105. God is a covenant person!
Most people do not understand covenant. It is the strongest relationship that
there is and it carries the most responsibility!
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). He had such a desire in his heart to bless
his covenant family.
That was the cry
of David, but it also the cry of Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4 (Amplified Bible) says, “But God – so rich is He in His
mercy! Because of and in order to
satisfy the great and wonderful and intense love with which He loved us.” David was an example of the heart of
God showing that He has an ache to bless His covenant people. David was a callused warrior, but he
cried out to bless his blood covenant family.
Why is there such a big deal about Mephibosheth?
Read 2 Samuel 9:1-13.
2 Samuel
9:1-13 says, “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?’ And there was a servant of the house of Saul
whose name was Ziba. So when they had called him to David, the king said
to him, ‘Are you Ziba?’ He said, ‘At your service!’ Then the king said, ‘Is there not still someone of the
house of Saul, to whom I may show the kindness of God?’ And Ziba said to the king, ‘There
is still a son of Jonathan who is lame in his feet.’ So the king said to him, ‘Where is he?’ And Ziba said to the king, ‘Indeed
he is in the house of Machir the son
of Ammiel, in Lo Debar.’ Then King David sent and brought him out of the house of
Machir the son of Ammiel, from Lo Debar. Now when Mephibosheth the son
of Jonathan, the son of Saul, had come to David, he fell on his face and
prostrated himself. Then David said, ‘Mephibosheth?’ And he answered, ‘Here is your
servant!’ 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.’ Then he bowed himself, and
said, ‘What is your servant, that you should look upon such a dead dog as
I?’ And the king called to Ziba,
Saul’s servant, and said to him, ‘I have given to your master’s son all that
belonged to Saul and to all his house. You therefore, and your sons
and your servants, shall work the land for him, and you shall bring in the harvest, that your master’s son may
have food to eat. But Mephibosheth your master’s son shall eat bread at my
table always.’ Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants. Then Ziba said to the king, ‘According
to all that my lord the king has commanded his servant, so will your servant
do.’ ‘As for Mephibosheth,’ said the king, ‘he shall eat at my table like one of the king’s sons.’ Mephibosheth had a young son
whose name was Micha. And all who dwelt in the house of Ziba were servants of Mephibosheth. So Mephibosheth dwelt in
Jerusalem, for he ate continually at the king’s table. And he was lame in both
his feet.”
Mephibosheth
was limp and lame like us. His
name means a dispeller of confusion and shame. He was Jonathan’s son, the grandson of Saul, who had tried
to kill David. He had been living
beneath his rights. He had a
covenant with the king and did not know about it. He was living in Lo Debar, which means a place of no
bread. The Bread of Life is the
Word of God. If we don’t know the
Word, we don’t know who we are. We need to know it.
One day the
covenant love just hit David so hard that he could not stand it. He just had to bless someone. So he called to find out who was a
survivor of his covenant with Jonathan.
David made
sure that Mephibosheth was served the rest of his life by Ziba and his
family. They ran the farm for
Mephibosheth. David poured out his
entire household for this covenant, and Mephibosheth ate at David’s table the
rest of his life.
Jonathan, Mephibosheth’s
father, had made a covenant with David.
1 Samuel 18:1-4 (KJV) says, “And it came to pass, when he
had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with
the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. And Saul took him
that day, and would let him go no more home to his father’s house. Then
Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the
robe that was upon
him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow,
and to his girdle.”
Questions:
Did Mephibosheth deserve
this?
Why do we need a Blood
Covenant with a king?
Mystery # 1.
We inherit curses and blessings
through blood. The Law of
Inheritance is that we inherit blessings and curses from our family, going back
many generations.
1. From our forefathers
Exodus 34:6-8 (Amplified
Bible) says, “And the Lord passed by before him (Moses) and proclaimed, The
Lord! The Lord! a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness
and truth, keeping mercy and loving-kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity
and transgression and sin, but Who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to
the third and fourth generation.
And Moses made haste to bow his head toward the earth and worshiped.”
2. From our own sin
Romans 6:23 (KJV) says, “For the wages of sin is death, but
the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Galatians 6:7 says, “Do not be
deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
Where
does the Law of inheritance live?
Is it in the body or the spirit?
