.
“Then the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant written in this book.” (2 Chronicles 34:31)
The covenant that the people of God made with the God of Israel was not a contractual agreement that people had to follow to maintain its benefits. Rather a covenant is deeper than just an agreement. A covenant is bound and maintained by love. It is more like a marriage proposal and acceptance where the parties make their vows to each other.
When God cut covenant with man, He passed through the pieces of flesh Himself as a smoking firepot signifying that, out of His love, He would maintain both sides of the agreement. Even from the beginning, God was making clear His promise that Jesus would sacrifice His life for ours, bringing us into relationship with the Father.
Because God made the covenant with Himself, it was eternal and unbreakable. When the Lord made a covenant with David that he would have the throne forever, it was signifying this permanent covenant through Jesus. In 2 Chronicles 13:5, “Don’t you know that the Lord, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt?”
As salt was a preservative used on meats, an agreement that involves salt symbolizes one that is meant to be perpetual, uncorruptable and indissoluble [1]. The covenant is for all time.
While the covenant promises are eternal, they are not forced or required. Because covenants were based upon relationship and were vow commitments established in love, walking in this place of love was how one walked in the covenant.
Even though the covenant is perpetual, one could choose to turn away from the Lord. It was a choice to walk in it. Walking away from this love relationship, the people of God would go astray. There was a time that people went so far astray that they forgot this covenant and no longer held it as precious. They lost track of the promises of God written by their forefathers.
Under Manasseh’s long reign, many were led toward sin and on a course towards destruction. Even when the Lord, in his mercy, made Himself known and set them again on the right path, the Israelites quickly became lost again under the next ruler. But the Lord was faithful in His Covenantial love to draw them back.
In 2 Chronicles 34:14-15, when repairing the temple, the people of God discovered again in it the “Book of the Law.” “The book of the commands” of God also referred to as the “Book of the Covenant,” included the first five books, called the Torah. It contains the blessings, curses, promises and commands of how maintaining the covenant looked.
In living into it and restoring the love relationship with God, the people would remove anything from their lives that was detestable to God and under the curse. Part of living in the covenant promises was removing from one’s life the things that are under the curses that turn them away from God.
In 2 Chronicles 34:31,33 it says, “Then the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant written in this book… So Josiah took away all the detestable things from the lands that belonged to the people of Israel and caused all who were found in Israel to serve the Lord their God.”
After reading from the book, Josiah called the people to consecrate themselves so they could serve Him. To consecrate oneself means to dedicate one’s life to serve and worship Him with one’s whole heart in faithfulness to the Lord. In other words, they set themselves apart for Him. One did not serve Him without living a life that was set apart and holy. They removed everything from their lives that was revolting to God and against His law.
It was giving oneself or, in essence, their hand, to the Lord in renewing the vows of the covenant. Commentary notes, “God’s people must return to him with humility, true worship and a wholehearted desire to serve him. The words ‘give yourself to the Lord’ literally mean ‘to give the hand to the Lord.’ This is symbolic of how one’s hand was extended as a pledge of absolute loyalty, faith and dependence toward God.” [2]
In Nehemiah, when the people of God returned to the land and rebuilt the temple, the people consecrated themselves by setting themselves apart. It says,
“The remainder of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, and the temple servants, and all those who on the basis of the Law of God separated themselves from the people of the lands… have decisively joined in with their countrymen and their nobles, and obligated themselves—by both a curse and an oath—to walk in the Law of God, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord who is our Lord, along with His judgments and His statutes.” (Nehemiah 10:28-29)
They ‘obligated’ themselves to the Lord. Obligation always comes from love when it is covenant and not from religious duty. One desires and takes it on themselves in order to establish intimacy with the Lord. Commentary notes that this involved faithfully following His commands, keeping themselves spiritually pure and unpolluted by the world and support God’s work with one’s time, money and possessions.
If one is not obligating themselves to the law by fully living into it, but rather, living in known and unrepented sin, they also are not living into the covenant. Rather, they have turned away in unfaithfulness. Sentimentality for God is not the same as following Him. His commands and ways of living are not optional.
