In The Beginning God Created The Heaven And The Earth.

(Genesis 1:1)

On the first day, God created light and separated it from darkness, and He called them Day and Night. (Genesis 1,3-5)

On the fourth day, God created the sun, the moon and the stars. (Genesis 1,14-19)
On the second day, God made a firmament and divided the waters under the firmament from the waters above the firmament, and called it Heaven. (Genesis 1,6-8)
On the fifth day, God created all the sea creatures and the birds. (Genesis 1,20-23)
On the third day, God created the dry land and plants. (Genesis 1,9-13)
On the sixth day, God created all land animals and man.– And God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.(Genesis 1:24-31)
In Genesis chapter 2, we learn details about how God created Adam and Eve, and how He put them in the Garden of Eden and had fellowship with them. But the most important detail is told already in chapter 1 – namely that God created man in His own image (Gen. 1:26-27), which means that God put His spirit into man; something that He hadn’t done for any other of His creatures

Adam and Eve had everything they could ever desire, only one thing they were not supposed to have:

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen.2:16-17)

But they allowed a snake (behind which was Satan) to deceive them, and they did the very thing they had been told not to do. So, they died immediately at the core of their being – their spirit was cut off from the life of God – and physical death would follow at some point.

By allowing the snake (and thus Satan) to talk them into disobeying God and sinning against Him, they caused the dynamics that God had set into motion at creation to become increasingly unsettled.

Even though it may sound like fun to us today to create a little stir in the cosmic order, the universe was anchored on spiritual laws (… the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. – Heb. 11:3). Just as we know that it is not a good idea to go against the laws of nature (walking two steps across an abyss is deadly, even though the law of gravity in itself is a very useful law of nature), in the same way going against the laws of the spiritual world (against the absolute truth, the righteousness of God on which the whole universe is centered) is not a good thing. And so, the life that could have been so good for mankind was spoiled.

Because of sin, death entered the world. Death essentially means “separation” – that is, separation from the life of God and, as a result, degeneration both on the spiritual as well as on the physical plane. And not only that – even though God had made man to be the gods of this world (Gen. 1:26; Ps. 82:6; Jn. 10:34-36), through willingly yielding to the devil, man enslaved himself to Satan (Ro. 6:16), to the degree that sin became established in man’s heart. Since then, sin has been the principle that has given Satan access to mankind to play havoc with our lives (Ro. 6:23).

God had created man to enjoy His love and have fellowship with Him. But sin instantly caused man to be steeped in fear and to hide from God from thereon, to go his own ways, and to live independently of God, but dependent on Satan. So, from thereon mankind became increasingly busy causing their own destruction (under the skilled tutelage of the devil).

And yet, God continued loving each single human being with the love of a true Father. But there was a problem now. Eugene Peterson expressed it like this: “We really don’t want God. We want to be our own gods.” (Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, Feb.23, 2007). – This statement is true probably for most members of the human species. When man yielded to the devil, we accepted the devil’s ways. And that’s actually a factor that has been complicating the project of saving mankind and helping us to come back into the love relationship with God that we were originally designed for and that is the only state of being for a human to be truly happy and fulfilled.

So, God started right away helping mankind by making covenants with them. (Man had ignorantly made Satan to be the god of this world, but by establishing covenants with man, God was still able to help mankind within the bounds of the laws set into motion when God had created this world.)

God Interacts With Mankind On The Basis Of Covenants

And so, the Bible is actually the book of the covenants. There is an old part (the Old Testament – testament means covenant), and there is a new part (the New Testament). The old covenant is revealed fully only in the new covenant – we are actually talking here about progressive revelation; and there is really just one covenant with many revelations. God made many promises in the OT which are really only fulfilled in the NT in the person of the Jesus Christ (cf. Lk 24:27.44-45; 2Cor 1:19). When we look at the various aspects of the covenant, we find out that Jesus is the total fulfillment of God’s covenant with man.

God’s Covenant With Adam

Right away, after sin had entered this world, God promised to mankind deliverance from the power of Satan, saying to the serpent:

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel. (Gen. 3:15)

That this promise was fulfilled in Jesus we can see in the New Testament looking at these scriptures:

But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law. (Gal. 4:4)

For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. (1Jn. 3:8)

Yet, until this promise could be fulfilled, the devil really played out his hand among mankind and things became increasingly worse. So, in Gen. 6 we read how God decided to destroy everything He had created on earth. But one man, Noah, stood out from the crowd because he still had a sensitive heart for God. – God told Noah what would happen: that a flood would come to cover the whole earth and wipe out all life on it, and that Noah should make himself an ark – a huge ship with enough room for him, his family (eight people altogether), and all kinds of animals – according the way God showed him. Now, building that ark wasn’t done within a few days. It took it’s time, and it wasn’t done in secret either. People surely must have seen it and asked what this was all about. But they did not care because their hearts were hardened by sin – that is: totally insensitive to God, but keeping themselves busy with the evil, death-causing things the devil had whispered into their hearts. So, Noah was the only person who trusted God – that is, Noah believed that God loved him and was totally for him; Noah heard and believed what God had said to him; and he believed that following God’s instructions would save him and his family.

So, God had shown Noah a way of salvation, and Noah had believed God and taken it. – Here again, as revealed in the New Testament, we have a picture of salvation through faith, pointing to Jesus Christ:

By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. (Heb. 11:7)

… when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. There is also an antitype which now saves us — baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, (1Pet. 3:20-21)

God’s Covenant With Noah

After the flood ceased and the ark was on dry land again, Noah built an altar unto God and offered burnt offerings: And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth (Gen. 8:21). – God knew that, even though Noah was a man who trusted God, the sin problem in man’s heart wasn’t solved yet. What God had done by sending the flood was like cutting out a bad cancer, so that life could be saved – but eventually the cancer would show up again. But God would deal differently with the problem from now on.

So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man … Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying: And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature … Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said: This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. (Gen. 9:1-13)

God had said to Adam:

See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food (Gen. 1:29f.).

But now He said to Noah:

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. (Gen. 9:3f.)

This change of instructions came about because after the flood environmental changes had taken place on earth, and man was now also allowed to eat animals to satisfy their hunger. But they were not to eat the blood – because the blood was another picture pointing to Jesus, as this New Testament passage shows:

He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:13f.)

But as, already indicated, the problem of sin in man’s heart (and all that it entailed) had not yet been dealt with. It was still festering there and giving the devil access and leverage, even in the lives of those people who wanted to walk in God’s ways. – One famous example of that is the life of Job. When great evil had hit Job, even though he walked according to God’s ways, Job made one statement that revealed something really important in the depth of his heart: For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, And what I dreaded has happened to me (Job 3:25). – You see, fear is the opposite of love. Before Adam and Eve sinned, they were so sure of God’s love. But after they had listened and yielded to the devil, fear entered their hearts. When we have fear in our hearts about something (or any of the emotions resulting from fear, even hate), then it shows that (in this area of our life) we don’t trust God; we don’t fully trust His love. It is an area in our hearts affected by the sin of this world – it is like the open window of a house through which a thief can enter to ransack and plunder a home. It’s a foothold through which the devil can play havoc with our lives – while KNOWING God’s love and being established in it is like being in a safe place. (That’s why the Bible says: Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life – Prov. 4:23.)

Jesus (who came as a man, but without sin) was referring to this issue when He said about the devil: … he has no claim on Me [He has nothing in common with Me; there is nothing in Me that belongs to him, and he has no power over Me] (Jn. 14:30; Amplified Bible). He was completely rooted and grounded in the Father’s love. There was no foothold in His soul through which the devil could attack Him. The same was also hinted at when Jesus (as a man) proceeded to cast out demons and the demons spoke to Him, such as in Luke 4:34 (using the Amplified Bible): Ah, {let us alone!} What have You to do with us [What have we in common], Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know Who You are–the Holy One of God! – Those demons were used to spotting the weak spots in human hearts/souls where they could apply leverage. But they couldn’t find any in Jesus. So they concluded that He was the Son of God and therefore didn’t actually have authority to cast them out at this time yet (since God had given this kind of authority over earthly things to mankind). But since Jesus had entered the earth as a man, He just commanded them out and they had nothing to resist Him. But ordinary man has a heart full of spots weakened by the effects of sin, which give the devil access and leverage.

As the sin problem was not yet dealt with, mankind essentially continued doing its own thing. God did what He could to keep the damage to the human race as a whole at bay. And the next big step in the rescue program of mankind took place when He called Abram out of the land of his forefathers. Abram had the same sin problem as anybody else, but he had a heart willing to trust God and to respond to Him.

God’s Covenant With Abraham

The story of Abraham (whose name was still Abram when God called him out) is told in Genesis, chapters 12 to 25.

When God called Abram out of his own country, Abram was already 75 years old and still childless because his wife was barren. Right then God promised to Abram many great things – tomake of him a great nation, to bless him [with abundant increase of favors], to make his name great, to make him a blessing [dispensing good to others] (Gen. 12:2), to provide protection, in him the families of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3), to give the land of Canaan to Abram’s seed (Gen. 12:7).

