Last night, we had a wonderful General Women's Meeting in conjunction with our semi-annual conference which will be held next weekend. I loved last night's meeting. One recurring theme involved covenants. I have been wanting to write about covenants for some time and now I have a solid reason to do so.
A covenant is a promise between
God and man. It is most sacred.
Covenants are two-way promises.
God promises great blessings but He expects us to keep our part of the promise.
The Old Testament records many such covenants. The key covenants recorded in the
Book of Mormon are related to the
covenants God made with His people in Old Testament times. Understanding Biblical covenants helps us
understand Book of Mormon covenants
and again place the Book of Mormon in
the larger context of Holy Writ.
Adam and Eve
While the Book of Genesis doesn’t use the word covenant when speaking of Adam and Eve, there is an implicit
covenant at work. After partaking of the
forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve became mortal.
They understood the difference between good and evil. Prior to the fall, they could not have
entered into a covenant with God because they were as innocent as a newborn
child. But after the fall, they were
able to be held accountable and capable of making covenants with God.
God’s part of the covenant as recorded
in the third chapter of Genesis sounds more like a punishment than a covenant
and most of the world interprets it as such.
But a prayerful reading of the text clearly points to promises and even
blessings. To Eve, He promises
conception and childbirth. The world
sees the word sorrow and thinks: curse. But God is giving Eve a
tremendous gift – the ability to become a co-creator with Him in providing
mortal bodies for His spiritual children.
God gave to Eve the promise of Motherhood.
To Adam, God promised toil –
weeds instead of fruit. But the key word
that this is a blessing and not a cursing is found in these words of verse 17:
“for thy sake.” Work is a
blessing. Caring for and protecting a
wife and children is a blessing.
Accomplishing a job well done is a blessing. Adam and Eve were blessed
and they came to understand those blessings as they had been given and they
worshipped God in gratitude and joy (Moses 5: 10 -11).
Adam and Eve also were given the
Law of Sacrifice – specifically the sacrifice of a first-born and perfect lamb
which represented the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. We know that they kept this law and taught it
to their children because their son, Able, kept that law as recorded in
Genesis, Chapter 4. That God was
specific as to the terms of the covenant is shown in the fact that He
“respected” Able and his offering of a lamb, but did not respect Cain and his
offering of grain. It wasn’t that Cain
didn’t have a lamb; it was that Cain tried to change the ordinance as given by
God which was a violation of the covenant. God knew that Cain’s intent was not
honest. He knew Cain’s heart.
Noah
God’s covenants with Noah are
recorded in Genesis, chapters 6 to 9. The first was that if Noah would build
the ark as God specified and gather the animals according to God’s prospectus,
God would see to it that Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives would
be kept safe within the ark and not be destroyed in the flood.
God’s covenant with Noah is recorded
in chapter 9 of Genesis and is the beautiful promise that God will never destroy the
entire earth by flood again. The token
of that covenant is a rainbow.
Noah’s part of the covenant after
the flood was to continue living the law of sacrifice as given to Adam. The first thing Noah did when leaving the ark
was to build an altar and offer sacrifice to the Lord (chapter 8).
Noah and his sons are also commanded to “multiply and replenish the
earth” (Genesis 9:1)
Abraham
Abraham also kept the ancient law
of sacrifice. We know that he did
because we first meet Abram (for so was he known at that time) in Genesis 12: 1
and by Genesis 12: 7, we learn that Abram built an altar to God.
Abram entered into a covenant
with God. One of the results of this
covenant was that Abram’s name was changed to Abraham and his wife’s name was
changed from Sarai to Sarah.
The Abrahamic covenant contains
three promises from the Lord: 1) a promise of land; 2) a promise of posterity;
and 3) a promise of priesthood, i.e., Abraham and his descendants would become
a chosen people before God and would be able to perform ordinances in His name.
For Abraham’s part, he was to
continue to keep the law of sacrifice.
He was to worship only one God.
The physical token of the covenant was circumcision of all male children
by the age of eight days. This law and token were to be maintained by Abraham
and his descendants until the Messiah
came to fulfill the law. Orthodox
Jews and Muslims still practice circumcision to this day because, while many of
them accept Jesus as a prophet, they do not accept him as the Son of God or the
Messiah.
The best known story of Abraham
and the law of sacrifice is the story of the binding of Isaac found in Genesis
chapter 22. It is a disturbing story
unless one understands that the call to sacrifice Isaac was a foreshadowing of
the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Abraham,
as the father of the covenant, had to understand at an emotionally deep level,
the sacrifice of the Father in giving His only begotten Son. Isaac, too, had to understand the willingness
of the Son to sacrifice His own life. (See Jacob 4:5 in the Book of
Mormon) In the end, Isaac’s life was spared. Abraham learned that
“God will provide himself a lamb” (Genesis 22:8). He did. That
lamb is Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.
Isaac
Isaac took part in the renewal of
God’s covenant when he was willing to give his life in obedience to God. So important was the covenant with God that
when Isaac was of sufficient age to take a wife, Abraham sent a trusted servant
to the home of a cousin to find a wife of the covenant for his son. He did not want Isaac to marry outside the
covenant of the Lord. The story of how the servant finds the one the Lord has
chosen for Isaac is a beautiful one found in Genesis chapter 24. Rebecca agrees to marry this man she has
never met and is promised through the covenant that she will be the mother of
“thousands of millions” (Genesis
24: 60).
Jacob
Jacob was a son of Isaac and
Rebecca. As a young man, he was forced
to flee his home after a fight with his brother, Esau. One night as he was sleeping on the top of a
mountain, he dreamed of a ladder between heaven and earth. Angels were ascending and descending. The
important thing about this vision in the context of covenants is that God
renewed the covenant He made with Abraham and Isaac that night with Jacob on
the mountaintop: land, posterity, and priesthood/being God’s chosen people. Jacob later married and fathered twelve sons,
including Joseph as we discussed earlier.
The Abrahamic Covenant was passed on through Jacob to his sons. Like Abraham, Jacob was also given a new
name: Israel.
God’s chosen people were promised
a specific land (described in Exodus as a “land flowing with milk and honey” [Exodus 3: 8]). They would have
peace and prosperity in the land. They
could grow mighty in the land through their posterity. They would be God’s people
and He would be their God.
Covenants in the Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon is intimately connected with the Bible.
The Old Testament Covenants given to Adam, Noah, and Abraham are
carried out in the Book of Mormon. Lehi was a descendant of Abraham through Isaac,
Jacob (Israel), and Joseph. It is not
surprising that he and his descendants were heirs to Abraham’s covenant.
Jesus Christ and the New Covenant
When Jesus came, it was in part to fulfill the Law of the Old Covenant and to institute a New Covenant or New Testament. The Covenant of Sacrifice was fulfilled in His ultimate Sacrifice upon Calvary. At the Last Supper, He explained that to His apostles and gave them the tokens of the New Covenant, the bread of His broken body and the wine of His blood. This is a renewal of the baptismal covenant that sets our feet upon the road of discipleship.
Text copyright March 2014, Gebara Education
except
Following the covenant of baptism, I was given the gift of the Holy Ghost. The constant companionship of the Holy Spirit has inspired and directed my life. When tempted to stray, I feel its voice of warning. When I have ignored that voice, it has always been to my sorrow. When I heed it, I am strong and protected. To live without it would be unthinkable.
