WFTD: Covenant (Berith): Let’s make a new deal!

Our word today is covenant—Berith in Hebrew—found in Jeremiah 31. Everybody, at some time in life, will be presented with a deal: a parent with a phone-addicted teen; a possible new boss with a possible new hire; a couple facing “I do vows” before an altar. Not all deals are created equal. Read the fine print. God has put forth a new deal with His people—a covenant. Would you cut this deal?

Jeremiah 31:32,33. The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

EXPOSITION: A covenant is a pact, agreement, alliance. The root word is bara (to create). It literally means to cut. A covenant is associated with the ratification ceremony of walking around and through cut flesh.

ILLUSTRATION (Backstory): In Jeremiah day, God is preparing to bring back His exiled people with a new relationship signified in a  new covenant , not of corporate laws written on physical stone tablets, but rather an individual, spiritual relationship with Him , not based on  outward obedience but an inward, and unconditional bond of His desire to be in kinship with His  people in a deeper, abiding, eternal way. The old covenant based on failed compliance pointed to better terms of a new covenant of the relationship between God and man—no prophet-teacher middleman, no legalese, no fine print that’s hard to read and even harder—nearly impossible—to keep. God is going to cut an old deal, a new way: heart to heart. “I’m yours, you’re mine. We got this because I got this.

APPLICATION: “Do” God because you love God, because you want to, not because you “have” to. Go ahead: Hug it out.

YOUR NOTES HERE:  Don’t take my word for it. Put your own exposition, illustration/backstory, and application spin on the word covenant here. II Timothy 2:15 says it’s your responsibility to rightly divide: