Covenant Reminders

The title of tonight's message is called Covenant Reminders and I'm not going to go into all aspects of our covenant.

We have a lot that goes into our covenant but in particular I wanted to talk about the Passover and how that relates to our covenant and the very first Passover and where that came from.

So let me give you some background on the first Passover and where that came from.

In ancient cultures, including ancient Egypt, the home was viewed as a temple, with the leader of the home kind of being at the level of a high priest, and so whatever deity they worshiped in that time because it was a secular culture whatever deity they worshiped that family worshiped, they believed that the deity would protect the home and look out after those people in the home, and so they would make sacrifices, and sometimes they would do this in the entrance of the home, but in most of these cases at the threshold.

They would make sacrifices of an animal and they would pour that animal's blood into a trough or a cutout in the threshold, and sometimes it was a bowl.

And a variant of that was that when they had a covenant between one household and another household, the custom was that if you invited somebody to come over to your house, you would sacrifice a clean animal and you'd let the blood spill into a bowl that was carved into the threshold, or a trough that was carved into the threshold.

And I think I got a couple of pictures to show you.

So, lee, if you wouldn't mind pulling those up, so the one picture is a stone threshold there and you see the cutout there in the bottom.

So the blood would pool in that little cutout across the threshold.

The other example I have is a bowl that's carved into a threshold, so that's just a stone threshold that people would step across and the bowl was cut there, so the blood would pool there.

And then, by entering the house, you would step over that threshold and in doing so you're entering into covenant with the head of that house.

And so let's go back to the first Passover, as God instituted it under Moses.

And so in Exodus 12, verse 21, it says Then Moses called for the elders of Israel and said to them Pick out and take lambs for yourselves, according to your families, and kill the Passover lamb.

Exodus 12:21

And so the Passover lamb had to be one that was as perfect as can be, without spot or blemish on this lamb.

And he said and you shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it into the blood that is in the basin and then strike the lintel, which is the top, and then also the doorposts with the blood that is in the basin.

And it says and none of you shall go out of the door of the house until morning.

So the setting for this is Egypt had been holding the Hebrews, the Israelites, as slaves, and Moses is making an appeal to the Pharaoh to remember the phrase Let my people go, and Pharaoh wouldn't let him go.

So you've got all these plagues that progressively got worse and worse.

And so here we are on the very last plague.

This is the one that would kill the firstborn across the land.

And so God commanded the Israelites, through Moses, gave the order for them to walk through the steps of this threshold covenant, and so all these steps here are very familiar because it was part of the culture of the time, even though it was part of heathen cultures.

The Israelites would have been very familiar with this, and so God was saying to them he was instituting His own covenant with them, His own threshold covenant, and so in verse 23, it says For the Lord will pass through, and the Hebrew word for that is Abar.

Claire recently talked about this, about the Hebrews and they being known as the Passover people, and so Abar is part of the Hebrew name for the Hebrews.

They're called the Passover people.

So it says in verse 23, for the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians.

They will pass Abar, or through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lentil and on the doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door or the doorway or the threshold.

And that's a different Hebrew word right there, which is patek.

It means to pass over, to step over, and so two words there.

Let me read this again For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lentil and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over, he will step over the threshold and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to strike you.

In other words, god was saying to the Israelites we're gonna have a threshold covenant and you're gonna invite me in your house and you're gonna kill the Passover lamb and it's gotta be a spotless lamb and you're gonna apply the blood to the threshold and that trough, that groove that you saw there, or that bowl and you're also gonna dip his hip in there and mark the lentil, the top, and the two doorposts, the left and the right.

And then I, god, when I come through the land of Egypt, I'm going to step over that threshold and come into your house and I'm entering into a covenant of protection with your house and you're the head of the house.

And so each of the heads of the house across all the Israelites had to make this covenant.

God entered, he entered into a covenant with the nation of Israel.

He entered into a covenant through Abraham when they cut the covenant.

But here God is making a covenant with each head of the house across the Israelites there.

And so he was literally saying I'm gonna come into your house and I'm gonna protect you from the destroyer.

And so God used this cultural, religious practice of the day to establish his own threshold covenant.

And that was a familiar thing to them and I gotta know that it was a familiar thing to the Egyptians because they had similar things in their culture.

And so God was being a demonstration to them that this God, the God of creation, the God who brought all these plagues against Egypt, is now entering into a covenant with every head of the household of all of Israel to protect them when the destroyer comes through the land, and he's not protecting the Egyptians.

And so it was a very impactful thing what God did there.

So we'll fast forward to the beginnings of our covenant, john the Baptist in John, chapter one.

He was doing what John the Baptist did he was baptizing.

And so as he's baptizing, jesus walks up and in verse 29, jesus is coming towards him and Jesus and John says behold the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world.

He called them the Lamb of God.

