by Aaron Davis
All six of these covenants between God and man would be considered secondary covenants that were extensions or amendments to the covenant that was established between God and Adam. They were additional promises of redemption that continued to reveal, mature, and be elaborated upon from covenant to covenant, guiding all of history toward the promise of Christ and His ultimate fulfillment of reestablishing the kingdom of God (and man’s benefits therein) in the earth.
II Corinthians 1:20 (MSG)
Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete.
Satan intended to destroy the rule of God and the establishment of His kingdom on the earth through the compromising of the covenant relationship between God and man, with sins as a separating barrier between God and His creation. With the institution of sin came the introduction of another kingdom in the earth, with which man would have to contend. Through Christ and by the grace of God in the New Covenant, man was restored to his original position of personal relationship with God and given the authority to once again establish the kingdom of God in the earth as was originally by God for man with Adam.
THE NEW COVENANT
II Corinthians 5:17 (AMP)
Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!
The coming of Christ was the culmination of all that was promised and foreshadowed in the former covenants and prophetic writings of the Old Testament. His appearance on the scene brings a wholly new covenant and a new way of living in the world where the old things are passed away and all things become new.
I like how Allan Smith put it when he wrote:19
Jesus, the New Adam, fulfills the righteous requirements of God’s covenant and brings the blessings of the covenant to a new humanity. There is no more need for animal sacrifices because His sacrifice solved the problem of sin once and for all (Heb. 10:1–14). The world itself, which was “made subject to vanity” because of Adam’s sin (Rom. 8:20), was reconciled to God by Christ’s atoning work (Col. 1:20) and was restored to its original ceremonial cleanness. Therefore, there can no longer be unclean lands or holy places. There is also a new human race to occupy the new world. Every member of this new race is a priest, including women and Gentiles. All have equal access to the throne of God (Eph. 2:12–22; Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11), for Christ Himself is the Great High Priest who brings His people unto God, and everyone who is baptized in Him has been made a son and heir (Gal. 3:26–29).
Now that the world has been redeemed and man has been saved through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the new humanity can inherit the glory originally intended by the heavenly Father . . . The new race, converted to faith in Christ is not sinless, to be sure, but righteous by God’s grace and the power of His Spirit. They have been saved in Christ in order to fulfill the original Adamic commission to subdue all things to the glory of God . . . History can come to an end when Satan is wholly defeated, man truly saved, and God glorified both as Creator and Redeemer.
TOUCHING THE UNTOUCHABLE, REACHING THE UNREACHABLE
Matthew 8:2–3 (NIV)
A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ”I am willing,” he said. ”Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy.
Under the Old Covenant, by law when you touched the unclean thing, you yourself became unclean and tainted by its environment. But under the New Covenant in Christ, the redeemed believer takes the kingdom of God to the unclean thing, to that which has been tainted by the influence of the kingdom of sin, and makes it clean! We are no longer changed by our environment, but instead, our environment is changed by us.
We are no longer restricted or defined by a state of uncleanliness, but rather commissioned to touch that which is unclean and make it clean! Christians today are commissioned to touch the untouchables and reach the unreachables! God has called men and women to establish His kingdom, to take back the ground that has been overtaken by the curse of the kingdom of darkness, and make whole those broken places that have been ravaged by the wages of sin.
Many have quoted the adage, “Hurt people hurt people,” but I’m convinced, under the authority of the New Covenant, that when we are establishing the kingdom of God in the earth, that also healed people heal people (I will elaborate upon this premise extensively in subsequent chapters).
ORIGINAL INTENT
Where the Bible ends on the topic of covenant is with a vision of eternity in the book of Revelation regarding the final fulfillment of covenant by God’s standard:
Revelation 22:3–5 (NKJV)
And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever.
From the beginning, God’s intent was for man to rule this earth through the establishment of His kingdom. Even when man veered from God’s intent for him, in His love, God orchestrated a plan for redemption and restoration to their original purpose and intent by Him. A New Covenant of Grace through Christ would establish eternal undivided connectivity and relationship with God. Through this New Covenant, man can, in spite of himself and in spite of sin, experience the intimate relationship with God that he was created to have. As a result, man also has the covenantal authority to establish the kingdom of God as true heirs and undefiled representatives of that kingdom.