Then several years passed by during which we can watch Abram enjoying God’s protection and prospering in everything he did. And eventually, in Gen. 15, we read this:

After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram, I am your Shield, your abundant compensation, {and} your reward shall be exceedingly great. And Abram said, Lord God, what can You give me, since I am going on [from this world] childless and he who shall be the owner {and} heir of my house is this [steward] Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram continued, Look, You have given me no child; and [a servant] born in my house is my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, This man shall not be your heir, but he who shall come from your own body shall be your heir. And He brought him outside [his tent into the starlight] and said, Look now toward the heavens and count the stars–if you are able to number them. Then He said to him, So shall your descendants be. And he [Abram] believed in (trusted in, relied on, remained steadfast to) the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness (right standing with God). (Gen. 15:1-6; Amplified Bible)

Then Abram asked God for a sign that everything would indeed happen as promised. Therefore, God told Abram to prepare a remarkable ceremony of that time that involved the cutting in half of animals so that the pledging parties could walk between them, affirming that the same should happen to them if they broke the covenant. And Abram did as the LORD had ordered him. At sunset a deep sleep fell on Abram. Then he was told that his descendants would be strangers in a foreign land where they would be afflicted for four hundred years. But finally God would judge that foreign nation and lead Abram’s descendants out with great possession, and they would return to Canaan. Then when it had become dark, a smoking oven appeared and a burning torch that passed between the animal halves. – God had put Abram to sleep so that he would not have to walk between the animal pieces, for it was a one-sided covenant to which Abram could not contribute anything (Gen. 15:8-21).

In Genesis 17, we learn that Abram was 99 years old when the LORD said to him:

Behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall you name be called Abram, but you name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. (Gen. 17:4-8)

In the same breath as God expounded on the covenant made several years ago, He gave Abram a new name – Abraham – and a sign of the covenant – the circumcision of every male under the covenant. Now, as mentioned before, this covenant was one-sided. God would see to the fulfillment of the promise. All Abraham had to contribute was his trust in God’s faithfulness. And so the act of circumcision was to be simply a reminder of God’s promises (similar to the rainbow given to Noah) and an act of expressing faith in the goodness of God. – It was never something to “earn” God’s promises with. And so we read in the New Testament: in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love (Gal. 5:6).

And in chapter 21 we read how to Abraham (by now 100 years old) and his wife (who was only 10 years younger than he) finally the long-awaited son – Isaac – was born.

In the next chapter, Abraham’s heart was tested for its confidence (= faith) in God when God said to him in Genesis 22:2: Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. And Abraham obeyed immediately, trusting that God knew what He was doing (see verse 8) – up to the very last moment, when the Angel of the LORD interfered and told Abraham to spare his son and sacrifice a ram instead that was caught in a thicket by its horns – yet another picture pointing to the true, ultimate Lamb of God (Jesus Christ – see John 1:29), that God Himself would provide and who would pay the price for our sins in substitutionary atonement.

In chapter 25, Abraham died at the age of 175 years. And in the following we learn that to Isaac two sons were born, Esau und Jacob (the latter would later be called Israel), and that Jacob’s twelve sons were the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel. One of these twelve sons, Joseph, actually became a slave in Egypt (because his own brothers sold him there), but under remarkable circumstances he became the most powerful man of the land, second only to Pharaoh. So, when a severe famine broke out, Joseph was able to let his father and his brothers with their families come to Egypt and to provide for them there during those hard years. So it came about that, as Abraham had been foretold, the people Israel dwelt in Egypt for a few centuries and became a mighty people in spite of many afflictions. – But even though Egypt had been a place to survive, it was not really a place to live (how many of us are in this position today?).

So when the end of this 400-year period drew near, God chose Moses to lead the people Israel out of Egypt. Moses had been born to Jewish parents, but through a set of amazing events he was raised in Pharaoh’s palace as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. So, Moses was trained up in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds. When he was forty years old, he understood that God would deliver the children of Israel by his hand (cf. Acts 7:23-25). But instead of finding out God’s plan and timing, Moses tried to take care of matters in his own wisdom and might, with the result that he had to flee the country and spend the next forty years in the desert until his heart was ready to do things God’s way.

The Mosaic Covenant

So, in Exodus chapter 3, we read how Moses was instructed by God to bring Israel out of Egypt, which involved going to Pharaoh and demanding that he would permit the people to leave Egypt. But Pharaoh, who trusted in false gods, refused to let them go, because he was aware of the enormous economical importance of this people for his land. Therefore, God sent him ten terrible subsequent plagues as judgment against the Egyptians and their deities, until the land was ruined and Pharaoh finally gave in.

