OUR COVENANT, Part 7
November 15, 2019
Today, if possible, I want to finish
the part of our discussion dealing with ãñ•ç• kheseed. When I first began
this part of the sharing, it didn’t dawn on me that it was going to become so
exhaustive but buckle your seatbelts, when we start to expand on this concept
with regard to the establishing of the United States of America, you will see
Covenant repeated again and again and again.
Our founding fathers fully
understood the principle of Covenant.
They realized that if there was going to be a Covenant to establish a
new nation, it had to be a Covenant with God, since He was and is the author,
the Creator, the backup and support of any real Covenant.
Let’s get back to where we left off
last week.
The
Lord had -- with His covenant -- given Israel "the
abundance of all things." All that He was, and all that He had
was given to Israel as His covenant people in the earth. They were to be
His personal representative. They were to show the rest of the world the
path to redemption from the curse that came upon the entire human race when
Adam and Eve subjected themselves -- and their descendants -- to the bondage of
Satan.
With
that position as God's covenant people came immeasurable blessing -- almost incalculable
blessing! With that position came God's power and authority in the earth.
With it came ãñ•ç• kheseed.
With it
came the promise that….
Deuteronomy
28:10, 13: "All people of
the earth shall see that thou art called by the name (shem/onoma -- patria - lineage)
of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee.....
And the LORD shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and
thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the
commandments of the LORD thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and
to do them.."
Get it?
Thus, it
required agape-kheseed, which empowered Israel's faith, and caused
that nation to believe the Word of the Lord, which was the embodiment of His
covenant. As I noted yesterday, this isn't something he gives just a tiny
bit of: He gave Israel the capacity -- under that covenant --to become His holy
people. He gave Israel "..according to the riches
of His glory.." -- "..that (they) might be filled with all the
fullness of God."
Understand?
The
Tabernacle of Moses was a picture -- a graphic representation -- of the
covenant, all the way from unregenerate and unredeemed death and destruction
under the bondage of Satan to a living relationship, walking and talking with
the Lord in the Holy of Holies.
Human
flesh, however, is stubborn and recalcitrant; and natural Israel -- at least up
to David's day -- had gone astray time after time after time after time.
The nation had gone through periods of repeated assault from their enemies and
occasional captivity only to be delivered by the Hand of God when they cried
out for a deliverer.
David knew
that the nation had somehow never really seen the heart of the Lord. He
knew they had missed out on the truth and power of the covenant God had
made. He saw beyond the symbolism of the Tabernacle of Moses to the Ark
of the Covenant as a picture of Israel's marriage to the Lord God. He saw
beyond the symbolism of the Golden Candlestick to a worshiping people -- a
people whose hearts exploded with a flame of love for their Bridegroom.
So David
set out to draw THAT picture ONLY in a way that anyone and everyone could
relate. He pitched a simple tent on top of Mount Moriah.
It was the same place where Shem had originally built his citadel as a place of
refuge for his bride and established Salem as an outpost of righteousness in an
otherwise heathen land. It was the same place where Abraham had taken
Isaac to offer him up as a sacrifice to the Lord in direct obedience to God's
command. It was the same place where the Lord had provided "a lamb
for a sacrifice" in Isaac's place.
In that
tent -- with its flaps open for all Israel to see -- was placed the Ark of the
Covenant. NOW Israel would see their marriage covenant with the
Lord. Instead of bringing the Golden Candlestick over from Moses'
Tabernacle in Gilgal, David appointed the families of
Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun to become a living golden candlestick: a people
whose entire life would be given over to minister love to the Lord God and to
show Israel just what could come from that covenant relationship.
And he
succeeded in a way that no one had ever before succeeded. The nation
began to prosper as it had never prospered. They had victory over all of
their enemies. Kings and leaders of nations and tribes began to sue for
peace with David and with Israel. The land began to bring forth as it had
never before brought forth. The people prospered. David
prospered. And Israel, for the first time in its history, actually became
a nation that worshipped God.
For some
reason, God's people have missed this picture. America was founded upon a
covenant with the Lord -- despite what the mainstream (or “lamestream”)
media loves to push off on the public. The time has come for this nation
to return to the Lord, and to the covenant our forefathers made with Him in
establishing us as "one nation under God."
Allow me
to digress for a minute. It is for that
purpose that River Worship Center has been established. Our vision is to
bring about a place where people will gather -- people whom the Lord has
called, trained, equipped, prepared and anointed in the same way that Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun were -- to minister to the Lord Jesus Christ in
praise and worship. Our goal is generating a place where folks will
gather in teams around the clock to minister to the Lord in shifts, 24 hours a
day.
We know
from past experience what happens in the realm of the Spirit when this begins
to take place. We know -- by vision and by the direct Word of the Lord to
us -- what God's purpose is for this nation, and where He intends to take this
worship.
