279. Covenant Established
Ezekiel 16:62 And I will establish my covenant with thee; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord.
The Lord promises to establish His covenant with His people and the people will know that He is the Lord. The purpose of a covenant is to give benefit to and make good things happen for both parties. It makes peace in place of hostility. The whole purpose of the Bible is to reveal the covenant God makes with His created humanity. The people on the human side have broken the covenant several times, but the Lord never breaks His covenant promise on God’s side.
God promises to establish, to make form, or to reaffirm the covenants God made with Adam, Noah, Abraham and David and their descendants. So here God re-establishes the covenant He already established. This covenant was finally secured for both God and people by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This covenant is eternally secure in the heavens by the blood of Christ. This very blood of the covenant is given to us and sealed in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Participating in Communion is remembering the promise and making it present and real and effective in our daily lives. And every time we respond to the Gospel by repentance and faith we accept the terms of the covenant. The Blood binds God to us and us to God. Ever after, we know that He is the Lord.
The covenant with the Lord is reestablished in Christ when He came to earth and did what He did. We have the promise of forgiveness, life and salvation secured as certain and sure and positive as it could ever be. God makes a promise and He keeps it. Jesus Christ holds up our end of the covenant and keeps it for us, thus securing a never-ending relationship. All the promises of God are Yea and Amen in Christ. We appropriate these promises by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Gospel. What we do when we go to church is reaffirm the already established covenant for ourselves and for our comfort and eternal security. We never get bored with the Gospel and we can never be over-reminded of it.