All of us have a variety of relationships in our lives. There are family relationships, business relationships and the relationships you have with friends and acquaintances. If you were to describe your relationship to God like one of those earthly relationships, which would you choose?

You will often hear the statement that “God wants to have a close, personal relationship with you through Jesus Christ.” If you asked ten Christians what that phrase means you would probably get at least six or seven different explanations. How does God define that “relationship?” Chances are. . .a little differently than you do.

God wants a “covenant” relationship with you. Understanding the biblical definition of the word “covenant” should help you have the relationship with God that He intended.

How is a “promise” different from a covenant? Christians have interchanged those two words in the study of Scripture, sometimes causing a misunderstanding of who God is and what He intended to communicate. A few things to consider before beginning to study:

1. The general meaning of “covenant” in Scripture is rooted in the Hebrew word “Berith.” Berith meant a lasting bond or contract between two people, something like an uncontestable last will and testament. The word carries with it the symbol of a “blood sealed” agreement, bonded like “blood brothers” and signifies that the bond is between two people who have agreed to a promise at the deepest level. In Scripture there is also a covenant between God and man. This type of covenant is an agreement of a greater to a lesser. God’s covenants with man were non-negotiable and conditional, different from an unconditional promise.

2. The Old Testament and the New Testament are not the Old and New Covenants. The Old Covenant was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 34), written on two tablets of stone. The New Covenant is described as written on human hearts (Jeremiah 31 and 2 Corinthians 3). There is a great deal of Scripture explaining and describing these covenants, but those Scriptures are not the covenant agreement itself.

3. Why would God make a covenant agreement with the Israelites, knowing that they would be unable to “keep their end” of the agreement? How is the Old Covenant different from the New? Did the first Covenant “fail” or did it make the second Covenant possible? Why did God establish a “covenant relationship” with his people? Those are the questions that this study will consider.

Why does the Bible describe our relationship to God as a covenant relationship? The ancient world understood that there were many different types of relationships. The word “yada” was applied to an intimate knowledge of a person or the closest of relationships. In Genesis 4:1, Scripture speaks of a man “knowing” his wife sexually (KJV) and that word describes the closest of relationships. The word “yada” described the relationship between two people, engaged in a covenant relationship.

1. Why did God establish a “covenant relationship” with his people?

a. Read Exodus 6:4-8. When God “remembers” his covenant, what will the people know?

b. Read Isaiah 45:2-7. Why does God want his people to “know” him?

c. Now read Hosea 4:6, 4:14 and 6:6? What happens when people do not know God?

d. Again, why did God establish a “covenant relationship” with his people?

2. What was God’s purpose in giving the Ten Commandments, the Old Covenant, to his people? (Deuteronomy 26:16-19)

a. Read Deuteronomy 30:11-20. Why does God want his people to obey his Law?

b. Why did God establish a covenant with his people that he knew they would not adhere to? Read Joshua 22:26-29. How did God provide for his people, knowing they would not be able to perfectly adhere to the Ten Commandments?

3. What is the “new Covenant”? (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

4. What are the requirements of this new Covenant? Read 1 John 2:1-6 and 2:12-14.

Application:

1. Biblically, what does it mean to have a “covenant relationship” with God?

2. Would you describe your relationship with God as a “covenant” relationship? In what ways?

3. It is easy to “work” yourself into a different kind of relationship with God. What can you do to maintain the relationship with God that He wants to have with you?

The Law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. Psalm 19:7

Scripture used in this lesson

Exodus 6:4-8

⁴ I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. ⁵ Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

⁶ “Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. ⁷ I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. ⁸ And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.’”

Isaiah 45:2-7

² I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. ³ I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. ⁴ For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me. ⁵ I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, ⁶ so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the LORD, and there is no other. ⁷ I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.

Hosea 4:6

⁶ my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.  “Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.

Hosea 4:14

¹⁴ “I will not punish your daughters when they turn to prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, because the men themselves consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes— a people without understanding will come to ruin!

Hosea 6:6

⁶ For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

Deuteronomy 26:16-19

¹⁶ The LORD your God commands you this day to follow these decrees and laws; carefully observe them with all your heart and with all your soul. ¹⁷ You have declared this day that the LORD is your God and that you will walk in obedience to him, that you will keep his decrees, commands and laws—that you will listen to him. ¹⁸ And the LORD has declared this day that you are his people, his treasured possession as he promised, and that you are to keep all his commands. ¹⁹ He has declared that he will set you in praise, fame and honor high above all the nations he has made and that you will be a people holy to the LORD your God, as he promised.

Deuteronomy 30:11-20

¹¹ Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. ¹² It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” ¹³ Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” ¹⁴ No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

¹⁵ See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. ¹⁶ For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

¹⁷ But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, ¹⁸ I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

¹⁹ This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live ²⁰ and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Joshua 22:26-29

²⁶ “That is why we said, ‘Let us get ready and build an altar—but not for burnt offerings or sacrifices.’ ²⁷ On the contrary, it is to be a witness between us and you and the generations that follow, that we will worship the LORD at his sanctuary with our burnt offerings, sacrifices and fellowship offerings. Then in the future your descendants will not be able to say to ours, ‘You have no share in the LORD.’

²⁸ “And we said, ‘If they ever say this to us, or to our descendants, we will answer: Look at the replica of the LORD’s altar, which our ancestors built, not for burnt offerings and sacrifices, but as a witness between us and you.’ ²⁹ “Far be it from us to rebel against the LORD and turn away from him today by building an altar for burnt offerings, grain offerings and sacrifices, other than the altar of the LORD our God that stands before his tabernacle.”

Jeremiah 31:31-34

³¹ “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. ³² It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. ³³ “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. ³⁴ No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

1 John 2:1-6

¹ My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. ² He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

³ We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. ⁴ Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. ⁵ But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: ⁶ Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

1 John 2:12-14

¹² I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name. ¹³ I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. ¹⁴ I write to you, dear children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.