The word covenant is not a very well understood word in our day. In our day with all of the animal rights activists, the Bible looks barbaric, but there is a purpose in the killing of innocent sacrificial victims and the shedding of blood. In looking at the Bible we must understand this word, because it is part of the very core and foundation of our faith. A covenant is a legal agreement between two parties which binds them together. The greatest example that the Bible uses from Genesis to the book of Revelations is the marriage covenant. When two people love one another then they enter into a covenant of marriage with one another which legally binds them together. The covenant of marriage consists of two hearts of love responding to one another, a ceremony of promises and the consummation of the marriage through sexual relations.
The Christian author Richard Booker says that ‘blood covenant is the scarlet thread that runs through the entire Bible. All other teachings are woven into it.
Once you understand the blood covenant your Biblical loose ends will come together’. The basis of God’s dealing with man is on the basis of covenant. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that we understand the blood covenant so we can understand God’s dealing with us. So let’s look at what the word covenant means from a Biblical perspective.
The word covenant means a binding agreement between two parties. Richard T Booker says that ‘by definition it is an agreement to cut a covenant by the shedding of blood'. So, the two divisions in the Bible are about an Old Blood Covenant and a New Blood Covenant. The blood covenant as revealed in the Bible is the binding agreement that brings man and God together or places them into a partnership. Let’s look at the beginning of the book of Genesis so we can see the covenant from its inception.
As I have previously said the seeds of all the major doctrines of the Bible are found in the book of Genesis. After Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s instruction, immediately they made coverings from fig leaves to cover their nakedness in Genesis 3:7. This was the first example of a dead work. It is man through his own effort, trying to cover his sin, but it was insufficient before God and then God reveals His way of dealing with the sin problem. Genesis 3:21 says, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” It is important that we answer two questions.
Where did God get garments of skin?
Why would He do this?
It’s common knowledge and common sense that tells us that garments of skin come from deceased animals. The text doesn’t explicitly say it, but God must have sacrificed an innocent animal or animals to provide coverings for Adam and his wife. The Hebrew word for made is asah and one of its meanings is to sacrifice. I would like to do a personal translation of this text and say:
The Lord God sacrificed innocent animals for Adam and his wife and clothed them with garments of skin.
Why would God sacrifice innocent animals? The reason is because God is a God of mercy and God of holiness. You cannot separate His mercy from his holiness. God’s holiness could not allow Adam and Eve’s rebellion to go unpunished. He loved them, but he could not be merciful and loving at the expense of his justice. He had to punish them for their disobedience because to allow rebellion to go unpunished would result in chaos. At the same time, God’s mercy reached out in unfailing love to provide a way of escape. That way of escape was the sacrifice of an innocent victim, who took their death penalty and was punished in their place.
If we look at Romans 6:23 we can see that God had to do this because it says that "the wages or payment of sin is death.” When Adam and Eve sinned, their payment was death. Someone had to pay for Adam and Eve’s sin, so God provided an innocent animal sacrifice as a substitute to pay for their death. Man was separated from God by sin and to be reunited the payment of death had to be made. Adam tried to pay with his own works by covering himself with the fig leaves, but it was not sufficient payment. It's like a man trying to pay a bank loan with Monopoly money.
The God who loved the man and woman stepped in and showed the way to be reunited back to Him. The only way was through the blood or death of an innocent victim. Leviticus 17:14 says that ‘the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life'.
God established a covenant with Adam and Eve when He promised them a future redeemer through the seed of the woman and at the same time sacrificed animals to cover their sin by the shedding of blood.
Hebrew 9:22 says, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. In Romans 5, Paul views Adam as not only a historical figure, but as a representative of the entire human race. When God made the promise of deliverance to Adam, He made the promise to us also.
Let’s look at another main figure in the Biblical doctrine of covenant, the father of the Hebrew nation Abraham. The most clear understanding of the covenant between God and man comes to us through Abraham, which lays the foundation for the New Covenant with man through Jesus Christ. It is in Genesis 15:1, 9-18 where we see that God establishes a blood covenant with Abraham and promises him that through his seed or descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed Genesis 22:18.
Charles Simpson comments on this text in Genesis 15 saying that, ‘the direct requirement of a blood sacrifice as the means of establishing a covenant first appears in this passage of the Bible. The animals to be offered were selected, cut in halves, and arranged in proper order opposite one another. The covenant parties then passed between the halves indicating that they were irrevocably bound together in blood. The cutting in halves of the sacrifice spoke of the end of existing lives for the sake of establishing a new bond of covenant. The sacred nature of this bond was attested to by the shedding of life blood.’ In Galatians 3:16 Paul the apostle shows us that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the seed of Abraham. He is the final fulfillment of God’s covenant with man, through whom God would bless all the nations of the earth.
Let’s take a look at one more link in the blood covenant and that is found in the book of Exodus when we see Abraham’s descendants delivered out of slavery from Egypt. The book of Genesis ends with Abraham and all of his sons going to Egypt because of a great famine. What was to be a temporary situation turned into a long-term settlement. In the book of Exodus, we see the very seed of Abraham, who were promised to be the people through whom all the families of the earth were going to be blessed, became the slaves of Egypt.
The book of Exodus opens with the children of Abraham in the land of Egypt for 430 years and slaves to the Egyptians. God raised up the prophet Moses to lead the children of Abraham out of Egypt back to the land promised to Abraham and his descendants. It was not until God gave Moses as a deliverer that the children of Israel began to get a glimpse of the God of their inheritance.