That's a direct reference to the Passover, which is this threshold covenant that the Hebrews had, the Israelites had with God.

So John prophetically called Jesus the Lamb of God, god's spotless Lamb.

He recognized that this was the covenant lamb that would be killed, that we would enter into a special covenant with, and so that was very prophetic there, john speaking in verse 29.

And so we'll go forward a little bit more.

When Jesus was arrested, he was brought into the court and Pilate found him to be innocent.

And so you know, pilate was the appointed leadership on the Roman side, the high priest Caiaphas, that was the high priest of the Jews right there.

So you've got Pilate.

The Romans are.

Pilate, that represents the world, and Caiaphas, that represents the covenant people with God.

Both of them had laid their hands on Jesus.

So Jesus is arrested here and Caiaphas called for his death anyway, even though Pilate found him to be innocent.

Pilate wanted Caiaphas.

Well, you know, if you find him guilty then you try him and you kill him.

But Caiaphas couldn't perform the killing because, under the Jewish law, jesus would have had to have been stoned, and there's a process for that and he couldn't begin to do that process because of the timing.

They were about to celebrate or observe the Passover feast, and so he had to prepare for that and would have been unlawful to kill Jesus during that time.

But he was determined Jesus must be killed.

That's why he turned him over to the Romans to have him crucified, and so Jesus was found to be innocent and without blemish and he would be the sacrificial lamb provided by God himself for this particular covenant.

So when Jesus was crucified, it turns out that he died at the exact moment that Caiaphas is over here performing his religious duties.

Caiaphas is sacrificing the literal lamb, observing the Passover, while God has offered his son the spotless lamb, the lamb of God, and he died on the cross.

In that moment the two lambs were slain at the same time.

One was a religious act and the other one was God entering into a new covenant with anyone who would receive him into their home.

And so it's a very special covenant.

So when we receive salvation, we're accepting the terms of the threshold covenant that God established, and we can accept those terms when we apply the blood of Jesus to the doorway of our heart and we invite him to come in, and his Holy Spirit passes over that threshold where the blood is marked.

The Holy Spirit passes over that and comes into us, into this body, into this house, into this temple, and enters into a covenant with us.

So what if the other party didn't want to enter into that covenant?

Well, the blood had been spilled, the invitation sent out, and if someone didn't partake of the covenant, they would step on the blood to show their disregard for the covenant.

Instead of stepping over the threshold and treating the blood as something special, they would simply just step on it as a symbol of disrespect and disregard.

And so in Zephaniah the prophet, he warned us about this.

So in Zephaniah, chapter one, verse seven through nine.

I'm gonna read these verses, zephaniah one, seven through nine.

It says in verse seven hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord.

God, for the day of the Lord is at hand.

The Lord has prepared his sacrifice, he has bid his guests which means he's sent out the invitations and it shall come to pass in the day of the Lord's sacrifice that I will punish the princes and the king's children and all such as are closed with strange apparel or those who worship other gods and from foreign lands.

In the same day, verse nine in the same day also, I will punish all those that leap on the threshold or step on the threshold.

If you disregard my covenant that I'm offering, I will punish all those that step on this threshold which fill their master's houses with violence and deceit.

And so that's Old Testament.

Right there, let's go to the New Testament, in Hebrews 10.

It speaks of willful disregard and rejection of what the covenant provides.

In verse eight it references the law of Moses that, on the testimony of two or three witnesses, anyone who rejects the law dies without mercy.

In verse 29, it says of how much worse punishment do you suppose will be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, or who has stepped on his blood and disregarded his covenant.

And it says and counted the blood of the covenant, by which he has sanctified a common thing and insulted the spirit of grace.

How much worse punishment do you suppose is available for those who will just disregard what Jesus did, waste what Jesus did, just step on it and shun it?

For we know him who said vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, and again, the Lord will judge his people.

Well, what does that mean?

I don't know and I don't wanna know.

I don't ever wanna disregard what Jesus did.

I don't ever wanna step on that blood and make it of no value and no worth.

I want to treat it as a very precious thing.

God stepped over that threshold and he came into my life, into this house, into this body, and he made this temple a dwelling place for himself.

And so he's entered into a covenant with me.

He's entered into a covenant with you and he'll protect this house, he'll protect your house when you take him up on the terms of that covenant.

And so there's a progression of knowing God.

People know God and then sometimes they can go from knowing God to ignoring God.

So they know something to be true and they just choose to ignore it.

And then there's others that deny God, and that brings a harsher and harsher wrath on the people of judgment and on the land.

So nations can deny God as well.

And so let's look at Romans, chapter one, and I'm gonna read a lot of verses out of here.

In Romans chapter one.

We're gonna begin in verse 16.

Verse 16 says "'For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.

So the invitation has gone out to all and anyone can accept it, for the Jew first, and also for the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

As it has written, the just shall live by faith, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against".

