Power of the Blood Covenant: Uncover the Secret Strength of God's Eternal Oath

by Malcolm Smith

  Saul was afraid of the popularity of David, fearful that he would snatch the throne from him; and his fear turned to hate and hate to an obsession to murder him. He tried to take David’s life on more than one occasion and finally made it his life’s passion to kill him.

  But the plots of Saul against David only served to bring Jonathan to face the reality that God had chosen David to be king after Saul. Jonathan was the crown prince, having the right of succession, and was to rule after Saul died. If he wanted to make his throne secure, he should have sided with his father in removing David. In making the covenant, he made a life-changing decision and in this final statement of the covenant between them died to his right to be the next king and swore allegiance to David.

  And he said to him, “Do not fear, for the hand of Saul my father shall not find you. You shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you. Even my father Saul knows that.” 18 So the two of them made a covenant before the LORD. And David stayed in the woods, and Jonathan went to his own house.

  1 Samuel 23:17,18

  This is the heart of their covenant. Not only as Prince Jonathan, but also as and for his unborn children, Jonathan laid down his throne and proclaimed David his king. To enjoy this covenant, his family had to say the amen to the decision of their covenant representative. He was the voice of his family declaring David as the rightful king of Israel, and in him his family pledged allegiance to him.

  Time passed, and the two young teenagers grew up into manhood and married and Jonathan had children. The old enemies of Israel, the Philistines, once again attacked Israel; King Saul, with Jonathan by his side, led the armies into battle. It was a day of great defeat for Israel, and both King Saul and Crown Prince Jonathan were killed in the battle.

  The Near Middle East in 1000 BC was a violent place. The first act of a conqueror was to assemble the family of the conquered king and kill all of his heirs to the throne. They eliminated immediately all potential problems in ruling the newly conquered people that might come from the recognized leaders of the people.

  It was not surprising, therefore, that when the news that the king and the prince were dead and Israel was defeated reached the palace, there was panic; everyone fled in a mad rush to escape the threat of death by Philistine hands. The royal nurses rushed to the nursery to take and hide the young sons of Prince Jonathan. A nurse picked up one of the princes, a little boy called Mephibosheth, and fled from the palace with him in her arms. She slipped and fell, and the baby was flung from her arms and smashed on the pavement; his legs were crushed, and he never walked again. He was taken secretly across the Jordan River to the wilderness, where he was raised in an insignificant desert town called Lo Debar.

  A period of unrest followed the death of King Saul, after which David became king of all Israel. The years passed by, but David never forgot the covenant made with Jonathan. When he had established his kingdom, he began searching for any of Jonathan’s sons that he might fulfill his oath and show covenant kindness to them.

  Now David said, “Is there still anyone who is left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

  2 Samuel 9:1

  It was a difficult task to find someone who would tell him where any of the family of Jonathan was to be found; no one would believe that David intended good. All the relatives of Saul believed David to be an impostor sitting on the throne that rightly belonged to an heir of Saul. In those barbaric days, the expected action would be for David to kill all the house of Saul before they killed him and claimed back what they perceived to be their throne. If he was looking for them, it must be to do them harm; no one could understand a covenant love that extended even to potential contenders for the throne.

  The story is told in 2 Samuel 9 of how David finally found the location of the crippled Mephibosheth and sent men to bring him from Lo Debar to his royal palace. Imagine how the young man must have felt as, leaning on his crutches, he watched the soldiers of David come to his house. He hated David, even though he had never seen him and had no knowledge whatsoever of the covenant between David and his father. He had been taught by the family of Saul to believe that David was the enemy who had stolen everything that rightly belonged to him, the rightful heir to the fortunes of his father, Jonathan, and his grandfather, Saul. He would most certainly share the common belief that the only reason David would want him in Jerusalem was to kill him.

  Taken before the king, he threw aside his crutches, fell on his face, and waited to hear the order for his execution. What he heard must have left him speechless.

  So David said to him, “Do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness for Jonathan your father’s sake, and will restore to you all the land of Saul your grandfather; and you shall eat bread at my table continually.”

  2 Samuel 9:7

  He was not treated on the basis of his track record of loyalty to David but on the basis of a covenant entered into before he was born, made by his father, who had stood as the covenant representative for his children’s children. David delighted in him as if he were Jonathan. He was accepted in the oath and yes of his father. The covenant, made years before in the blood-shedding of Jonathan, still held as fresh as the day it had been made. Although he was confronted personally with the covenant and its promises, there was no need of a further individual covenant between David and Mephibosheth; David accepted him solely on the basis of his having been in Jonathan at the making of the original covenant.

