secret opening in the base of the skull—one may begin the work of the restoration.
In Judaism, and therefore, naturally in the Old Testament, there is no concept of heaven as there is in Christian eschatology. Nowhere is there a promise to Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, or to any of the prophets of a "piece of pie in the sky in the sweet by and by." Jewish eschatology is totally lacking a heavenly inheritance. The inheritance of the Jew in the world to come is restricted to a real estate plot in the Middle East. It concerns restoration of the land to the people in the world to come as well as restoration of the land to its former state of productive abundance. Although the Jews do not believe that they will be the only people in the world to come, they do believe that every man who responds by faith to God in whatever covenant relationship the Eternal One has revealed to him will have a part in the life in the world to come, or the Messianic Age.
Isaiah the prophet describes this life in the world to come and the return of the world to the condition of the Garden of Eden thusly: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots...and righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' dent" (Isaiah 11:1, 5-8) As Isaiah states, when the Messiah comes, even the carnivorous animals, such as the lion, the wolf and the bear, shall return to their original states of being vegetarians.
The third chapter of Genesis records not only the robbery of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil but also the drastic consequences of that theft. When Eve jerked the fruit from that tree and Adam partook of it with her, they brought a curse upon the land, upon the serpent, and upon themselves. The ground was to bring forth thorns and thistles, the serpent was to crawl on his belly, and Adam and Eve were to live a life of strenuous toil. Moreover, Adam and Eve discovered that they were naked.
When God challenged their misconduct, Adam, as human nature is even today, passed the buck to Eve. Half blaming God, he said, "That woman you gave me, she...." When the Creator challenged the woman, her reply was, "The devil made me do it." The effects of the violation of this covenant have continued to the present: man continues to pass the buck of responsibility to someone else.
In Genesis 3:14-19, the second covenant was made between God and man: the Adamic Covenant. The first promise contained in the Adamic Covenant was that the seed of the woman would restore the earth to the Edenic conditions. Meanwhile, however, many consequences would be suffered by the human family. The grief of womanhood would be multiplied: "In sorrow thou shall bring forth children...cursed is the ground for thy sake. . Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. . . in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it was thou taken: from dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return."
This is the Adamic Covenant under which the human family has continued to live for 5,759 years as of the Christian year 1999. Under the Adamic Covenant, however, the punishment levied upon man proved to be ineffective as a corrective factor. According to the Jewish tradition, 1,657 years passed from the Adamic Covenant to the covenant of Noah. Between these two covenants, mankind lived in a very highly advanced civilization. In spite of such advancement, man's moral nature and God-consciousness suffered such a great decadence that civilization was finally obliterated by the judgment of the flood of Noah.
After the Flood, the earth no longer appeared to be the same planet it had been before. Much of the animal life that had existed in those years was destroyed. Much of the plant kingdom also ceased to exist. The earth was unable to produce with the fertility and abundance that it had before. The geophysical features were so totally changed that the family of Noah found an entirely different world when they came out of the Ark.
Genesis 8:20 to 9:17 contains the setting and conditions of the Noahic Covenant. We must remember that Noah was a non-Jew. With this covenant, man's relationship to the earth and the animal world was changed. For the first time, God made provision for man to eat flesh. According to Jewish interpretation, the Noahic Covenant is broken down into what is called the Seven Laws of Noah. As the Adamic Covenant did not replace the Edenic, but rather complemented it with greater provisions, so the Noahic Covenant neither replaced nor annulled the Edenic and the Adamic covenants.
Basically, the Seven Laws of Noah prohibit idolatry, fornication and murder. Under their provisions, human government was ordained of God; and capital punishment, through human government, was so ordained. Dietary changes were also stipulated in the Seven Laws of Noah. While all flesh was now permissible for food, God made a very clear distinction between the clean and the unclean animals. Noah had been instructed to take the unclean animals by pairs into the Ark. The clean animals, however, were taken into the Ark by sevens.
Under the Seven Laws of Noah, cannibalism was forbidden. Even eating flesh from an animal before it was properly slain was also forbidden. This was to prohibit man from cutting off a muscle or limb of an animal and eating it, leaving the animal to live maimed.
The eating of blood was also prohibited. Under the Noahic Covenant, an animal had to be properly killed to be used for food. Any animal that was torn of beast, died of itself, or was found dead, could not be eaten.
The Noahic Covenant, like the Adamic, is universal in scope, and is applicable to all men. It is not specifically to Israel.
More to follow…Shalom.