I love digging in scripture and discovering the nuggets of love God inserted for us to find. It really is like a treasure hunt. Listening to sermons, podcasts, and commentaries are also a favorite as they help to illuminate different aspects of God’s love that I may have missed (there’s been a lot of those!).
I firmly believe that we should be reading the Word for ourselves – don’t just take someone’s opinion as the truth. We’re told in Jeremiah 31:31-34, and it’s later repeated in Hebrews 8:8-12, that the Lord Himself will teach us about Him. We won’t have to go to a priest or a pastor to be taught about God because He sent the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself to us each individually. While our relationship with God is meant to be personal, I do still believe we’re to learn from each other.
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17 NIV
There was a time that I walked away from the church, barely prayed even silently, and Christian music grated my nerves. I was hurt, I was lost, and I was confused. I didn’t want any part of any iron to sharpen my iron – partly because I thought I must not be anything like iron. That all happened in my late teens.
Fast-forward to my mid-twenties, I decided to search God out, but I didn’t know where to start. I had gone through the feelings of abandonment from God as well as my earthly parents, I had felt as though God couldn’t be trusted because He was an angry God, and I didn’t know anyone I could trust in teaching me about who God really was. I started off by purchasing a Bible.
When I went into the Christian bookstore (I’m not sure these even exist anymore), I was very price conscious. I was a single parent and only knew what I had been programmed with when it came to translations. I didn’t even know how to study the Bible. So I purchased the only thing I knew anything about that I could get for less than $25: a thin line NIV Bible in navy blue with silver-gilded pages.
After I found my Bible, I still didn’t know how to study it. I might read passages like Numbers 22, but I wouldn’t get a good picture of God because of how the language was translated. The example I mentioned, if I were reading Numbers 22:20, God told Balaam to go with the men, but just two verses later, it says that God was very angry that Balaam went. This is what might cause my eye to twitch because in one minute we have a loving God, but the next day you might be talking to a donkey because there’s an angry God that’s going to kill you for doing what you thought was okay. Seriously, read Numbers 22:20-30, just not in the NIV.
As I have grown in my relationship with God, I’ve gotten to a point that I cannot be moved on: God is better than we know Him to be, and His grace is far greater than we believe it to be. If anyone were to tell me that God is not good, I might just laugh out loud! But then I think about the pain I experienced when I believed that very same lie. I don’t wish that on anyone.
Why is it we believe God is not good – or not always good? Maybe it’s because we have poor translations from the original language the Bible was written in, poor teaching about the character of God, or simply connotation issues. I used to ruffle at the word discipline because I understood it to mean punishment. I also used to hear the word sovereign and take it to mean puppet master. Our words and what they mean, our very language, hold so much power!
What about the word good? When we hear someone say that something is good, we often understand that to mean average or just okay. My God is nowhere near average and is more than just okay. What about the word fine? How are you doing? I’m fine… That’s typically stated to mean that they’re just okay or simply not bad. I don’t know about you, but fine is supposed to be high quality, superior, exquisite, magnificent, excellent, or splendiferous (it’s a word, I promise).
We also might be struggling to understand God’s character. Is He good? Is He angry? This really boils down to understanding covenants. Some people believe only in reading the New Testament because they consider themselves to be New Testament Believers – but what about all the beautiful stories of the Old Testament that point to Jesus and the covenant of grace that He paid such a high price to provide for us?
I was once accused – fairly sarcastically, I might add – of believing that God changes. No, God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8). I find it interesting to look at how God interacts with His people inside of covenant and the different covenants we have in the Bible.
I want to dive a little deeper into the covenants mainly because they are fascinating, and they help us understand God’s heart for us. There are multiple covenants in the Bible, but based on my word count, I’m going to simplify things for now. Very broadly speaking, we have two categories of covenants: conditional and unconditional.
Conditional is when both parties make promises to uphold and if they don’t then the covenant is broken. Unconditional is when the covenant cannot be broken. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not so confident that the human race has ever been very good about keeping promises.
Adam and Eve broke covenant when they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The first people ever and they failed at covenant (don’t hate – we probably wouldn’t have done much better). Noah had an unconditional covenant – God will never flood the earth to wipe out all life even if the human race becomes more and more wicked. We are benefactors in this covenant, too. That’s good, right?
The covenant God made with Abraham was considered unconditional, too – good thing because he messed up when he doubted God and lied about Sarah multiple times… oh, and also doubted his heir would come through Sarah. And he’s said to have been righteous! But we’re benefactors of this covenant, too, since we’re grafted into the family through Jesus.
The Israelites asked for the rules (the Law – also known as the Old Covenant) and broke them right away – as a result, about 3,000 people died (Exodus 32)! This was considered a conditional covenant and the human race, as I stated before, are not very good at keeping promises.
Breaking covenant produces bad things, and we have the misfortune of being the ones that break covenant time and time again. But God never does. I have never met someone who never told a lie and never would, but then I got to know God – He never lies and never will (Numbers 23:19, Titus 1:2). Not only that, but He can’t!
This comfort of covenant is even more solidified when I read about the covenant that we’re in because of Jesus’ willing death and resurrection. This covenant is not made between us and God. There’s no way that we can break this covenant of love, grace, and peace that we find ourselves as the benefactors of. How is that possible?
God made His covenant, with mankind as the benefactors, with Himself… making it unconditional.
God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. Hebrews 6:17-18 NLT
So many people hear the word promise and tend to not take it too literally. Someone promises, but we’re so used to being disappointed… or we’ve been the one who disappoints. The word promise has lost a lot of its value. Language, our very words and their meanings, are so very important in our faith and to our faith.
What words do you struggle with? Is there a concept of our covenant that you struggle to believe as true? If you’re seeking answers, God is ready to answer. He encourages us to seek Him, to knock on the door, and to ask for anything. And as we seek, we will find… as we knock, the door will be opened… and as we ask, He will give generously (Matthew 7:7-8).
While there is always a plethora of things to write about when it comes to faith, I want to spend some time doing a type of Q & A. If you have questions, you are probably not alone. Ask – I would love to join you on your journey of discovering just how splendiferous our Father is.