  But now confronted with the gift of covenant, he had a decision to make. To accept the covenant, he had to enter into the pledge of allegiance Jonathan had made to David, which would separate him from all the other members of the family of Saul, to never share in the hatred they bore to David. To enter into the covenant would be a death to all that he called life—its goals, hopes, and ambitions, and all the friends who shared them with him—and to rise again from that death to being a prince in the royal house of David.

  Lying on the floor before David, he accepted the yes of his father, swore allegiance to David, and allowed the covenant to change his life forever. He was taken into David’s house and treated as a prince, eating with David every day as a kind of continual meal of covenant.

  ...“As for Mephibosheth,” said the king, “he shall eat at my table like one of the king’s sons.”

  So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem, for he ate continually at the king’s table. And he was lame in both his feet.

  2 Samuel 9:7

  The human race, born of the family of Adam, bears all the traits of the family of Saul. Each one of us walked in disobedience to God and lived under the authority of the domain of darkness. Then there came into the family of Adam one who was of us but utterly different.

  Christ’s story is similar to Jonathan’s. Christ was bonded in love to the One hated by the family of Adam, the true God and King of all humankind. As Jonathan in the story, Jesus summed us up in Himself, stood as us and for us and entered into covenant with the Father on our behalf. The covenant was made solely with us in view.

  As our covenant representative, He declared and lived the pledge of love and obedience to His Father that was realized to its fullest in His blood-shedding on the cross. His obedience was summed up in His prayer in Gethsemane: "Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done." (Luke 22:42).

  We were born two thousand years after that covenant was made. We were born into the family of Adam, crippled by the lie and ignorant of the covenant. We lived in the darkness with a distorted image of God, never knowing of His love or of His designs of love toward us. We lived in our wilderness, lost and dead to God, in our hideout of Lo Debar.

  But He never gave up His pursuit of us, and finally we were summoned by the Holy Spirit to hear the Gospel. We believed we would hear the words of an angry God; instead we were stunned by the words of His love and forgiveness. Our track record of rebellion and disobedience had been forgiven, dismissed in the cove
nant made before we were born in our representative head, the Lord Jesus. And all the riches earned by the Lord Jesus were turned over to us; we have become heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus.

  We are not treated as individuals in isolation; we do not have a private covenant with God. The covenant was made, its terms and promises made sure in Christ 2000 years ago; in all that He did, He acted for us and as us. The Gospel called us to personally enter the covenant because we were in Christ when the covenant was made.

  Our decision was our response to the covenant that divine love had made: to say yes to the yes of Jesus the covenant head, to die in His death to independence and disobedience, confessing Him as Lord and in Him submitting to the Father. It meant nothing short of a death and resurrection, actually changing families. We died to being part of the family of Adam, the old man, to being included into the royal household of the new Man. Such a response meant incurring the wrath of the family of sin and darkness that we were once a part of. They would, in fact, treat us as they treated Jesus.

  This takes place by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit. We, who live two millennia from the making of the covenant, are united to Jesus, our covenant head, and made part of His history, partaking of His life. We take our place at the royal table along with the royal princes and, basking in the love of our Father, we eat the meal of covenant.

  Chapter 8: The Blood of God

  We have seen that a covenant in Bible times was a matter of life and death. This was underscored throughout the ritual by the death of the covenant animal, the oath taken by the two parties, and the shedding of their own blood, which flowed down their arms as they swore to keep the covenant even to the shedding of their own blood.

  For God to make the new covenant, the representative— the God Man, Jesus—had to shed His blood in death and, rising out of death, bring us the blessings of the new covenant in the authority of His shed blood.

  Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.

  Hebrews 13:20

  But what is this obsession with death that must involve the shedding of blood? Why the death of millions of animals by the shedding of their blood? Why did the love of God finally focus in the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ?

  From the beginning to the end of the Bible, we have the shedding of blood. In the Old Testament, a river of blood flows from the animals that were slain daily as sacrifices in the tabernacle and the temple. In the New Testament, the central celebration is in giving glory to the blood of Jesus that fulfilled all of the Old Testament sacrifices.

  And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll, And to open its seals; For You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, And have made us kings and priests to our God; And we shall reign on the earth.

