For thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant (Ezk 16:59-60 ESV).
In this past year-of-all-years, have you felt horribly alone? Have you felt twisted and turned inside-out and upside-down? Have you wondered where God is in all this? And if He even cares?
You may have felt like your prayers are unheard. Your troubles insignificant. And the love of God drained right out of the world.
There is much God has given us in the way of reassurance for times like these. One is this: covenant.
Cover-to-cover, the Bible reveals God keeping His covenant through Christ. It is the backbone to every storyline.
Covenant is something God cannot forget. Hear these words and linger over them:
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me
(Is 49:15-16).
The prophets proclaimed the Word of the Lord: I remember My covenant.
How could He possibly forget? Ever before Him, Jesus bears the marks of covenant on His scarred body.
If the New Covenant is a better covenant (Heb 7:22), and if God never forgot the Old Covenant, how much more will He remember the New?
But it must be cherished . . . revered (see Heb 10:28-21).
We share in that covenant. In partaking of the new covenant meal, the Lord’s Supper, we remember the Lord and honor His sacrifice. We draw near to Him . . . and one another. We dine in fellowship with the King of Covenant—as Mephibosheth did David (2 Sm 9:13).
Dare I share, however, my concern that we moderns don’t have the same solemn commitment and comprehension to covenant as the ancients? Therefore, we lack a real understanding of its gravity. As Kay Arthur wrote, “No matter what it costs, a covenant is a covenant is a covenant. Covenant commitment is meant to be unbreakable.”
Moderns tend to equate it to a conditional promise to be overlooked, disregarded, forgotten . . . broken.
But God is infinitely not like us. We cannot assign to Him our finite, fallible, and mutable propensities.
The prophets continually reminded God’s people of God’s remembrance of covenant. And the Bible has provided models of this loyal love in narratives like David and Jonathan (1 Sm 18:3), Ruth and Naomi (Ru 1:16), Hosea and Gomer (Hos 2:19-20, 3:1). Jesus and His Bride, the Church (Eph 5:29).
The Israelites did not keep covenant with God—to their own destruction (Jer 22:5, 7-9; 34:8-17). But that was not the case with God. He continually called out for their return (Zec 1:3).
For those times when you do feel He doesn’t see you, remember God has promised to never leave or forsake (Dt 31:6, Heb 13:5). Because of covenant. Nothing can ever nullify His covenant.
The Lord will always remember His covenant—and remain ever faithful to it.
Sovereign Lord, You provided redemption for Your people; You have ordained Your covenant forever—holy and awesome is Your name (Ps 111:9). Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip us with everything good for doing his will, and may He work in us what is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen (Heb 13:20-21).