Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, “As for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the livestock, and every animal of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ship, even every animal of the earth. I will establish my covenant with you: All flesh will not be cut off any more by the waters of the flood. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be a sign of a covenant between me and the earth“

(Genesis 9:8-13)

The waters destroyed creation and the waters receding revealed a second creation – as it relates to the Earth itself (2 Peter 3:5-7). In the ‘first’ creation of the Earth, God made covenant with Adam: “Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”” (Genesis 2:15-17). Inherent in that covenant with Adam was the BLESSING (Genesis 1:28). As soon as Noah left the ark, he made an altar and worshipped God. He was set here on Earth (like Adam had been), he connected with God (as Adam had done), and God again made a covenant with humanity (the full Noahide Covenant event is found in Genesis 8:20-9:17). God again BLESSES humanity: “God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you will be on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the sky. Everything that moves along the ground, and all the fish of the sea, are delivered into your hand. Every moving thing that lives will be food for you. As I gave you the green herb, I have given everything to you. But flesh with its life, that is, its blood, you shall not eat. I will surely require accounting for your life’s blood. At the hand of every animal I will require it. At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man’s blood, his blood will be shed by man, for God made man in his own image. Be fruitful and multiply. Increase abundantly in the earth, and multiply in it.”” (Genesis 9:1-7). God is always seeking a covenant relationship with humanity. Here in the ‘second’ creation, it is the time of Messiah, the time of the restoration of relationship with humanity.

“Yahweh, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
    You have set your glory above the heavens! . . . Yahweh, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!“

(Psalm 8:1 & 9)

God made covenant with humanity, and the angels marvelled. Who IS humanity that God pays so much attention to them? Compared to the God of glory, we are nothing (Psalm 103:14). Yet in Messiah (Psalm 8:6), we are set right below God and above the angel class (Hebrews 1:14). We are brought into His righteousness through COVENANT with Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). God is always seeking our salvation, a relationship with Him, with no divisions or separations – something ONLY possible through Jesus, the Anointed One (1 Corinthians 6:17). And for that, God ALONE should get the glory.

“Be therefore imitators of God, as beloved children. Walk in love, even as Christ also loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance.“

(Ephesians 5:1-2)

How do we live in Covenant then? Ephesians 5 explains it well: walk in love. That can mean MANY things, so Paul begins to show us what they are. What to avoid. What to cleave to. These are not stand-alone concepts found nowhere else. They are echoed in the Law and in the Prophets. They are founded in the principles that Jesus proclaimed throughout His ministry – especially in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and the Sermon on the Plains (Luke 6:20–49). Walking in love is walking in obedience to and in alignment with the moral character of God. It’s renewing our thinking to His point of view. It takes sacrifice, because we learn a system of FEELINGS. God’s system is of PRINCIPLES, but those principles have no bondage. They have no hooks and barbs. No negativity. They are TRUE freedom and TRUE covenant with God. They ARE abundant life (John 10:10).

Summary

God’s glory is all around us. Pointing us to Him, His existence, and His place above all things. This establishes our need for Covenant with Him, so that we can return to the place we rejected when Adam chose to rebel. It is through Covenant that His Grace, Mercy, and Love become a physical path for us to walk as we seek to emulate and appreciate the great GIFT of our Great God.