The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants,
Because they have transgressed the laws,
Changed the ordinance,
Broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore the curse has devoured the earth,
And those who dwell in it are desolate.
Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned,
And few men are left.
And those who dwell in it are desolate.
Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned,
And few men are left.
The question posed by a commenter from this verse is… What is the everlasting covenant that was broken?
My sister asked me the same question, but she did not like my answer and the conversation stopped. (I have to admit, I was quite frustrated at the time, and the conversation got heated, so I’m sure my tone of delivery didn’t help.) She never followed up by telling me what her answer was.
I know that question was not asked simply for me to ponder over. It was asked because she wanted to tell me what the everlasting covenant was that not being kept by these people who were being destroyed. I believe she would have continued on to explain that the everlasting covenant was the Passover, and that we needed to keep the Passover so that we would not break the everlasting covenant and so we would be protected in the last days. Am I right?
So what is this “everlasting covenant” in Isaiah 24? Is it the Passover, or could it be something else?
I didn’t want to speculate, so I went straight to the Bible to search for what it says about a “covenant.” There are a number of covenants that God makes in the Bible, and more than one of them are described as “everlasting” or “eternal” or “lasting” or to be kept “forever.”
Some of those covenants are promises that God made and intends to keep, with no requirements from the human race at all. In Genesis 9, God makes an everlasting covenant never to destroy the earth and all its life with a flood again. There is nothing we need to do as part of that agreement—it’s all God. (Click here for a correction to this part about Genesis 9.) We can never break that type of covenant.
We need to look for the kind of covenant where God did give the people some responsibility to keep on their part.
So that's the direction I'll be going next. Stay tuned....
Click here to go on to Part 2.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” —Matthew 22:37-40
ReplyDeleteWhoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me. —John 14:21-24
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. —1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Love fits all.
ReplyDeleteGod is love. Love=God. Love God=Love to love maybe?
ReplyDeletebecause we don't love each other, we fight against each other, we don't share with poors so they starve, because we don't love ourselves, we get all sorts of diseases, because we don't love the environment, we get global warming and extreme weathers...finally we destroy ourselves...
ReplyDeleteThat sounds reasonable to me.
ReplyDelete