Psalm 111:9 – “More Covenant Business”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

⁹He has sent redemption to His people;

   He has commanded His covenant to [the] ages;

  Holy and fearsome [is] His name.

While I’m pondering holiness I have run across several passages touching on this business of the “everlasting covenant,” which I considered in an earlier post. What catches my eye in Psalm 111:9 is this fact that the psalmist refers to it as the “covenant to [the] ages” or an “everlasting covenant.” As I said earlier, he is clearly not referring to the Mosaic Covenant, which was never intended to be nor ever called an “everlasting” covenant. In my earlier post I suggested it is probably referring to the Abrahamic Covenant, which, in Psalm 105:8-11, is clearly presented as an “everlasting” covenant.

In that post, I dismissed the New Covenant on the basis that I thought the psalmist most logically had to be referring to a covenant current in his time. Now I’m having second thoughts. Perhaps, in the psalmist’s mind, what he is seeing is the Abrahamic Covenant – God’s promises to the Jewish people to be their God, to give them the Land, and to make them numerous (Gen 12:1-3 et al) – but whether he realizes it or not, the New is involved.

The Abrahamic Covenant is extremely important to understand the Bible and the whole flow of human history, and particularly the flow of Jewish history. In Gen 12:1-3, the Lord promised to make Abraham into a great nation and attached to his family the Messianic line (“all peoples on earth will be blessed through you”). In 15:18-20, He specifically promised to give him the land of Canaan. In 17:6-8, He sums up the Covenant as including the three important elements, 1) that He would make his descendants “very fruitful,” 2) that He would be their God and they would be His people, and 3) that the land of Canaan would be their everlasting possession. The story of the Exodus starts with the people of Israel being very fruitful and filling the land, but it was the wrong land, Egypt, not Canaan. Then what followed was the battle between Pharaoh and the Lord over whose people they were. Note that it was actually an expression of the Abrahamic Covenant that the Lord kept sending Moses to Pharaoh to say, “Let My people go.” Pharaoh thought they were his people. The Lord thought otherwise and we know who won! Then the Lord took them into the land of Canaan and in fact gave the land to them. In that case, their possession of the land was brokered under the Mosaic Covenant, which, being dependent on their obedience was destined to fail. However, that only meant that a New Covenant must be struck, in order for the Abrahamic Covenant to be fulfilled. So the Abrahamic Covenant itself is an everlasting covenant and extremely important but it requires another covenant for its implementation.

In my studies of late, what particularly caught my eye was the reference to the New Covenant in Hebrews 13:20, “Now may the God of peace, Who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, …” In this case, I think clearly the reference is to the New Covenant, especially in light of the many passages in the book of Hebrews, including 9:15, “For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”

I also note that, the New Covenant itself is intimately tied to the Abrahamic Covenant, as in Ezek 37:26,27, “I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever,” and Ezek 11:19,20, “ I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God.” This “Everlasting covenant” is clearly the New, but many of its elements are those of the Abrahamic.

I think the thing is the point of both the Old and New Covenants was actually the implementation of the Abrahamic Covenant. In other words, God promised Abraham to bless his descendants. The question remained exactly how and when He would enter into covenant with those descendants. Under the Old Covenant, the people actually thought they could pull it off – “All the Lord commands us, we will do!” They (of course) utterly failed, and, whether they realized it or not, their only hope was the blood of Jesus to offer them an unconditional covenant of grace, which is then, the New Covenant. The purpose of the Old Covenant was to implement the Abrahamic, but it was based on the people’s obedience and was hence destined to fail.

The New Covenant is in fact very specifically the unconditional implementation of the Abrahamic Covenant with the Jewish people (and later we learn it can be unconditional because it is based on the blood of Jesus). This unconditional implementation of the Abrahamic Covenant in the New is very clear in a number of passages, including Jer 31:31:

“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.
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.

 “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.
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.”

So, in conclusion, whether the psalmist realized it or not, if he was referring to the Abrahamic Covenant, then this verse also includes the New Covenant as the “everlasting covenant” which implements the Abrahamic. I suppose I doubt that the psalmist could have known that, still being under the Mosaic Covenant, and probably the main thing in his mind is the Abrahamic and God’s promised blessings to the Jewish people. I’ve never really realized before how the New actually implements the Abrahamic. The Abrahamic is the everlasting covenant but it requires another covenant for its implementation – and that must be an unconditional covenant of grace to in fact implement it all “everlastingly.”

Very interesting!

For whatever it’s worth, I will note that I don’t believe we as Gentile Christians are under the New Covenant. We are certainly blessed under the Abrahamic Covenant, as the Lord told Abraham, “… and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:3), but the New Covenant is very specifically between the Lord and “the house of Israel and the house of Judah” – the Jewish people. The book of Hebrews contains extensive references to and explanations of the New Covenant, but we should not forget, it is the book of Hebrews. It is specifically written to Jewish believers.

A covenant is a legal agreement. We as Gentiles are not related to the Lord through any kind of legal agreement, rather we are “in Christ.” We are not related to Him legally but rather organically. We are “the body of Christ.” That is precisely why we are related to the New Covenant – not because we are under it but rather because we are in its Mediator. The church enjoys many of the blessings of the New Covenant, particularly the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but that New Covenant obviously has yet to actually be implemented with “the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” We enjoy its blessings because we’re in its Mediator.

Strikes me that the Lord’s plans and what He’s doing in this world is so way, way bigger than we even begin to realize. There is so much more going on than our meager struggle to survive. Thank the Lord He’s in charge and making it all fit together!