Hebrews 6:9–20 (NASB)
Better Things for You
But, beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you, and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way. For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you.” And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
God is unchangeable in His purpose, interposed with an oath. It is impossible for God to lie. This hope we have as an anchor for our soul (for our mind, will, and emotions to be anchored to). God is a covenant-keeper; when He makes a promise, it is an anchor for us to hold on to because He cannot lie.
Covenant is a big deal to God! So even when we break our end, He has sworn by perfection and is bound to His own Word to hold up His end, even when we do not.
As we continue on in this book, the establishment of God’s kingdom through our New Covenant will be a central pivot point for understanding the balance between who we are to God, who He is to us, and why the truth
we have been taught may not necessarily be the complete truth.
Part II
There Is More!
Experiencing Quantum Discovery
“God is the creator of both the physical world and the spiritual world. He is the architect of both the visible world and the invisible world. So the same principles apply in both domains, because the same mastermind designed both domains. So Jesus was the world’s greatest at helping people visualize the tangible in order to grasp the certainty of the intangible. He was the world’s greatest at equipping people to believe.”20
—Dr. Dave Martin
As we seek to understand (discover) that which we may have previously not understood, more becomes available to us through both knowledge and application.
CHAPTER SIX
The Kingdom of God
“God [is] the author of the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion.”
—Robert Boyle, physicist and chemist, considered to be the founder of modern chemistry
As we enter Part II of this book, it’s important to realize that, although the premises presented here are my views, my desire in writing this book is not necessarily to present a case establishing the validity and truth of the Bible, as much as a desire to expose perspectives that are perhaps different from what may have been previously perceived. How you process them is up to you. My hopes are that what is written here provides you more to consider than perhaps your own experiences have presented, allowing you to analyze those occurrences from a different perspective or viewpoint.
John 15:7 (AMP)
If you live in Me [abide vitally united to Me] and My words remain in you and continue to live in your hearts, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.
Having now established, at least from a biblical perspective, that God is a God of covenant, and the Bible conveys His thoughts and His nature, then the natural progression of thinking would likely cause many to question their own experiences. When we did what we thought we were supposed to do—we prayed and we asked God to intervene—why did Grandma still die?
This question and those that parallel it have such significant impacts on how we process our relationship with our Creator. Typically we often summarize the conclusion of the question with one or two applicable answers pertaining to varying degrees of God and His sovereign will. But what if more than the previously understood variables play in to our scenario? Perhaps additional laws could or do influence the chasm between our experiential versus desired outcomes.
PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL LAWS OF ACTION AND REACTION
Going back to physics for a moment, one of the foundational laws of physics (laws of motion) written by Newton in the late 1600s states, in layman’s terms, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In parallel, there is also worldwide evidence of belief systems in spiritual laws that transcend the box of Christian faith, indicating that a great majority of world religions, even people who do not subscribe to any faith at all, believe in an unseen principle where if you do good or bad to other people, it comes back to you.
Some faiths call it Karma. The Bible explains it in terms of reaping and sowing or seedtime and harvest in reference to planting a particular seed in the ground and seeing a direct harvest of that seed.
Galatians 6:7 (AMP)
Do not be deceived and deluded and misled; God will not allow Himself to be sneered at (scorned, disdained, or mocked by mere pretensions or professions, or by His precepts being set aside.) [He inevitably deludes himself who attempts to delude God.] For whatever a man sows, that and that only is what he will reap.
As we see in Galatians 6, this physical law of sowing and reaping also has some sort of spiritual parallel, while Genesis 8 states that this physical principle of seedtime and harvest will be in effect for as long as the earth remains.
Genesis 8:22 (AMP)
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
We know that planting a watermelon seed will produce a watermelon in its time of harvest and comparatively speaking, planting a spiritual watermelon seed will also produce watermelons in your life, not apples. It is a physical law and apparently a spiritual law of cause and effect that is unchanging in its institution (at least as long as the earth remains, when comparing Genesis 8 to Galatians 6).