The children of Israel witnessed the awesome demonstration of the power of God, as Moses and Aaron displayed signs and wonders before all of Egypt. Pharaoh the leader of Egypt did not want to let them go, but through a series of God’s judgment upon the land and the people of Egypt; he finally let them go. The final straw that released the children of Abraham from slavery was what has come to be known as the Passover. The Passover became one of the 3 main Hebrew feast that they celebrated yearly in remembrance of their deliverance. The Passover is one of those main links between the Old Blood covenant between God and the Hebrew nation and the New Blood covenant made between God and all of mankind.
The children of Israel were instructed to sacrifice an innocent lamb for each house, place that blood on the door of their homes and eat the sacrificed lamb so that the death angel would Passover their homes where the blood was applied. The text for this is found in Exodus 12:1-13. It was the Passover sacrifice that saved the children of Israel and delivered them from Pharaoh’s power who is a symbol of Satan the god of this present age and Egypt which is a symbol of this present world order corrupted by sin.
The Passover was a prophetic picture of the cross which crushed Satan’s power over us, and which delivers us from slavery to the corruption of this present worldly system.
It is in Exodus, after they sacrificed the lamb that the children of Israel were commanded to take the blood into a basin and then were told to put it on the post of the doors. The applied blood to the door of the house was a covering. Wherever the blood was applied, the death angel would Passover and spare the firstborn.
Jesus was the final fulfillment of the Passover lamb. Let’s take a look at the covenant we have with Jesus Christ.
On the night before Jesus went to the cross, he partook of the last Passover meal with His disciples and it was on this night that there was a completion of the old blood covenant and a bringing in of the new blood covenant. The first Passover found its fulfillment in Christ and was simply a model of the Last Supper. Among some there is a debate as to whether Christ partook of the Passover meal or the Lord’s Supper on that last night with His disciples before his crucifixion. He did both. At the same time, it was the last Passover meal, and the first time the Lord’s supper was eaten.
In Matthew's gospel it says, ‘while they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said take, eat this is My body.’ Can you imagine what might have been going through the disciples’ minds at this moment? They had only heard their Master speak this way one other time as recorded in John 6:51 where Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; this bread is my flesh, offered so the world may live.’
The body of Jesus Christ was unlike that of any other human being.
In his gospel, Luke vividly portrays the birth of Christ. The angel Gabriel spoke to Mary the virgin chosen by God and said, ‘the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God’. Matthew quotes Isaiah by saying, “Behold the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel which translated means, ‘God with us.’ Then John in his gospel says, ‘The word became flesh’. If we take a further look at John's gospel, we will see that he goes from seeing Jesus as God taking upon Himself human flesh, to the words of John the Baptist who ‘saw Jesus coming to him and said, ‘Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ John 1:29.
John the Baptist who was the prophet sent to prepare the way for the Messiah saw the true purpose of Christ, which was to be a pure sinless sacrifice, shedding His blood for all of humanity.
In John's first epistle chapter 3 verse 8 he says the son of God appeared for this purpose, that he might destroy the works of the devil. The only way that Satan could be defeated was through a man, the promise seed of the woman. It was the first Adam, who had handed Satan his power and authority. Therefore, it had to be through a man, the last Adam that Satan’s power was to be destroyed. Hebrews 2:14-15 tells us that, because God’s children are human beings made of flesh and blood - Jesus also became flesh and blood being born in human form. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he deliver those who lived all their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.
The Passover lamb to be sacrificed in Exodus 12:5, which was to be unblemished, merely pointed to the final sacrifice of Christ.
The apostle Peter in his epistle calls Christ ‘a lamb unblemished and spotless’ I Peter 1:19. On that night when Christ was partaking of that last Passover meal with his disciples, he was pointing them to his body, which was about to be beaten, crucified and have the sin of the world laid upon it. The mystery of Christ was about to be revealed.
The scribes and Pharisees who were the interpreters of the prophets could not understand how the Messiah could be both a conqueror and the suffering servant at the same time. However, the two main themes of the prophets came together in one person. The mystery of Christ is that he broke the serpent's hold over man as a spotless, harmless, sinless lamb being slaughtered on the cross. When God became man in a human body, he was then offered up as a sheep being slaughtered and through his death on the cross the serpent's head was being crushed.
Jesus handed the bread to his disciples and said eat this flesh. This flesh, which has no sin, is about to become sin for you. The New Covenant is a binding agreement and through the one-man Christ Jesus, God has made available to mankind both Jews and the nations of the earth the invitation to enter into an eternal blood covenant with him. It is not a covenant based on our works, but based on the work of Christ on the Cross, shedding His blood for us, so we can be free from the guilt and power of sin.
Forgiveness of sins is the main theme of the blood covenant and by it we are brought into a new relationship with God as covenant partners.
Relationship is the basis of covenant. God’s blood covenant through Jesus Christ is the basis of our relationship with Him. Under the old blood covenant before the time of Christ the people of faith offered innocent animals as their substitute for sin. It simply pointed to a future redeemer who would come. Now that Jesus has come as the very fulfillment of the seed of the woman, we can enter into a new relationship with God based on the blood that He shed on the cross for us.
When you enter into a blood covenant with someone you promise to give them your life, your love and your protection forever. Jesus Christ laid down His very life on our behalf because of His great love for us and if we will enter into this covenant with Him He will protect us and keep us as His own. The blood covenant we have with Christ is something we can always rely on and it is on this firm foundation that we can begin to build a strong and healthy relationship with our Heavenly Father. Romans 5:8 says that God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. It is reassuring that while we were sinners God so loved us that He gave us His son as a sacrifice for our sins and entered into an eternal blood covenant with us. That’s it for this lesson.
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