Mutual Commitment Between You and God

Study: #670 – Church in the Houses From: February 1 – 7, 2011

Mega Zoe Christian Church Pastor: Edith Cruz

TOPIC: "Mutual Commitment Between You and God" Genesis 22:10-14 Abraham was an obedient and humble man, this way he was able to comply with God. God asked for his son and he willingly delivered him because his trust was in Jehovah and not in the men of this world. Abraham was obedient, meek, a man of faith; there was no place in his heart for arrogance or pride. Genesis 26:5 says: "Because Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees, and my laws..." Jehovah himself spoke to Isaac of his father Abraham. God tells him that Isaac would not perish because from the descent of Abraham the earth would be filled. There was nothing to fear. God made a covenant with Abraham. A covenant is a mutual obligation of two or more who are committed to comply each other with his or her obligations and commitment. In this case the divine God with man. So, if Abraham heard the voice of God and obeyed the covenant that God made with him we should know that we are also under the covenant of blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and we should also comply with our part. If we become negligents and take lightly what God has done out of love and we destroy this covenant, we will lose eternity and everything that is divine, the promises, everything. The covenant with God must always be honored, conserved and never broken. By means of this covenant God would give Abraham every promise of prosperity. He would be the father of many nations. The nations would multiply and also the kings that would come out of Abraham. God would establish the covenant, as he said: "among me and you", to be his God and the God of his descent. Canaan would be the land of Abraham’s offspring. Then, the circumcision was adopted by God as a physical sign of the covenant among Him and His people who came out from Abrahams loins. That sign was so important that all of Abraham descendants were known as: the circumcision. Moses is an example and we can see it in Exodus 4:24 when Jehovah encountered him and wanted to kill him. Why? Moses was going to give the message to his people about the law of Jehovah, but he himself had to learn obedience. Moses had failed to God’s covenant with Abraham by not performing circumcision on his own son. He had to follow Abraham’s covenant and comply with it. Perhaps Moses’ wife, Zipporah, did not want to because she was possibly not interested in that covenant. But, regardless of this, Moses knew how important this covenant was. God wanted to kill Moses because of his disobedience. By harboring the sin of negligence, which was exactly what happened to Moses for not wanting to circumcise his son, he brought to himself the danger of death. Of course, there was an uneven yoke among Moses and his wife; Zipporah was a Midianite (born in Midian). There was no interest in her to obey the voice of God spoken to Abraham. An uneven yoke makes a person want to please first his or her partner and God’s covenant is not kept. God will always show his displeasure for omissions are: sin. We are his children; that is what Moses was. The one who offended God was Moses for not obeying the covenant and not circumcising his son, not Zipporah. Men break covenants, not God. Mathew 26:27-28 says: "Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the NEW COVENANT, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." Before, the sign of the covenant was the circumcision, now it is the blood of Jesus poured on the cross, which we remember in the juice that we take in the holy supper. When we break the covenant with our sins, Oh God! When Moses failed by not complying with the circumcision, perhaps he was influenced by Zipporah who was a Midianite, a foreigner who did not know the God of Abraham. If now in our days you also break it with the impious, remembers that in spite of the impious, that is your covenant. That if you dance, laugh, sing their songs, fornicate, adulterate, etc., you destroy the covenant that God made with you by means of the blood of the Lamb. Christ took the bread and split it. That is how his body was broken, it was something too great and painful for anyone to come and

despise it destroying that covenant. How painful! It is very painful the way in which we obtain the pardon of our sins. When we break this covenant it is because we returned to our sins. He was pierced for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:5). Jesus gave His body to be crushed in favor of His disciples and of all the believers. It is our duty to obey and comply with our part of the covenant just as Abraham did. Jesus said: " Take, eat, this is my body…", this is how we receive the redemption. We give consent upon receiving the bread and the eternal promise of life. Then, we cannot break this covenant. We were separated for God and His kingdom, separated from this sinful world. The bread is received and we eat it, this shows the death of Christ in our favor. The cup of the grace was prepared for us to drink it, then, if I break this covenant I despise that blood. Jesus said: "Because this is my blood of the new covenant." Every benefit and privilege that we have we owe it to the merits of the death of Christ, His blood poured for many. This covenant is of pardon to reach the reconciliation among God and men. This covenant is a covenant of two: God and you. I Corinthians 11:27 When the covenant of blood is broken and the body of Christ, we will be blamed of the body and the blood of the Lord. The Scriptures tell us to test ourselves, check yourself and see if you have broken the covenant. The holy supper isn’t just another meal, it is a solemn supper ordered by the Lord. The body of Christ was given so that sin would be removed. If we do not judge ourselves and we persist in living in sin at the same time that we participate of the Supper of the Lord, we’re living a great lie breaking the covenant of blood. We take the supper understanding that the body of the Lord was surrendered in order to take our sins away. According to I Corinthians, some of these people refused to recognize their sin. To break the covenant with the law, with the commandments, is terrible; then judgment will come like it happened with them. They became ill and weak. They did not judge their sins, they were not confronted with so much evil among them, they took it for granted and death arrived. The Lord is compelled to discipline those who break the blood covenant. God in his great love does not break the covenant with any of us; we are the ones who in the flesh destroy the covenant. Let us be faithful as Abraham was, and keep the covenant with the blood of the Lord. We must watch our ways and everything that has been given to us. There are many promises and the eternal life. We must persevere in the faith and in the love for God by means of prayer, fasting, congregating for our edification, serving God and being humble and docile with our pastors. In this way we will comply with the covenant and never lose the promises given to Abraham and to his descent. Amen.