Too often, we want a range options and scales of choices. We live in a place of wanting to receive certain promises and obligate ourselves to certain laws, but others we do not like, we want to ignore. However, God does not give us the option of a range of living opportunities. We either live into the covenant out of love and receive it all, or we have turned away from it and are living outside of it. One must choose which way they will live.
Before entering the Promised Land, Moses charged the people, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
That thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. (Deuteronomy 30:19-20).
This does not mean that when we sin, we have fallen away without hope. God cut covenant with Himself knowing our tendency to go astray either unintentionally or intentionally. There is a place of grace and forgiveness when we turn back to the Lord.
“Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep his decrees! With all their hearts they seek him. They never do anything evil [intentionally], but walk in God’s ways. You have laid down your precepts to be carefully kept.” (Psalm 119:1-2)
Part of living into the covenant is also celebrating it with feasting. In the time of Hezekiah, it speaks of them feasting on the goodness of God with great joy. Worship, praise, remembering past victories with gratitude and receiving, in a spirit of worship and praise, healing, encouragement and abundance. People often ate and sacrificed offerings with deep gratitude.
It says in 2 Chronicles 31:1 that the fruit from feasting on the love of God was that the people tore down everything in their lives that reflected the ways of the world that turned their hearts away and kept them from living into the covenant promises.
“And when this celebration was finished, all of Israel that was present went out to the cities of Judah and smashed the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherah poles and tore down the high places and the altars throughout all Judah and Benjamin, and in Ephraim and Manasseh, until everything was destroyed. Then all Israel returned to their cities, each man to his own possession.”
What are we feasting on? We can look at the fruit in our lives to see where it is that we are setting our hearts and what we are feasting on. Is it fullness with deep gratitude or craving and want?
Sometimes people feast on gossip, criticalness, self-centeredness, fear and/or judgement. The result in their lives is lack rather than abundance. Like the Israelites who were bit by the snakes in the wilderness, our lives become filled with poison.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:10 about those who followed worthless cravings and practiced idolatry that “we must not embrace their ways by complaining–grumbling with discontent, as many of them did, and were killed by the destroyer!”
Everything we do, is to come from a place of covenant love. Walking with Him, is walking in the place of covenant, bound by love. In the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus tells of someone who was not dressed in the appropriate wedding attire that attended with the other guests. He was ordered to be cast out. Jesus is making clear that following His commands out of religion rather than from a place of devoted love does not have place in His covenant.
“Make vows and fulfill them to the Lord your God. All round Him bring tribute to the Fearsome One.” (Psalm 76:12)
Paul warns us to beware if we think it can’t happen to us and pride becomes our downfall (1 Corinthians 10:11). Many miss the mark. In pride and self-sufficiency, they move towards a religion that lacks covenantal love and extends mercy based upon performance rather than a life drawn towards holiness by ties of love leading to repentance and change.
In 2 Timothy 3:2-5 it says about many in the end times, “For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”
Jerame Nelson notes that it is from the place of intimacy and obedience [covenantial love] that comes the manifestation of the supernatural. He writes, “If you’ll begin to live a lifestyle of ascending the hill of the Lord, a lifestyle of praying and intimacy with God, it will change who you are, and you will begin to walk in the supernatural.” [3]
In Daniel 11:32 it says that with flattery, those who have violated the covenant will be led astray down the wrong path [of religion] but those who intimately know their God will be strong and do exploits for Him.
Lord, just like you did in the time of Josiah, bring your covenant to the forefront. Forgive us that we so quickly get led astray. Revive us in Your ways. Turn our hearts fully toward You once again. Let us walk in Your ways in intimate commune with you, loving You with our whole hearts and putting away the things of the world that would separate us from Your loving presence.
- Biblestudy.org. What is the meaning of a salt covenant? Located at: https://www.biblestudy.org/question/covenant-of-salt.html#:~:text=A%20covenant%20is%20an%20agreement%20between%20two%20or,him%20a%20perpetual%20throne%20%282Samuel%207%3A11%20-%2016%29.
- Fire Bible (MEV). Life Publishers International. 2015.
- Nelson, Jerame. Manifesting God’s Love through Signs, Wonders, and Miracles: Discovering the Keys of the Kingdom. Destiny Image Publishers, Shippensburg PA. 2010.
