Covenant Love: Introducing the Biblical Worldview

Lesson - Lesson One: The Master Key that Unlocks the Bible | St. Paul Center For Biblical Theology http://www.salvationhistory.com/studies/lesson/covenant_the_master_key_that_unlocks_the_bible I. Course Introduction and Overview A. How to Read the Bible Cover-to-Cover we're going to give you the compass you need to navigate the Bible from start to finish. That compass is one word - covenant. Covenant is the answer to the question: What's the Bible all about? B. The Covenant Principle: Testimony from Scripture and Tradition At the Last Supper, Jesus identified Himself as the New Covenant, in words we recall during every celebration of Mass - "This cup is the cup of My blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant" "We should not forget the fact that 'the Covenant' was one of our Lord's names in primitive Christianity, following the text of Isaiah: 'I have made you: Covenant of the peoples' first generations after the Apostles - understood biblical history as proceeding by means of a series of covenants made by God with His chosen people to understand "the divine program and economy for the salvation of humanity" we have to understand God's "several covenants with humanity" and also "the special character of each covenant." Scripture is all about "the vital covenant relationship that God wants to establish with men." "The content and meaning of Scripture was God's covenant plan, finally realized in Jesus Christ...and in the Church." each one of us is "called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer Him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead" "The renewal in the Eucharist of the covenant between the Lord and man draws the faithful and sets them aflame with Christ's insistent love" II. What is a Covenant? A. The Difference Between Covenants and Contracts Covenant comes from the Latin word, convenire ("to come together" or "to agree"). "covenant" expressed by the Hebrew word berith and the Greek word diatheke. difference between covenant and contract in the Old Testament and throughout the Bible is profound. It's so profound that we could almost say that it's the difference between prostitution (contract) and marriage (covenant). Or between owning a slave (contract) and having a son (covenant.) First, contracts involve promises, covenants involve oaths. The "word" you each pledge to the other is your name. And you each sign your name on the contract as a "sign" that you'll uphold your end of the bargain or keep your promise. Covenants are much different. In a covenant, you elevate and upgrade your promise. Not only do you give your word, you also swear an oath, invoke a higher authority - you call God in as your witness. Think of the oath we're most familiar with, the oath you swear before taking the witness stand in a courtroom: "I promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God." You've promised, given your word to tell the truth. You've also asked God to help you keep your promise. It's not only you and the judge now. It's you, the judge and God. Now, if you lie under oath, you're not only liable to go to jail, you're liable to be punished by God. The flip side of asking for God's help in an oath is surrendering yourself to God's judgment. You say, in effect, "I'll be damned if I don't tell the truth." second big difference between contracts and covenants is this: contracts exchange property, covenants exchange persons. Contracts involve you promising to pay a certain sum of money and the person you're contracting with to deliver you a certain product or service. When people enter into a covenant, they say: "I am yours and you are mine." In a contract, you exchange something you have - a skill, a piece of property, money. In a covenant you exchange your very being, you give your very self to another person. Marriage is a covenant. The man swears an oath to the woman, "I'm yours forever." The woman swears an oath to the man, "I'm yours forever." B. The Meaning of Covenant in the Bible He is saying to His people, "I will be their God and they shall be My people...I will be a Father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to Me" What's God up to in making these covenants? He is forging sacred kinship bonds. By His covenants, the Creator is fathering a family. The human race is being transformed from something physical and natural into something spiritual and supernatural. The Bible begins with God's covenant with Adam and Eve By the final pages of the Bible, we see that the New Covenant He made in Jesus has embraced the entire world. Remember all those details of the Bible that seemed so hard to figure out - the laws and commandments, the ritual rules; the oaths that God swears to His people and His people swear to Him; the historical episodes of sin and betrayal and repentance and forgiveness; the punishments and deliverance; the psalms and wisdom teachings, the prophecies of a new and final covenant redemption? They all make sense when you understand them as part of God's divine plan to make all men and women into His sons and daughters through the covenants, which are all summed up in the New Covenant, where God sends us "a Spirit of adoption, through which we can cry, Abba, 'Father!'" III. An Introduction to the Covenants of the Bible A. The Number of the Biblical Covenants