In chapter 12, in connection with the tenth plague, the Passover feast was instituted: God announced that during this night He would execute judgment by killing all the firstborn of man and beast in Egypt. But the Israelites He commanded that every household should kill a flawless, male lamb, not older than one year, put its blood on the door-posts and lintel of their houses and then stay inside during that night and eat the Passover lamb. And when the LORD struck the land of Egypt with this plague that night, He passed over the houses that had the blood on their door-frames (Exodus 12:13). Seeking protection behind the blood of the Passover lamb, the people Israel learnt that they were not any better than the Egyptians, but that they depended on forgiveness and redemption through the shedding of innocent blood. – And again, looking into the New Testament, we find out that this Passover lamb was actually a picture pointing to the real Savior, Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:29).

Thus, the people Israel moved out of Egypt, just as God had predicted to Abraham, and started on their journey through the wilderness.

And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people. (Exodus 13:21-22)

In chapters 19-24, we learn that Israel received the law out of the hand of God at Mount Sinai – the law that was to be the people’s “schoolmaster,” not their substitute savior as many (to this day) have assumed:

Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. (Gal. 3:24-25)

The Mosaic Law was there to show to the people God’s standard of righteousness. So far they had only compared themselves among each other, and as there was always someone who was worse than they, they were actually always pretty good people, or so they thought. They didn’t see their need for a savior. They didn’t see that their own sin was actually killing them (individually and mankind as a whole – Ro. 5:12.21; 6:23). – So, after God had given many commandments, which Moses told the people … all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words which the LORD has said we will do’ (Exo. 24:3). So God made a covenant with the people that was sealed with blood (Exo. 24:3-8). – The people said they would do all God had demanded of them so they could enjoy the blessings that their obedience to the law would bring them. They were not aware of the sin-principle deep within them that caused them to do things the devil’s way (leading to death), and not God’s way (leading to true life). So, even though on the surface it looked like the Mosaic Law was a good thing that gave them easy access to God’s blessings, in a sense it actually made things worse for them. It forced them to face the reality of their sinfulness and their utter inablility to rescue themselves. In addition to their already existing sin-problem, now they were also liable to keep the law. That’s why God had waited so long before He finally introduced the absolute standard of the written Law. As the New Testament puts it:

The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1Cor. 15:56-57)

Sin is that which brings death. And the law actually reinforces sin. The moment we are told not to do something (which we even may not have wanted to do prior to the command), that’s the moment when we start desiring to do this very thing. It’s the sin-principle within us that drives us, but fulfilling our lusts leads to death (most of the time not immediate physical death, but a long lingering death of an unfulfilled life, such as sickness, poverty, depression, etc.). The only way out is entrusting ourselves to God’s mercy and grace – which has been true and applicable at all times of human history.

The opposite of entrusting ourselves to God’s mercy and grace is doing things in our own wisdom, strength, and ability – in the arm of the flesh, as the Bible calls it (cf. Jer. 17:5; 2Chr. 32:8). And we read in the Old Testament story after story, generation after generation, where most of the Israelites chose to do just that, depending on themselves rather than trusting their God. Then, failure and misery would lead them to repentance and seeking their God again, so that times of blessing would come. But as soon as they were experiencing good things, they forgot where the good had come from and they returned to their old ways again, wondering why they didn’t work. The children of Israel were (and still are! – s. Ex. 4:22; Ro. 11:29) God’s chosen covenant people. But even they failed to understand that they had been offered a RELATIONSHIP with God, not a system of dos and don’ts called RELIGION where people still depend on their own abilities to save themselves (but are unable to do it no matter what they try).

One man who stood out from this pattern of external observation of religious duties was king David, a man after God’s own heart (1Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22). And the Bible calls him that even though David had also messed up and failed several times during his reign. He even committed adultery and then murder to cover up, and he did a number of other foolish things. But no matter how badly he messed up, he never lost his trust in God’s goodness, as this verse (and also many of his Psalms) demonstrates: And David said to Gad, ‘I am in great distress. Please let me fall into the hand of the LORD, for His mercies are very great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man’ (1Chr. 21:13). David had, despite his sin problem, a heart that was sensitive to God. Therefore God chose him, a shepherd boy, to become a great king. And He promised David to establish his seed to the throne of his kingdom forever:

When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. (2Sam. 7:12-13)

And even though in a sense this promise was referring to David’s immediate offspring (i.e. Solomon and then his sons after him), Psalm 89 makes it obvious that this line of kings was not without interruption. So again, the ultimate fulfillment of this promise is found in the New Testament in the person Jesus Christ:

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end. (Luke 1:31-33)

The Perfect Fulfillment Of All Promises In Jesus Christ

For all the promises of God in Him [Jesus Christ] are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. (2Cor. 1:20)

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? (Ro. 8:31-32)

We find in the Bible many revelations that are really building upon each other. Jesus is the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15), the seed of Abraham (Gen. 22:18), the seed of David (2Sam. 7:12-13)– He is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Adam, to Abraham, to David. And He is also the fulfillment of many of the symbolic pictures (such as the Passover Lamb) given to Israel under the leadership of Moses.

