God's Covenants with Israel

Will God Keep His Promises?

Everything in the Christian life rests on one question: does God keep His word? He made promises to Israel thousands of years ago, some of them still unfulfilled, and the nation that received them has spent much of its history in unbelief. If God could quietly set those promises aside, or keep them in some sense other than the one He gave, what confidence could anyone have in His promises to us?

“God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?”NUMBERS 23:19 · KJV

Scripture's answer is that God binds Himself by covenant, and He does not break His covenants. This study walks through the covenants God made with Israel, shows which depend on Israel's obedience and which rest on God alone, and traces how the New Covenant, sealed in Christ's blood, reaches both the church today and Israel in the day of her salvation.

A Pattern in God's Covenants

When God makes a covenant with His people, a pattern repeats. Watch it unfold at the Exodus.

1. God acts. He hears His people's groaning, remembers his covenant with Abraham, and comes down to deliver them (Exodus 2:24; Exodus 3:8).
2. He speaks through His Word and His prophet. Moses carries God's word to Pharaoh and to Israel.
3. He wages war on His enemy. The LORD is a man of war, and Pharaoh's host is cast into the sea (Exodus 15:3–4).
4. He makes a covenant. At Sinai He sets His terms before the people (Exodus 19:5).
5. He constitutes a people. Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation (Exodus 19:6).
6. He dwells among them. Let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them (Exodus 25:8).

The New Covenant follows the same pattern, raised to its height. God acts by His Spirit. He speaks through the incarnate Word, who was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14). He defeats His foe at the cross, where Christ spoiled principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15) and destroyed him that had the power of death (Hebrews 2:14). He makes a people who in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God (1 Peter 2:10). And He dwells among them, building them for an habitation of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22).