Both. That is why people look like their
parents. But the invisible part of
what is inherited in the spirit fools most people. There are two parts of a person that can have life or family
inheritance.
John 3:5-6
says, “Jesus answered, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of
water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of
the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.’”
The physical life carries the
looks and build of the body.
The spiritual life is the life
that carries the inheritance of blessings and curses.
Example: The
law of gravity keeps an airplane on the ground. But when the plane taxies down the runway fast enough another
law takes over and nullifies the law of gravity; that is the law of lift. In the same way, the law of substitution
nullifies the law of inheritance.
This basically
means that people may be born into a certain family and from that family
lineage they will receive blessings and curses as their inheritance, but it
also means that those can be changed.
Tribes in Africa, in American Indian culture and some Asian type
societies have always looked for ways to swap or trade blessings and curses
with other people.
Before the foundation
of the world, God prearranged to have Jesus crucified according to the ETERNAL
Spirit, which means that the substitution principal was in effect before any
man was created.
Revelation 13:8 says, “All who dwell on the earth will worship it,
whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world.”
A good
example of the law of substitution was the Passover.
Exodus
12:13-14 (Amplified Bible) says, “The blood shall be for a token or sign to you
upon [the doorposts of] the houses where you are, [that] when I see the blood,
I will pass over you, and no plague shall be upon you to destroy when I smite
the land of Egypt. And this day
shall be to you for a memorial. You shall keep it as a feast to the LORD
throughout your generations, keep it as an ordinance forever.”
Mystery # 3.
You might think, “How does the blood do anything? I was not
there when Jesus died; that blood is dried up by now.” I’m glad you asked, just hang on and
find out!
Since the
beginning of creation, man was the subject of blood covenants. Adam had a covenant with God that he
broke. Many primitive cultures
still believe that blood covenant brothers are closer relatives than those born
of the same mother. A blood
covenant actually intermingles the life of both partners and creates a new
common life. A marriage is a blood
covenant. Ephesians 5:31 (KJV) says,
“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined
unto his wife, and they two shall be one
flesh.”
Mystery # 4.
2 Peter 1:4 says,
“…by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that
through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world
through lust.”
We don’t only
become partakers of the divine nature, but we also become partakers of the
resurrected nature, over which death has no more dominion.
We have
an absolute guarantee that God will care for us. He cannot break the blood covenant! It is the most powerful guarantee
mankind could ever have. It is
guaranteed by the very life of Jesus, and He cannot die again!
Mystery # 5.
Do you cut your wrist? NO! The spiritual blood is
transferred by words!
John 6:63 says,
“It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they
are life.” Jesus told the poor
people in this chapter that they needed to get rid of their curse. They needed to eat His flesh and drink
His blood. Then He made the
transition to the spiritual. He
said the flesh profits nothing, but My Words
are spirit and they are life. Read
the story in John 6:63.
Words
are the only bridge of communication between the natural and the spiritual worlds.
Words contain
“spiritual blood” and they are the bridge between spiritual and material
worlds. But how do words become like blood?
Luke 4:4 (KJV)
says, “And Jesus answered him, saying, ‘It is written, that man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word of
God.’”
Jesus IS
the Word.
John 1:1-3
(Amplified Bible) says, “In the beginning [before all time] was the Word
(Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. He was
present originally with God. All
things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not
even one thing made that has come into being.”
The
Power of God is within our reach!
Romans 10:8-11
says, “But what does it say? ‘The word, is near you, in your mouth and in
your heart’ (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that
if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that
God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with
the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes on Him will not
be put to shame.’”
You could summarize it this
way: The Power of God is in His Word.
Mystery # 6.
Why doesn’t this always work? In order to complete a
blood covenant, it takes two deaths.
Luke 9:23-25
says, “Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him
deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires
to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save
it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself
destroyed or lost?’”
Deny means to say no to something. The word life used here means soul, or our will, mind and emotions. We must daily say no to those things of our will, intellect and emotions
that don’t line up with God’s will and character.
Is this
difficult? NO - YES! No, it is not difficult to bow and
worship a loving creator God who gave His life for you. Yes, it means giving up all rights to your
own life to the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. This is not a “religious or church” thing. This is becoming one with the creator
of the universe.