More than 300 prophecies and promises in the Old Testament refer to the coming of the Savior. In the New Testament, we learn that all of these were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. When all the pieces of the puzzle for God’s redemptive plan to work out were in place, God sent His own Son on earth to be the seed of the woman who would crush Satan. He came as a man – but with one fundamental difference: He was without sin. He was as sinless as God had created man in the beginning.

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. (Titus 2:11)

He who has seen Me has seen the Father. (John 14:9)

He came to earth to overcome sin (that had entered the world through the sin of Adam and Eve) by taking our sin, our guilt, our punishment into Himself, so that all, who would accept this gift by faith, would be able to experience for themselves the intimate love relationship with God for which we were originally created.

When Jesus died at the cross, He did not die for His own sin because He had none, but He was the flawless Passover Lamb which made all further animal sacrifices unnecessary. When Jesus cried out a short time before He died: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? (Matthew 27:46; see also Psalm 22, which was written about 1.000 years before the crucifixion of Christ), He took our separation from God into Himself, so that we wouldn’t have to endure it any longer.

And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. (1John 2:2)
As a proof that the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ was sufficient to give us eternal life, God raised Him from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is the good news of Easter which enables everyone, who believes it and who entrusts his life to Christ, to lay down his sins at the Cross and instead put on Christ’s righteousness – and make the vision of the prophet Isaiah an actual personal experience:

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. (Is. 61:10)

At the Place of Choice:

Jesus says to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6)

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born … of God. (John 1:12-13)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.(2Corinthians 5:17)

But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. (1Corinthians 6:17)

The Bible also tells us that after His resurrection, Jesus returned to the Father, where He now sits in glory at His right hand, and that one day He will come back in order to judge the living and the dead. And everybody who rejects the gift of salvation (and prefers to depend on his own good works, or who denies God’s existence altogether), chooses to pay the penalty of his sins himself, which means spending eternity in separation from God, but in the company of Satan in the lake of fire.

Most assuredly, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself; so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in the which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. (John 5:25-29)

Whoever puts faith in Christ, is a benefactor – an heir – of the covenant of God. In the Old Testament, everything was looking toward the Messiah, the coming Savior, and all the sacrifices provided forgiveness of sins on credit until Christ would pay it all off. So people were looking forward to the Redeemer who would come. – In the New Testament, we are looking back to the Redeemer who has come, and we already have received every promise in Christ.

Everything is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. So, the answer to whatever our problem is, is found in the Word of God. It’s found in the covenant. And the promise of the covenant becomes effective in our lives when we understand that it is not us, but that it is Jesus who has secured that covenant. And so, when we put faith in Jesus, who is the grace of God, then we receive all the promises of God, in Him. We receive every benefit – not because of who we are and what we have done, but because of who He is and what He has done.

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘And to your Seed,’ who is Christ. And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. (Gal. 3:16-17)

And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Gal. 3:29)

The promise was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who fulfills all of the promises of God. All of the promises of God are in Him Yes and are in Him Amen. So, if we have a promise of salvation, in Christ it is Yes and in Christ it is Amen. If we have a promise of healing, and we can see many promises of healing throughout the Old Testament and then throughout the New Testament, in Christ it is Yes and in Christ it is Amen.

Hebrews 8:6 tells us that the New Testament – or the New Covenant – is a better covenant established on better promises. It is better because Jesus is the one who accomplished it, who completed it, who fulfilled it. It’s not based our own goodness, our own righteousness, on our deeds, but on what Jesus did for us when He lived a righteous life, died in our place, and then rose again to newness of life. And so we have a better covenant established on better promises. So, if we find a promise for healing in the Old Testament, then – because we have a better covenant – our New Covenant must include healing, because it is better. If we find a promise in the Old Testament for physical and financial prosperity, then we can find many in the New Testament.

All the promises of God can be obtained only through a personal relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. And that’s actually the theme we find running throughout the Bible. – So, are you after religion, or after a real relationship with the living God?

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. (Ro. 8:1-2)