So there's something that's revealed to those who believe and there's something that's revealed against those who refuse it, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth unrighteously.

You know, there's a lot of people in the world who are suppressing truth.

The media is real good at that, and they fall on the wrong side of God here when they suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

Verse 19, "'because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them".

In other words, they're without excuse.

They've known God and now they're ignoring.

For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

You can't see nature, be in nature and refuse to believe that there is a God.

You can deny that all you want, but you're on the wrong side of truth.

And it is clearly visible to anyone with a pulse.

If you just look around you, you'll recognize that there is a God.

Verse 21,.

Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened.

And so when you go from knowing God to ignoring God, to rejecting God and denying God, there's a progression that gets worse and worse all the way through.

Here, professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruption, incorruptible God into the image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

They worshiped man-made things.

Therefore, god also gave them up to uncleanliness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies amongst themselves.

Who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who blessed them.

Who is blessed forever, amen.

For this reason, god gave them up to vile passions, for even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.

Likewise, also, men leaving their natural use of the women burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which is due.

You see, this that's gotten progressively worse over the last couple of decades.

It's horrendous.

Now they receive in their bodies the disease that goes along with the things that they commit the vile here, verse 28,.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, god gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting.

So the further they drift away from God, the more they become blinded to the truth and blinded to what's right.

And suddenly the things that are right are now wrong and the things that were wrong are now right to them.

And so they have a debased mind Verse 29, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil mindedness.

They are whispers, backbiders, haters of God, violent, proud boasters, inventors of things, of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who, knowing the righteous judgment of God that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

And so people who do these evil things and those who approve of these evil things are deserving of the same penalty here.

And so there's just a natural progression that goes from recognizing that there is a God and he's the God of creation to ignoring God, to denying God and the covenant that he's offered, and you see the world getting darker and darker.

And I think back to the beginnings of this nation and our schools.

And I've got a.

I didn't bring it tonight, but I've got a little book about this big.

It's a copy of an original primer from New England from about the 1600s.

All the way through they had this book for first graders from 1600, 1700s into the 1800s and this was the book that first graders used for the beginnings of their education, and so they're learning the alphabet and so with that they learned that A is for Adam and through Adam's sin we all fall.

And B is for.

I forget what the letters are all the way through there, but every one of the letters of the alphabet has a biblical reference in there.

In the New England primer for first graders there was something like 53 questions about the 10 commandments, and so there's no separating the beginnings of our education from God's word, because our children were educated with God's word.

That was their education.

Everything else that went along with that had a biblical reference that went with that.

So our kids began and the early founding of our nation.

They began with a biblical worldview.

They understood that there is a God and that he's the God of creation, and they didn't deny him.

And so we fast forward a little bit further.

And then there were some Supreme Court cases that changed some things in our nation, and so I believe it was 1971.

There was a Supreme Court case that provided a three prong test.

It's called the Lemon Test, and it was Lemon is not the fruit, it is the name of one of the people involved in the case, and so it was Lemon versus a school district, I believe, in Pennsylvania.

And so the result of that was that the Supreme Court established something called the Lemon Test.

And the Lemon Test is what determines whether or not it's constitutional for something to be in a public place, in a public school, in a government house, and in particular religious symbols and scriptures and the Ten Commandments and things of that nature.

And so if it didn't have a primarily secular purpose, the Lemon Test would say that it's not constitutional under the establishment clause.

The establishment clause says that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion or preventing the free exercise thereof.

But the Supreme Court justices twisted those words, twisted that meaning, and then came up with something called the separation of church and state.

And we know from our founding that our founders were escaping a tyranny where the government said they must worship this way in this particular church and have this particular doctrine.

They left that because they wanted to have freedom to worship how they chose.

And so the separation of church and state.

You'll find it nowhere in our constitution.

It was in conversation of the day, and Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Church that the government must have a wall of separation that keeps government out of the church.

The church there was concerned with our constitution that if we're gonna make these laws that we're gonna end up with something where the government determines what the church does.

And he was saying the opposite of that.

He was saying that no, there's a wall there.

There's a wall that separates government and keeps government out of the church, but in no case should the church ever stay out of government.

So we have the problems that we have.

We have this natural progression of godlessness in our nation because we've taken the church out of government, we've taken God out of the government.

And so 1971, the Supreme Court ruling, meant that we have less and less godliness.

They start by pulling the Bible out of school and then 10 commandments down.

They say the 10 commandments are not primarily secular, so they must come out of the schoolhouses.

And so there's all these movements and efforts.

Something like 7,900 cases were decided because of this lemon test that determined that things must have a primarily secular purpose.

Well, thankfully we have another Supreme Court ruling.

In an eight to zero decision, supreme Court justices I believe it was just last year did away with the lemon law or the lemon test, and they determined that if it has a longstanding history and is significant to our history, then it must have a strong presumption of constitutionality.

And so suddenly those things which were not constitutional from 1971 and 7,900 court rulings.

All of the sudden we have religious liberty again and those things which were religious and biblically based, that had a significant part of our history and were consistent in history like our New England Premier, like how these kids learned from the Bible all of a sudden these things will now meet the new standard of the Supreme Court ruling, and so it's like we've been set free, but nobody knows it.

And so we've got to help people know that we have religious liberty again and we have to push the envelope to bring God back into these areas, back into our schools, back into government.

And so again back to Romans 1.28,.

It says even though they did not retain God and their knowledge, it used to be that kids in school had a solid knowledge of God, and now, for generations, these kids have heard nothing about God in school and they have no knowledge of God.

And it says since they did not think it worthy to retain a knowledge of God, god gave them over to a debased mind so that they would do those things which they ought not to do, those things which are not fitting.

And so that's what you see.

The culture has shifted so far away from God because we pulled God out.

So what's the solution?

To put God back in there and to reestablish that knowledge of God in our schools.

And so we've got to take that step, we've got to do these things, we've got to bring God back into our schools.

But we're talking about our covenant tonight, and I'm about to wrap it up here.

So God has entered into a threshold covenants with the Israelites, household by household.

Jesus, the Lamb of God, the spotless Lamb of God, his blood was shed during the Passover, at the exact same time that the Passover Lamb was being slain.

God's Passover Lamb was being slain and he was opening up a covenant to come into your house and to mine, such that when the destroyer comes through the land, he can't touch your house, he can't touch my house because God is in this house.

We have that kind of a covenant with him, a threshold covenant, and so, no matter how dark it gets I just outlined these passages in Romans, where it's just getting worse and worse and worse, it leads to worse conditions out there, and I don't care how bad it gets in this world we still have a covenant with God, a threshold covenant with God, where he's come into our house and on God's side.

He must perform his side of that covenant.

On our side, if we don't perform our part of the covenant, we don't get the benefit of it.

But if we perform our side of the covenant, god can't not perform his side.

He must perform his side.

He's obligated himself to do that, and so that's a huge benefit for us, no matter how dark it gets out there, no matter how dark it gets in our local area, our county, our state or our nation.

We have a covenant that includes righteousness.

You are the righteousness of God and Christ Jesus.

Jesus, the blood of Jesus made you righteous.

It traded your unrighteousness and put it on him and he gave you his righteousness.

So we are righteous.

He gave us peace, prosperity, healing, wholeness and protection.

And Jesus didn't say that we're guaranteed no trouble because we have a covenant.

We have this covenant with God.

Therefore we have no trouble.

No, that's not so.

In John 16, 33, jesus said these things I have spoken to you that in me you may have peace In the world.

You're gonna have trouble and tribulation, but then he says be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

In other words, if I did it.

You can do it.

Another way to put that is I have overcome the world and I'm gonna hand it over to you with my authority and my power that I leave with you, and all you have to do is enforce the terms of against the world that I've already overcome.

So that means that we're more than an overcomeer we reap the benefit that Jesus provided and we didn't have to do any of the hard work to get it.

And finally, in Revelations, chapter 12, verse 11.

Revelation 12:11

So this is after Satan has been thrown down.

Satan is known as the accuser of the brethren.

He used to be have access to God, where he could accuse the brethren to God every day, but then Satan was cast down from that place and he no longer has access to God.

And that occurred when Jesus cut the covenant, or when God cut the covenant through his spotless lamb and created a different set of terms, and so Satan was thrown down from heaven.

In verse 11.

It says and they overcame him.

They overcame him, satan, by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony, and they love not their lives into the death.

What does that mean?

They overcame him by the blood of the lamb.

Well, the blood's been applied.

Has it been applied in your house?

Are you?

Have you taken advantage of the blood and what that means?

Have you applied that blood to your house?

And then it says so they ever came by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony.

So you can have this covenant.

But if you don't speak of this covenant, if you don't speak your covenant, if you don't speak the word, then the devil, who doesn't play fair, will come into your house and act like a destroyer and wreck your stuff and wreck your life and wreck your family and wreck your health and wreck your finances.

If you let him but you don't have to let him when we resist, he leaves, he flees.

And so by the word of their testimony means you've got to enforce with your mouth your covenant rights, your covenant rights to healing, to prosperity, to peace, to wholeness, to protection, and don't let the devil steal from you.

We have a covenant.

When you speak the word, it invokes the terms of the covenant.

You've applied the blood in your life, but when you speak the word, it invokes the terms there, and no weapon formed against you will prosper, no harm will come near your dwelling.

And so those are some reminders about our covenant tonight.

There's so much more that goes into our covenant, but the threshold covenant is a unique piece of that big picture and so I hope that's helping you tonight.