  Revelation 5:9,10

  It is not only within the pages of the Bible that we find the shedding of blood. Around the world, I have witnessed the sacrificial shedding of blood among peoples far removed from each other, with diverse forms of religion. Records of the ancients universally contain the shedding of blood in sacrifice to the gods, both animal and human sacrifice. Where did such a universal idea come from? Because it is to be found among all people and throughout history, one would have to believe that it arose in the babyhood of the human race and spread along with the spread of humankind across the earth.

  Secular anthropologists tell us that it originated in the fear of the supernatural, the belief that an angry God demanded to be placated with blood. But the Bible gives us a very different picture.

  Leviticus 17:11-14 is the key Scripture to understanding what lies behind the shedding of blood. The blood contains the life of the creature, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood"(verse 11). God, the Creator and source of all life, owns all life and the blood in which it is contained. Therefore, throughout the Bible all blood, animal as well as human, was regarded as sacred. It was never to be eaten, and when an animal was killed, its blood had to be reverently buried.

  Therefore I said to the children of Israel, ‘No one among you shall eat blood, nor shall any stranger who dwells among you eat blood.’ “Whatever man of the children of Israel, or of the strangers who dwell among you, who hunts and catches any animal or bird that may be eaten, he shall pour out its blood and cover it with dust;

  Leviticus 17:12,13

  The first response of God to the sin of man was to give them the gift of animal sacrifice, in which the sacred lifeblood of the animal was shed in death, being poured out on behalf of the sinner under the penalty of death. The animal literally took the place of the sinner. The man or woman’s sins, one’s entire condition of separation from God, was placed upon the animal; then as the sinner’s substitute, its lifeblood was poured out in death. The life of the substitute animal was yielded up in death by the shedding of blood to the One against whom sin had been committed.

  The principle of substitutionary sacrifice was not revealed in detail to the human race until it was spelled out in minute detail in the Law of Moses:

  "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul."

  Leviticus 17:11

  Although this was thousands of years after the first couple fell, the principle was true in the eyes of God from the beginning of time.

  But how could the blood of an animal have any effect upon sin? There was absolutely no virtue in the blood of animals to cover the sin of humankind. Where, then, do we look for the effectiveness of animal blood through the centuries before Jesus came?

  To fully understand the sacrifices, we must look backward into the secret purposes of the Trinity. We have already seen that before time and space were created, the Triune God determined in covenant love to create humankind to eternally share His life. That was decided even though God knew that man would sin and wreak havoc upon creation. It was purposed that the Father would send the Son, who would join humanity in their sinful condition, taking their place and bearing their sin in His body, pouring out His life blood for them and as them. Before time and space were created, the ultimate gift of the sacrifice of the Son had already been given in the heart and determination of God.

  ...the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.

  1 Peter 1:19,20

  ...the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

  Revelation 13:8

  The ultimate gift of the sacrifice of God the Son, who had already been given before time, was pictured and anticipated in the gift of the blood of animals in sacrifice. Apart from the determination in the heart of God to give His Son, animal sacrifices meant less than zero. The blood of animals could not take away sin, and God was affronted by sacrifices that were presented merely as a religious ritual.

  “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?” Says the LORD. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats.”

  Isaiah 1:11

  In itself, the pouring out of animal blood could contribute nothing to bringing a person to God. The animal sacrifices had significance and meaning only because they shadowed in time and space the sacrifice already accomplished in the heart of God from before creation, awaiting its accomplishment in earth’s history. The benefits of the blood of Jesus were present to the worshippers in the Old Testament by virtue of the fact that He was slain in the heart of God from the beginning of time and shadowed in the animal sacrifices. Every animal sacrifice prepared the people for the actualization in time space history of the secret determination of God to become the substitute for His creature human.

  The Bible
is the only book that gives the account of when God gave the original blood sacrifice to sinful humans. When man and woman fell from their lofty position by the great disobedience and set the course of the race according to the satanic lie, they came under the penalty of death. In love, God came to the couple and initiated the unfolding of His gift of salvation, which would come to its full expression in the cross and resurrection of Jesus. At that time God gave the first promise of this salvation, announcing that there would be a seed or descendant who would crush the head of the serpent, Satan. (Genesis 3:15.)

  At the same time, there is the record of what appears to be a strange act of God: He replaced the tunics of fig leaves the guilty couple had made to cover their shame and gave them instead coats of animal skin.