God makes six major covenants in the Bible, with: 1. Adam and Eve 2. Noah and his family 3. Abraham and his descendants 4. Moses and the Israelites 5. David and the Kingdom of Israel 6. Jesus and the Church It's important to know these covenants well - what God promises and what is required of those who enter into the covenants. B. The Character of the Biblical Covenants For each of these covenants, try to learn and remember the five special features: * the covenant mediator (the person God makes the covenant with) and his covenant role (whom the mediator represents) * the blessings promises in the covenant * the conditions (or curses) of the covenant * the"sign" by which the covenant will be celebrated and remembered * the "form" that God's family has as a result of the covenant. The Covenant with Adam (Genesis 1:26-2:3) Adam is the covenant mediator in his role as husband. blessings - that their union will be fruitful and their offspring will fill the earth and rule over it. sign by which the covenant will be remembered and celebrated - the Sabbath, the seventh day of rest. condition that they must keep to fulfill their obligation under the covenant - that they not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. attaches a curse for disobedience - that they will surely die. assumes the form of the marriage bond between husband and wife. The Covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:8-17) God promises never again to destroy the world by flood. mediator, Noah, in his role as the father of his family. blessings to Noah and his family (that they will be fruitful and fill the earth) conditions that must be obeyed (not to drink the blood of any animals, not to shed human blood). sign of the covenant is the rainbow in the sky. assumes the form of a domestic household, an extended family. The Covenant with Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; 17:1-14; 22:16-18) swears to give Abraham a great land and to bless his descendants, who will become a great nation. mediator Abraham in his representative role as chieftain. blessings of land and great nationhood for his descendants, and through them to bless all the nations of the earth. Circumcision is also the condition that Abraham and his descendants must obey in order to keep the covenant. sign of the covenant is the mark of circumcision. God's family is takes a "tribal" form. The Covenant with Moses (Exodus 19:5-6; 3:4-10; 6:7) mediator Moses in his representative role as the judge and liberator of Israel od swears to be Israel's God and Israel swears to worship no other but the Lord God alone. blessings promised are that they will be God's precious and chosen people. conditions of the covenant are that they must keep God's Law and commandments. sign is the Passover, which each year commemorates Israel's birth as a nation. assumes the form of a "holy nation, a kingdom of priests." The Covenant with David (2 Samuel 7:8-19) mediator David's "house" or kingdom forever, through David's heir, who will also build a temple to God's name. God promises to make David's son His son, to punish him if he does wrong but never take away his royal throne. "Your house and you kingdom shall endure forever" and through the blessings of this kingdom God promises to give wisdom to all the nations. sign of the covenant will be the throne and Temple to be built by David's son, Solomon. form of a royal empire, a national kingdom. The New Covenant of Jesus (Matthew 26:28; 16:17-19) mediator Jesus assumes the role of royal high priest and fulfills all the promises God made in the previous covenants. Isaiah and Jeremiah, had taught Israel to hope for a Messiah who would bring "a new covenant," through which God's law would be written on men's and women's hearts conditions of the covenant are that men and women believe in Jesus, be baptized, eat and drink His flesh and blood in the Eucharist, and live by all that He taught. The Eucharist is the sign of the New Covenant. its final form as a universal (katholicos or 'catholic' in Greek) worldwide kingdom, which Jesus calls His Church. IV. The Bible: A Bird's-Eye View A. A Book of Covenants If we look at the Bible as the "book of the covenant" it gives us a whole new perspective. Bible, then, isn't simply a collection of separate poems and histories and prophecies written over the course of centuries. It's the story of God's love for His people. He taught His people the reason they were created - to share His life with Him, to be part of His family, to be His children. finally in Jesus He shows us that He wants us to share in His very Being, to enter into the heart of the Blessed Trinity. Lesson - Lesson Two: From Sabbath to Flood | St. Paul Center For Biblical Theology http://www.salvationhistory.com/studies/lesson/covenant_from_sabbath_to_flood II. How to Read Genesis read Genesis on its own terms - which are religious, not scientific or historical in the modern, secular, rationalistic sense of the terms. "The Scriptures tell us how to go to heaven - not how the heavens go." Scripture gives us religious history, religious truth, and it conveys that truth and history to us through symbols and figures and different literary styles. Book Daniel: He describes 400 years of Israel's history in terms of four beasts, four ugly animals that oppress God's people "beasts" each represent nations - Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome - that oppressed Israel. Genesis as it was written - as an ancient Hebrew narrative that's telling history in a religious, not modern-secular, way. This is family history. It's not the history of nations and armies and economies that we're used to. It's history from God's perspective. III. Creating a Covenant of Love A. The Love Story of God and Humanity creation was a deliberate, purposeful act of love by God. God created the world because God is love (see 1 John 4:16). And love is creative, self-giving and life-giving. God made the world as a pure gift of His love. He created the world as His home, a sort of cosmic temple in which the heavens are the ceiling and the earth - with all its vast continents, rivers, oceans, mountain ranges and the like - is the floor. The world is made to be a temple where He will dwell with the descendants of the man and woman, the crown jewel, of His creation. The world is made to be the site where God will live in communion with the people He created. That's what the seventh day, the Sabbath, means (Genesis 2:1-3). seventh day marks the completion of God's work on His dwelling, and this is the day He makes a covenant with the people He created. We can say that God made the world in seven days as an act of cosmic oath-swearing, a "sevening of Himself" to His creation - He created in order to covenant. God reveals to Moses that the Sabbath is to be observed as "a perpetual covenant" Sabbath becomes the day of worship, when God and the people He created in His image rest together in love. Catechism calls the creation story the "first step" in "the forging of the covenant of the one God with His people...the first and universal witness to God's all-powerful love" future covenants - with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and the New Covenant of Jesus - is a remembrance and a renewal of this first covenant with creation. in those future covenants, we will find that God is remembering, rededicating and recommiting Himself, so to speak, to this original covenant. As the covenants of old are described as renewing the covenant of creation, the New Covenant - the final and everlasting covenant - is described as bringing about a new creation. Jesus, "the firstborn of all creation" becomes the "firstborn from the dead" and the "firstfruits" of a reborn humanity Those who enter into that New Covenant through Baptism become "new creations" Finally, the Letter to the Hebrews tells us: "A Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God" " Creation moves toward the Sabbath...The Sabbath is the sign of the covenant between God and man; it sums up the inward essence of the covenant....Creation exists to be a place for the covenant that God wants to make with man. The goal of creation is the covenant, the love story of God and man" The goal, the purpose - the reason that God made the world "in the beginning" - is the covenant, the communion of love that He desires with the human race. B. The Wedding in the Garden we have the chapter that begins with God instituting the Sabbath, blessing it and making it holy (Genesis 2:1-3) ending with God instituting marriage - in which man and woman become one flesh We don't find the literal text telling us here that God is "instituting marriage" and that He is making it a permanent, irrevocable covenant between husband and wife. And we don't find the literal text here telling us that this marriage covenant between Adam and Eve symbolizes God's permanent, irrevocable covenant with the human race and all creation. This is the way God works in the Bible. It's His "pedagogy" - His divine teaching style. He unfolds things slowly. Often He gives us the "sign" itself first and then reveals to us the full significance of the sign later here in Genesis. He's giving us the "sign" of marriage. Later in Scripture it will be revealed that marriage is about not only the relationship between husband and wife. It's intended by God also to be a sign of the relationship He desires with all humanity. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, he quotes this text and explains that this marriage covenant in the garden is a reference to the covenant between "Christ and the Church" marriage is also a symbol of a far greater love - the love that Christ has for His bride, the Church, the love that God has for His people. What Revelation "reveals" is the final consummation, the marriage of Christ to His bride And what else? A new creation - a new heaven and a new earth That why when Jesus comes, He calls Himself the "bridegroom" and those who are united to Him in Baptism are called "espoused" we need to see here - right at the beginning - that this marriage in the Garden of Eden, along w ith the Sabbath that God institutes, are signs that point us to things far greater. Pope John Paul II says that the Sabbath story "discloses something of the nuptial shape of the relationship that God want to establish with the creature made in His own image, by calling that creature to enter into a pact of love" C. The Child-Like Image of Man The "nuptial" image of the groom and spouse is only one of the images the Bible uses to describe the relationship of God to His people. The other image is that of Father to His children. We find this image, too, in the Genesis account. In Genesis 1, we