Unbreakable

In that day, YHWH made a covenant with Abram Genesis 15:18

Made – Today you need an attorney, but in ancient Semitic cultures, contracts between two parties were signed, sealed and delivered with sacrifice.  God tells Abram (later Abraham) that He wants a contract between them.  This valid contract obligates two parties to certain actions.  Furthermore, breach of contract means that the offending party will be punished – severely.  In this case, cut in half, just like the animals that are sacrificed to seal the deal.  Abraham is all for this arrangement.  After all, God promises to make him into a great nation.  It seems like a good deal.

Abraham doesn’t account for human failure, but God does.  While Abraham sleeps, God completes the covenant agreement.  Literally, God cuts a covenant (the Hebrew word is karat) with Abraham.  The imagery could hardly be more graphic.  God passes between the rows of slaughtered animals.  There is a lot of blood.  Life has been taken.  This covenant is sealed with cutting.  It’s as powerful a covenant as you could get.  But here’s the clincher.  God obligates Himself to both sides of the agreement.  Abraham never walks between the slaughtered animals.  God takes on His part of the agreement and Abraham’s part.  This covenant is unbreakable!

Why is this so important?  First, it establishes the entire foundational agreement between God and His people.  God chooses Abraham as the father of the eventual nation of priests.  This covenant guarantees that God’s work through Abraham will absolutely come to be.

Second, this covenant tells us that Abraham’s failures and disobedience (and by extension, the failures and disobedience of all of Abraham’s children of the promise) do not nullify the covenant.  Human sin cannot break God’s promise because God’s promise is not conditional.  In fact, (and this is very important), God Himself cannot nullify this covenant.  Why?  Because He obligated Himself to both sides of the agreement.

We need to let this sink in.  What it implies will change your views about a lot of subjects.  The covenant with Abraham will never be broken.  It is just as valid today as it was on the day that God cut it.  God still considers Israel His true, and only, child.  Israel is still the vehicle through which God will bring the nations to Himself.  Israel is not rejected, displaced or superseded.  The church does not stand as the successor to Israel.  The church is merely grafted into Israel in order that God may accomplish His ultimate purposes for Israel.

Now, don’t be confused.  The political entity called Israel is not the same as the line of the children of promise called Israel.  You and I, as believers and followers of the Messiah Yeshua, have been adopted into the family of the true Israel.  We are Gentile proselytes joined with Jewish believers.  Our father is Abraham too.  But this means that the ways of God revealed to Israel must be our ways because we are now part of Israel.  God hasn’t changed His mind about what He wants or how He will get it.  The covenant cannot be broken.

Topical Index:  Covenant