Pact of Peace

This is a series of devotions and meditations that reject fear and champion faith in God. It discusses the concept of covenant and emphasizes that God is a faithful covenant-keeper. The covenant is described as a serious agreement with responsibilities and conditions. It explains the different types of covenants and highlights that our covenant with God is unilateral but requires our free will to accept and follow His commandments. The passage also discusses the story of Phinehas, who acted in righteous anger and was granted a covenant of peace and an everlasting priesthood by God. It concludes by emphasizing that God seeks to save and redeem us, and the lies about punishment and hell are meant to keep us from accepting His covenant. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of His word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to His perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Numbers 25.12 Therefore say, Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace. This is a personal two-fold promise to Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron. It is also a shadow of the promise of God to all humanity. Now, both of these promises to Phinehas are significant, because Yahweh God is a God of covenant. Know, therefore, that Yahweh your God Himself is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and lovingkindness to a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments. Deuteronomy 7.9 The Lord makes promises. Joshua 21.45 The Lord makes His face to shine on us. Numbers 6.24-26 The Lord blesses us. Ephesians 1.3 The Lord saves us. John 3.16 And the Lord gives us grace, sustaining us in all good works. 2 Corinthians 9.8 But beyond all that, Yahweh God covenants with us. A covenant is serious business. A covenant is a written agreement or promise usually under seal between two or more parties, especially for the performance of some action. Merriam-Webster definition. It comes from Latin and refers to two or more parties that are coming together for a contract or an agreement of promise. Not something off the cuff, but something that will have responsibility, privileges, and conditions or stipulations. We use the term as the basis for political treaties, social behaviors, and lifelong bonds such as marriage. It is serious stuff. To give you an idea how serious, let's look at the Hebrew word that is used for covenant. Berith. It is defined between men as a treaty, alliance, league, agreement, and pledge as man to man. As a constitution or ordinance, that's monarch to subjects. As an alliance of friendship, person to person, or marriage, man to woman. And between God and humanity, it is defined as an alliance of friendship or divine ordinance with signs and pledges. That's just a phrase. The word is used to mean covenant making, covenant keeping, and covenant violation. It's used about 285 times in the Old Testament. Pop over to the New Testament, and the word is now the Greek diatheke, I think. It's used about 33 times and is defined as a disposition or arrangement of any sort which one wishes to be valid. Or the last disposition which one makes of their earthly possessions after death, or a testament, or will. It is also defined as a compact, a covenant, and a testament, such as God's with Noah after the flood. It's used when referencing relations between God and humanity. In the ancient world, the covenant was serious enough that it was often a blood covenant. Whether blood was shed at the drawing of the covenant or not depends on what source material you read. But the idea everyone agrees on was that if the covenant was violated, the violating party had to pay with blood. As in, keep this or you're going to die. No one entered into covenant lightly. There was no get out of jail free card. There wasn't any no-fault divorce, as it were. That's just a word picture. I'm not actually referencing marriage and how it works specifically. Covenants come in two levels or two forms. One is bilateral, and that's between two equal parties. This is the vast majority of human-to-human covenants. It doesn't matter if it's political, pledging, or marriage. Both parties are equal and joint contributors. That means equal status, equal privileges, equal responsibilities, and clear assigned roles within that framework since only one individual can enact a given role. Think of the president of a company and a vice president. They are equally working together, but they can't both be president. When it comes to a sovereign covenant, the second level, like monarch to subject, the covenant level is unilateral. The subjects are the recipients, but they don't actually contribute anything. They don't offer any substance to the agreement. The monarch provides the substance of the bond with unmerited favor, meaning the subjects don't do anything to deserve the offered arrangement. The subjects are to accept it as offered and keep it according to the stipulations. The flip side is that all the responsibility is on the side of the monarch who then has to give the results that by oath they have assured their subjects will come. If they fail to give the results, they are 100% responsible. If the subjects fail to keep the stipulations, the monarch can punish the subjects or withhold the results from the subjects. Now, our covenants with Yahweh God are unilateral, but under the dominion of free will. In other words, Yahweh doesn't withhold anything from us. Yahweh doesn't punish