have God the Creator bringing the cosmos into existence - making a cosmic "home" for himself. At the end of this creation, we see Him creating the human person "in his image...in the divine image...male and female." In Genesis 2, we see God working personally, as a Father, lovingly fashioning the man from the dirt of the earth, creating a garden paradise for him, and finally creating a spouse for him from his very side. "image and likeness," means to be that person's child. "image and likeness" expresses the Father-son relationship of God and His people From the very beginning, then, we see that God intended people to be His children, His divine offspring. here, in the first pages of the Bible, we're given the two most powerful images of human love imaginable - that of parent and child and that of husband and wife Bible we're about to read cover-to-cover, tells the story of God raising His family from infancy to adulthood. He prepares them little by little to be fit for the wedding supper of the Lamb in heaven, for a divine union with Him that can only be symbolized by marriage - the most ecstatic and intimate of human relationships. IV. A New Creation, A New Covenant A. Falling Towards a Flood (see Genesis 3-5) show us "the fall" of our first human ancestors - from divinely made son and daughter living in paradise, to wayward children who reject their Father's wisdom and squander their birthright, losing their home. Devil, in the form of the serpent, tempts them and leads them astray (see Catechism, nos. 391-395). And sin - the rejection of God's Fatherhood - enters the generations of humankind. He promises that throughout human history there will be an "enmity" between the serpent, Satan, and the woman, "the mother of all the living," and between their offspring first child born of original sin, Cain, becomes the world's first murder. As Adam and Eve, the first children of God, rejected the Fatherhood of God, their children reject the brotherhood of man, symbolized in Cain's spiteful words to God: "Am I my brother's keeper?" good seed born of Adam and Eve - Seth. It's the children of Seth, born of Seth's son, Enosh, who first begin to worship God, to "invoke the Lord by name" Seth's descendants, seduced by the beauty of the daughters of Cain, take them as wives. Worse yet, they took more than one wife - "as many of them as they chose." The sons of Seth violate the sanctity of the marriage covenant instituted by God in the garden. fruits of the "intercourse" of the sons of Seth and the daughters of Cain were men of even more violence and wickedness - "men of renown," which Scripture elsewhere calls "proud giants...skilled in war" B. Beginning With the Rain God's second covenant with His creation - the covenant made with Noah. The new world wells up from the chaotic waters of "the abyss" on the seventh month the ark came to "rest" on Mount Ararat Like Adam, Noah is given authority over the animals (9:2). He is also given the same command as God gave to Adam: "be fertile and multiply and fill the earth." (9:1). Finally, as He did with Adam, God makes a covenant with Noah and through him with all living beings Noah is described as a new "first man. God also expands the "family structure" of His covenant people - from a husband and a wife to a family unit. Noah's family - his wife and three sons and their wives - is included in the blessings of this covenant. C. The Story of Two Names As Adam (whose name in Hebrew is almost identical to the word for "ground," adama , allowing for a wordplay between the two) was given a garden to till, Noah plants a vineyard and becomes "a man of the soil" (see Genesis 2:15; 9:20). And as the forbidden fruit of the garden proves to be Adam's downfall, so the fruit of Noah's vine, wine, becomes his. And like Adam's fall, Noah's exposes his sin and nakedness (seeGenesis 3:6-7; 9:21) and results in a curse To uncover the nakedness of your father is to commit incest with your mother. To put it bluntly - while Noah was drunk, Ham slept with his mother. We can only speculate as to Ham's motives. It's reasonable, based on other evidence in the Scripture, to presume that Ham wanted to seize his father's authority. Sleeping with his mother was the ultimate insult and sign of disrespect The son born of this incestuous encounter is Canaan. He will grow up to be the father of a nation known and reviled for its abominable practices as Adam bore both Cain, the slayer of his brother, and Seth the righteous one, Noah too has a good seed: his firstborn son Shem, who had tried to "cover" his father's nakedness descendants of Ham The great patriarch Abraham, who we'll read about in the next lesson, is descended from the line of Shem. Egypt, Canaan, Philistia, Assyria and Babylon. From this line, came the nations who tried to build the Tower of Babel in order "to make a name [Hebrew = shem] for themselves" (Genesis 11:1-9). In other words, they were trying to build a kind of "counter-kingdom" to stand against the name of God. Shem is the Hebrew word for "name." And from the line of Shem, God raises up His chosen people. The Jews are "Shemites" which is where we get our modern expression "anti-Semitic" or "anti-Semite." The Jews descend from Shem's great grandson Abram (see Genesis 11:10-26), to whom God promises: "I will bless you. I will make your name [Hebrew = shem] great."