🦁 Lent 4-1

Readings: Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Genesis 9:8-17; Ephesians 1:3-6. 

Reflection

Good morning. This is Tim Tribble, broadcasting from Sacramento, California. Today's readings come to us from Psalm 107, verses one, two, three and 17 to 22, Genesis Chapter nine, verses 8 to 17, and Ephesians chapter one verses 3 to 6. So today's readings have to do with the term covenant really quite a bit in the reading and the lot of us in today's world. Oh, and especially in Western culture, we're not real familiar with a covenant. 

It's more than a contract. So mostly used to like business contracts, rental contracts, things like that. Way more than that. This is something in good times in pre pre Christ during Christ times. That were done. And it was actually it was a ritual. It was more binding than family. 

So you can draw your correlations that you would like there. But this was a blood covenant. It was called the ancient ritual of cutting a blood covenant. There are seven parts to creating the covenant. First thing is, you exchange cloaks, which signifies a promise that there would be. Everything I have is now yours. Both going both ways. They trade in cloaks. They exchange their identity. There was an exchange of weapons. This signified that one. They weren't going to attack each other. And two, that if anyone attacks you, I will hunt them down and get revenge. Payback, even if it costs me my own life. They exchanged names, so they shared in all the obligations, liabilities, advantages of the names that they exchanged. Somewhat similar to marriage, but not quite that. Trying to relate to something we can relate to in this day and age. And then there was the exchange of blood. So they would make a cut of it and they would bind, bring their wrists together so that their blood co-mingled, you know, mingled together. And that was the blood covenant. It was the joining of two lives in the one. 

Then there was an exchange of blessings and curses. That was during during the cutting of the flesh. 

Sometimes animals were cut in ceremony, split in two with the men walking in the pieces of figure eight. That was, if you remember, the one in the Bible were both as they laid down the animals and then the spirit, Lord and flame passed over the animals. B That would be that part of the memorial exchange. 

So they would exchange seven stones for generate for generations. So this was not just a, you know, two guys doing the thing for, you know, next year. This was a generational. They were then bound together and then they would have a meal and they would they would break bread. So there's a lot of similarities and things with God's covenant with Abraham and the other covenants that we read about in the Bible. And then in the new the New Covenant. So there's a lot of what's the word one use here? There's a lot of imagery. 

So when we talk about the New Covenant, so Jesus came was crucified on the cross. This is the beginning of the New Covenant. We had Abraham's covenant and we know how well that worked out. And so then we turn around. Now we have the covenant with Jesus through Jesus, the New Covenant. So there's several. But the eggs, the exchanging of the cloak, there's some scriptures here. 

Philippians two seven, Jesus became a man. First Corinthians 130 He became our righteousness. Galatians 327 we put on Christ, Colossians 310, we put on a new man and Luke 1231 the promise of for provision and then the exchange of weapons, which is the promise for protection. So Ephesians 611, of course, we have the armor of God. Second Corinthians ten three The weapons are divinely powerful and in second Thessalonians three three, the Lord will protect us. And then we have, under the exchange of names, we have joined identities and responsibilities being shared. So in John 112, we become Children of God in Acts 1126. Disciples are called Christians and it and then we have the exchange of blood. So John 19 The Crucifixion, The seven Wounds. Galatians 220 We were crucified with Christ. Romans 229 The circumcision of the heart. Heart. Colossians 211 212 Removal of flesh. Jesus is the perfect sacrifice. That's the difference. This is the perfect sacrifice. No animals needed. Then we have the exchange of the blessings and the curses. So first Corinthians 611, we are justified in Christ. Colossians 210, they write, We are complete in Christ. Matthew 311 talks about being anointed by the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28 1819 We have authority in Jesus name Galatians 313. Jesus became our curse. The exchange of memorial gifts. We have Second Corinthians 122, which fills us with the spirit of the pledge. And then we have Luke 22, 15 to 20 of the Lord's Supper, which again coming down in the exchange of bread, flesh and wine, the blood. So we have John 553 to 58 eat my flesh and drink my blood to be in me. John 1723 Jesus is in us. Ephesians 2627 We are in Christ. And then John 15 talks about how we abide in Christ. So there's a lot of correlation. These are things that are done. Remember when this is written and one of the things we have to we have to take into account when reading the Bible is they're using things that are familiar to the people at that time. We've changed. That doesn't mean that God, you know, that our faith has changed. And it's just the way the things that we use now to describe things and get people to understand how that how things relate are different. Because we don't do these things anymore. We don't do sacrifice sins anymore and blood sucking, and we go down and sacrifice the animals and things like that. That's been gone for for some time. 

And they're using descriptors and things that people in that time period and time frame would understand. So sometimes we have to go back and it's really, really important when we're reading the Bible and looking at things, to go back and look and understand what the culture was like in that area at that time. And then it makes things clearer to us because you got to be really, really, really, really careful with literalism because things change. And as we get a better understanding of translating the ancient Greek ancient Hebrew into English and start using words in context with what is being said and not just translating word for word, for word for word. People who are familiar with linguistics understand this. If I say hello, my name is Tim, and we take that sentence and we translate those words as they are in that order in any other language, most of the time we're going to wind up. It's going to sound really weird to the person who's that original language speaker because they will not. They have a different, different grammar, different context. So just something to keep in mind. That's how we're refining things and getting better understandings of translations coming.