This principle (at least in some cases) could provide additional perspective, clarity, and perhaps even answers for the above Then why? scenario. But in other cases, it may produce additional questions, particularly when it is perceived that, at least according to the sowing and reaping principle, we sowed seeds of goodness and love and reaped what seemed a bitter harvest.
I think it would be safe to assume that we all have probably experienced times when we felt we were treated unfairly. Times when we gave freely of ourselves only to have someone take advantage of the gift we gave him. We felt that we gave 110 percent of our time, our love, our acceptance, or our faithfulness, doing all that we knew to do, but when it came time for reciprocation or a return on that investment, we were disappointed.
This scenario and those like it is difficult to process when feelings associated with reaping a bitter harvest are related to people with whom we have had a relationship. But it becomes increasingly more difficult when that someone is God.
IS IT THAT CUT-AND-DRIED?
How many times have you had to change your mind about a situation based upon new information available to you?
As a detective, there were many times I would walk onto a crime scene and initially it appeared to be very clear as to what had happened, until I talked to someone who was there at the time of the crime. If that person offered a different perspective on what transpired, it often changed my entire outlook.
What all of us know to be the truth is that the difference between life in prison and walking out of a detective’s office on the day of a crime is often determined by the answer for why they did it. Self-defense is entirely different from first-degree murder, even though the end result is the same.
Sometimes there are unseen factors in this physical realm influencing physical outcomes that, once revealed, change people’s perspectives. I have found myself wondering if perhaps there are also additional spiritual factors that may be influencing our experienced outcomes.
UNSEEN FORCES
Ignorance can play a huge role in our perception of any scenario. It is well understood and justified throughout history and science that a lack of awareness of a law, or failure to acknowledge it, does not release you from the effects of it. If it is a law, your understanding of it, awareness of it, or belief in it may have no affect on its influence over your situation, unless the knowledge or acknowledgement of it allows you to somehow harness its power (which we will further elaborate upon in later chapters as it pertains to the release of faith).
I’m reminded of the nuclear disaster that took place at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986. This event is considered to be the worst nuclear event in human history (rivaled only now by the understood after-effects of the Fukushima disaster still unfolding daily). What’s interesting to me is that the city of Pripyat didn’t look any differently on April 27, 1986, from the day before when the Chernobyl power plant had a meltdown—but the environment was significantly changed. There was a kingdom of unseen radiation reigning in Pripyat that mandated a complete evacuation of the city. And it is still relatively uninhabited today because dangerous levels of invisible, life-threatening radiation have permeated every structure; it even resides in the soil of that region!
Now, in light of that event, consider this scenario: If, for some reason, I were dropped out of a plane somewhere over Eastern Europe and happened to find my way to Pripyat in the months following the Chernobyl disaster, my ignorance could be the death of me. Finding myself in a geographic area where I don’t know the language, I don’t know how to read the signs, I don’t understand the history, and I don’t kno
w why this city is uninhabited, I wouldn’t realize that there is an invisible kingdom ruling beyond my ability to physically detect it. On the surface, I may deduce that I hit a metaphorical jackpot in finding an entire city that now, for all intents and purposes, belongs to me! But if I took up residence there, if I decided to linger in that land, my ignorance would not exempt me from the effects of the kingdom of invisible radiation upon my body.
In this scenario, I didn’t plant the radiation seeds, but nevertheless I will reap the harvest of them. Not because I deserve to, not because I was a part of the events resulting in the nuclear meltdown, but because I am now a variable in the cause-and-effect equation of nuclear energy and its radioactive fallout. Ignorance would not excuse me from being touched by the establishment of that radioactive kingdom existing outside of my understanding of it.
I wonder how many times we have experienced an event in our lives where ignorantly we become a victim of radioactive fallout in a spiritual Chernobyl-type of experience. Maybe there have been occasions where ignorantly, we have found ourselves in unfamiliar territory where we don’t know the rules, we don’t know the history, we don’t know the language, we can’t read the signs, and we get sucked into a cause-and-effect vortex that quickly spirals beyond our understanding or control. In the end, we’re just another link in a seemingly unavoidable and unfair environment of victimization. By an unforeseeable yet very binding chain of events, we’re left with nothing more than the undeserving, unjust question of Why me?