It is a
small beginning. We are only a few people at this moment in time.
But we have the Word of the Lord:
Zechariah
4:10: "For who hath
despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice and shall see the
plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven;
they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole
earth."
Early on
in our series on Covenant, I made a statement that raised a few eyebrows:
namely, that Adam and Eve, being made in the express image of God, in His
likeness and makeup, had the ability to speak things into being. I cited
from the example that the Lord brought to Adam every living creature to see
what he would call them, "and whatsoever Adam called every living
creature, that was the "name" thereof."
This word,
"name," of course, comes from the Hebrew íL shem. Paralleling the
Greek, onoma, it is a whole lot more than "dog, cat,
elephant, horse," etc. The word, íL shem, represents the
very nature, the character, the makeup, the personality -- what makes one what
they are.
Thus, Adam
was not simply coming up with some kind of name that popped in his head: he was
declaring and decreeing the character and makeup -- the very nature -- of each
animal as the Lord brought it before him. That was creative power in
action. Adam spoke the nature of every living creature into
existence. He "called those things that are not as though they
were," thus speaking life (in this case, animal life) into existence.
I
shouldn't have to say this, but some folks may draw the wrong conclusions from
my words, so let me be specific. Adam was not creating life in the same
sense that God created life by breathing His breath into Adam. He was not
creating life out of the dust of the earth. Rather he was speaking life
in the sense of personality and nature into these heretofore robotic creatures
that made them what they are.
That may
be a concept that escapes some folks, but his decrees were not academic
sayings: they were life commands that caused every animal to take on the nature
and makeup that we now know of those animals. Prior to Adam's decree, the
animals had no particular distinctive character or personality or makeup.
They were just "living creatures" without any real identity.
It is
important to understand this concept because it is at the very heart and center
of covenant. Bear with me.
Proverbs
18:21: "Death and life
are in the power of the tongue, and they that love it shall eat the fruit
thereof."
That is
not a metaphor, or a figure of speech: it is a covenant statement. How
about this one?
Proverbs
18:20: "A man's belly
shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth, and with the increase of his
lips shall he be filled.”
I quit
counting after I passed more than 600 references in Scripture to the truth of "Death
and life are in the power of the tongue...," as they relate to
the words that we say, the things that come forth from our mouths. I
suspect that number of references in Scripture to the words we say, the
statements we make -- for good or evil -- easily exceeds a thousand in the Old
Testament alone.
Let me get
to something that Jesus said; and this is specific and germane to covenant:
Mark
11:23-24: "For verily I
say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and
be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe
that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he
shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore,
I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye
pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."
Why do I
say that this is specific to covenant?
Were it
not for the fact that every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God carries
with it the creative power and empowerment to bring it to pass, there would be
no covenant. If we are to enter into covenant with the Lord, that same
creative power must be there for our part to be enacted and come to pass.
We must have, therefore, "whatsoever we say."
The very fact that so many (un)-believing
Christians fail to have what they say is because they almost immediately cancel
out whatever positive, life-giving, creative power they hope for by
conditioning their speech with doubt, unbelief and fear. They have what
they say, all right: death, destruction, sickness, poverty, need, weakness,
etc. They cancel the benefits of their covenant with the Lord by virtue
of the destructive power of their speech.
We were
created to be like God in every respect, save that we cannot be Him and be the
ultimate ruler of the universe. Yet we have been empowered by covenant,
as Paul writes,
Ephesians
2:6-7
"And [He] hath raised us up together, and made us sit
together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might show
the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ
Jesus."
THAT's not
a figure of speech. It isn't a metaphor. It is a covenant truth
that places us -- as faith-parties to the New Covenant -- on the throne of the heavenlies LITERALLY! It is a covenant truth enacted
by the agape love of the Lord Jesus Christ for us.
Do you
understand that it is agape-kheseed that
empowers covenant, both for us and through us?
I said it yesterday, and I'll say it again. It required agape-kheseed, which empowered Israel's faith, and caused that nation to believe the Word of the Lord, which was the embodiment of His covenant. Just as He gave Israel "..according to the riches of His glory.." -- "..that (they) might be filled with all the fullness of God," He has given to us in an even greater measure.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
In case you are missing out on real fellowship in an environment
of Ekklesia, our Sunday worship gatherings are
available by conference call – usually at about 10:30AM Pacific. That conference number is (712) 770-4160, and the access code
is 308640#. We are now making these gatherings available on
video using ZOOM. If you wish to
participate by video on ZOOM, our login ID is 835-926-513. If you miss the live voice-only call, you can
dial (712)
770-4169, enter the same access code and listen in later. The video call, of course, is not recorded –
not yet, anyway.
Blessings
on you!
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Temple, Texas 76504
Email Contact: CapenerMinistries@protonmail.com
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