us. Sin was the price of rebellion and it was paid by Jesus through his death and resurrection to life. With God, the covenant is simple. Keep my commandments and I can bless you. Don't keep my commandments and you put yourself in a place where you cannot receive what I am offering. So, it's the same thing as salvation. You are going to separate yourself from God forever because of the sinful nature you have. That is the factory setting of humanity. Jesus paid the price of sin so you can accept that he did that and follow him submitted to Jesus as Lord. If you do, you don't have to separate yourself from God. You can break that setting. You can choose something different. Now, as a species, we hate the idea that there is a God who punishes us and casts us into hell if we don't do right. Now, this is a fine thing to hate because it's true. God doesn't punish us. God doesn't cast us into hell. God seeks to save us. God seeks to correct us so that we don't get punished. God is about heading us off of the path and redeeming us, sustaining us so we don't starve. God is all about the good. Everything else is a lie designed to confuse us and replace God with our idea of what God is. The main purpose of this lie is to ensure that we don't alter our course, that we don't choose to not go to hell, that we continue choosing hell in our ignorance. One of the other purposes of the lie is to keep us from accepting covenant from God, to focus on our bad and not on His good. And this was exactly the problem of Phinehas. Phinehas had killed. Behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought to his brothers a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel while they were weeping at the door of the tent of meeting. When Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw it, he rose up from the middle of the congregation and took a spear in his hand. He went after the men of Israel into the pavilion and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel and the woman through her body. So the plague was stomped among the children of Israel. Numbers 25, 6-8. Now the history of this here is that God had commanded the people to stay away from the people of the lands that they were entering. They weren't to intermarry or dabble with them because then they would be tempted away from Yahweh and to these people's idols. The Israelites were, of course, doing this, but it was happening outside of the camp of Israel. Numbers 25, 1-2. This man did this inside the camp of Israel. It was a direct slap in the face of Moses, Yahweh, and the Israelites. It was a direct challenge to Yahweh. Phinehas burned with righteous anger and responded by killing the men. Now if you were a priest, a serving priest, you were forbidden to kill. They couldn't even be around a dead body. Leviticus chapters 21 and 22. Levites as a tribe were warrior priests. They weren't serving priests, but guards to instruct Israel and guard the things of the Lord, sometimes literally like the tabernacle. But Aaron and his sons and descendants were serving priests. And serving priests set themselves apart from even the other Levites in what they could or couldn't do in order to remain pure and consecrated to their service. And there's a whole bunch of stuff wrapped up in that. Now since Phinehas killed, he wasn't eligible to serve as a priest anymore or become one if he wasn't one yet. The rabbinical teaching on this is a little muddied and it depends on the commentator you're reading. But in any case, Phinehas didn't kill out of anger or spite or wrath or frivolously. He killed in righteous anger in jealous defense of the statutes of Yahweh God. And God did not hold it against him. Yahweh spoke and granted Phinehas his covenant of peace. One English translation of the Hebrew text reads that Phinehas is granted Yahweh's pact of friendship. In the immediate, this covenant had two levels. First, Phinehas no longer had to fear reprisal from the relatives of the dead man because God said that it was a righteous slaying of sinful behavior that would have infected the whole camp. Second, Yahweh is declaring that because of Phinehas's righteous fervor, he was worthy of the role of priest. In fact, in verse 13, God says, It shall be to him and to his offspring after him the covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the children of Israel. Phinehas was gifted priesthood for himself and all his descendants. As Phinehas loved the Lord, the Lord showed his love to Phinehas. Now, if you start wading through rabbinical teaching on this verse, there's a lot to uncover. Among them is that this idea of peace was more than just peace to his fellow men. This was more than no reprisal for the killing. This was peace to Phinehas himself, period. Peace includes the idea of no conflict between people, animals, and creation, a lack of the curse in its entirety. Some rabbis believe that Phinehas was therefore granted immortality because of this. Now, there is certainly evidence that Phinehas was granted long life as it is a benefit of fervent loving of God and following his guidance and ordinances. See Psalm 91. Long after Joshua and the elders of Joshua's time were passed on, we find Phinehas serving before the altar of the Lord. Judges 20, 28. If you look at the timeline alone, Phinehas was close to 300 years old at this point. Now, that's some peace. Although his death is never recorded per se, there are many people whose deaths are never recorded. We may not know if he was called up directly like Enoch and Elijah, but we do know that he had favor and he lived a long time. God loves us. We know this. He treats us magnificently even though we don't deserve it. His mercy endures forever. His loving kindness endures forever. He showers us with grace and faith. He is our father, our savior, our teacher. There is also, beyond this, his peace, his covenant of peace. The angel declared loudly and eternally, glory to God in the highest, on earth, peace, goodwill toward men. Luke 2.14. We are offered Yahweh's covenant of peace separate from salvation, from adoption as sons and daughters, and from being the body and bride of Christ. Jesus offered it to us in a unilateral agreement in John 14.27. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, I give to you. Don't let your heart be troubled. Neither let it be fearful. This isn't just a New Testament offer. It has been an offer from the beginning. Zechariah 3.7 tells us, if you walk in my ways and if you will follow my instructions, then you also shall judge my house and shall also keep my courts, and I will give you a place of access among these who stand by. We also find it in Exodus 18.20, 1 John 2.6, Deuteronomy 10.12-13, Psalm 18.30, 2 Timothy 3.10, Job 23.10-12, and Psalm 1.1-2. Yahweh wants the best for us. The best is more than sonship in Jesus. The best is more than his righteous spirit. The best is more than indwelling by the Holy Ghost. The best is more than salvation. The best is more than blessing. The best is more than blessing others. The best is more than relationship, prayer, and waiting on the Lord. The best is obedience. It is better than all other sacrifices, 1 Samuel 15.22. To obey is to walk in His path, Proverbs 4.26-27. To obey is to seek Him, Luke 11.9-10. This is the covenant of His peace, to seek His face. If we do, we unilaterally can expect the results of His peace. Strength, Ephesians 3.14-16. Rest, Matthew 11.28-30. Needs taken care of, Philippians 4.19. Answered prayers, Matthew 7.7. Working everything to His glory and our good, Romans 8.28. Long life and revelations, Psalm 91.16. That's pretty good peace. This is in addition to our also unilateral promises in salvation to be with us always, Matthew 28.20. Protection, Psalm 33. Freedom from a return to sinful habits, 1 John 1.9. And total and absolute connection to Him, Romans 8.38-39. Yahweh God wants us with Him. He wants to give us good things. He forgives, indwells, redeems, and renews us. He is good for His promises, 2 Corinthians 1.20 and Joshua 21.45. All of that is wonderful and awesome and to be desired, but if you will seek His face, seek Him. There is a covenant of peace to walk in, a covenant of special relationship, dedicated priesthood, and peace with all things in Him, by Him, and through Him. It is a journey of special, set-apart closeness with Yahweh God. It is to be desired above all things, and every single human being is called to it. Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call on Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to Yahweh, and He will have mercy on him, to our God, for He will freely pardon. Isaiah 55, 6-7. Take Him up on the offer. Start today. He is at the door knocking. Seek Him. Seek Him diligently and with every waking moment. Seek Jesus in every way. If you do, you will find Him. If you find Him, you can enter His covenant of peace. It is a reward unlike anything else, and it is worth finding. Seek Him today. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Proverbs 8, 17-21. Those who seek, find. One of the greatest promises of the Word, God is not hiding from us. He is hiding for us. He is not to be cheapened. He is not common. He is there, eternal, righteous, glorious, and worthy. He loves us and wants us beside Him. He gives His Word as flaming signposts to follow to His throne. He sent His Son who volunteered to pay sin's price and redeem us, to give us the choice, to give us the option to leave the world behind and enter His kingdom. By grace, through faith, and with never-ending mercy, because of love, He doesn't want to send us match notes. He doesn't want to do a drive-by smooching. He wants fellowship, more than coffee and donuts, more than catch-up sometime, true and total friendship. One of the greatest things you can experience in this world is to be truly and totally seen by another human, for everything about you, every nook, cranny, every fold and flab, every quirk and quarrel, every petty and pretty, every idea and I don't, for all of it to be seen and accepted. It is unique, and not everyone finds it. What Yahweh offers us when we seek Him puts that experience to shame. What we get in Jesus and through Jesus when we seek the Lord is something that defies real description. It includes all of the good that God can imagine. It is total relationship, total seen-ness. It is a treasure not to be missed, and able to be found by everyone. He loves you, and He will love it when you find Him. Start today. Seek so you can find. As we close, remember that you have birth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love, and no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you, just because you're you. 1 John 4 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent His only-born Son into the world, that we might live through Him. And this is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear, too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.