Promise A Real Promise

A covenant is a contract or agreement between two or more parties. Covenant is how God has chosen to communicate to us, to redeem us, and to guarantee us eternal life in Jesus. These truths, revealed in the Bible, are the basis of Christianity. The Bible is a covenant document. The Old and New Testaments are really Old and New Covenants. The word "testament" is Latin for Covenant.

Covenant. What a wonderful word. It's wonderful when it comes to God because he is the keeper of his word. He is faithful to his covenants with man kind even when man kind isn't faithful to him (As evidenced by the wandering in the wilderness once the Hebrews left Egypt.)

The act of salvation is a covenant made between God and man. God lays out specifically what he will do if we respond to his free gift of eternal life. Tie into this covenant someone whose life has been wrecked by addiction and the covenant offers to bring to this life a new power. A new power (In the form of the Holy Spirit) that will lift this person out of the muck and mire of sin/addiction and set it upon a new course of living.  As the Big Book of A.A. says..."God does for me what I could not do for myself."

In Exodus 6, we read where God describes to Moses the terms of a covenant he is going to make with the Hebrews who are trapped under the control of an evil Pharaoh.
"Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the Lord......
I will free you from your slavery in Egypt  (The same promise exists today for anyone trapped and enslaved by sin/addiction)

I will redeem you with mighty power and great acts of judgment ( God alone possesses the POWER to break the hold of sin/addiction in our lives. We have tried and tried to quit, and maybe even had some success for a brief period of time. But we were unable to sustain our new found freedom. God grants to us the Power necessary to live free and clean)

I will make you my own special people (What a promise! It's like being put in God's witness relocation program. We are changed...we are new creations (I Cor. 5:17). Not only that, we become God's people....a special people. No longer will we carry around all the labels that the world has put on us......Junkie...thief...liar....cheat....manipulator.....no good. Now we stand in God's presence as son's and daughter's of the Most High God....Now that dog will hunt!)

And you will know that I am the LORD your God who rescued you from your slavery in Egypt (This speaks of the ongoing relationship we will have with God in our new life. We will know (experiential knowing) God in ways that we never could have imagined).

I will bring you into the land I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It will be your very own property (Now today...God doesn't promise us land, that was for the Hebrews. But God does promise to give us a new life. In order to possess it we have to enter through Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection. We don't get a promised land but we do get a promised life.

I am the LORD (God closes out this particular portion of scripture the same way he opened it. By declaring his name.....I AM THE LORD. In other words...I am the keeper of covenants. You can take his word to the bank because it is true and amen.

Are you struggling today?
Are you still living in your sin/addiction?
Why not say yes to Jesus and accept his offer of a promised life?

God on you.....
mb