To Walk with God

We said in the last message that a covenant is a binding agreement, or a relationship that is defined by a binding agreement. In natural covenants, like a marriage covenant, we understand that there is a specific relationship that is defined by a very specific agreement. Both husband and wife have to walk or live according to that agreement in order to experience the benefit of that relationship. If they don’t walk according to the agreement, live in and under its authority, then the relationship is ruined. 

Well God has made a covenant with man, and this covenant is also a very specific relationship. It is a specific kind of relationship, and it is defined by a specific agreement. But this relationship with God is not an outward set of rules or expectations like we have in a marriage covenant. The covenant that God made with man, the way that man can walk with God, is to live in and by the life of His Son. Again, the covenant that God made with man is like God saying, “Anyone who wants to walk with Me, and experience My power, My work of redemption, must walk and live in the life of my Son. This is the agreement. This is the relationship. This is the only way to walk with Me.”

So first, we must understand that the covenant that God made with man is a specific relationship, a specific agreement. I mean, it is not just anything that man wants it to be. We do not have the ability or the right to define our relationship with God. It is defined and established by God, and we are invited into it. But then, it is also essential that we understand that Jesus Christ IS THE COVENANT.  The covenant is the life of the Son of God. What does that mean? That sounds weird to our ears. How can a divine Person be a covenant? Try to hear this: Christ is our covenant, because the life of Christ IS the relationship that God has invited you into. In other words, the way to have a relationship with God, the way to walk with Him and experience Him, is to live by the life of this divine Person, to abide in the life of the Son of God.   

Isaiah 42:6-7 “I, the LORD, have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house.

Isaiah 49:8-9 “Thus says the LORD: ‘In an acceptable time I have heard You, and in the day of salvation I have helped You; I will preserve You and give You As a covenant to the people, to restore the earth, to cause them to inherit the desolate heritages; that You may say to the prisoners, “Go forth,” to those who are in darkness, “Show yourselves.’ They shall feed along the roads, and their pastures shall be on all desolate heights.’”

Christ was given to man as a covenant, as a specific relationship, with a specific agreement. What does that mean? (I know I am repeating myself, but I do it with the hope that these things become increasingly clear). It means that if you want to walk with God, if you want to experience His power, if you want to feel what God can and desires to do in the heart of man, then you have to walk in the life of His Son. That is the agreement. That is the relationship, and there is no other. 

You cannot just say that you are in the new covenant because you have true beliefs about Jesus, or because you read the Bible, or because you go to a church that is called New Covenant Baptist Church. No, that is not the agreement. That is not the relationship. You cannot just say you are in the new covenant because you were born after God ended the old covenant. You cannot say you are experiencing the new covenant just because you have stopped practicing the rudiments and shadows of an outward Christianity. You cannot say that you are experiencing the new covenant because you do not have to practice the Mosaic Law. NONE of these brings you to an experience of the new covenant. These things are not the relationship. These things are not the agreement. What is the relationship? What is the covenant? “Anyone who wants to walk with Me, must learn to walk, to live, to abide, in the LIFE of my Son”. 

Everything depends upon this one thing, upon learning to ABIDE, to walk, to live in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. God didn’t give a book as the new covenant. That’s not what God said through Isaiah. He didn’t not say, “I will prepare and give a BOOK as a covenant to the peoples and as a light to the nations.” No!God certainly gave us a New Testament, but the New Testament is not the new covenant. The New Testament describes the new covenant, invites us to the new covenant, tells us how God established the new covenant through the life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and outpouring of the Spirit of His Son. But you can memorize the New Testament, and experience absolutely nothing of the new covenant. 

God didn’t give us correct beliefs, true doctrines, or the Apostles’ Creed as a covenant. He didn’t give us church buildings, church leaders, and church activities as a covenant. God gave us the life of His Son as a very specific relationship, with a very specific agreement. And in order to know the new covenant, we must learn to live, and to stay in the life of the Son. And we must be taught by Him not to BREAK the covenant, because there is another life in man, another source, another birth in man that is a stranger to the covenant of God. And if we walk and live in that other life, that other birth, regardless of what we believe with our mind, then we are covenant-breakers. 

Everything depends upon our understanding and experiencing of these two things, these two births. Everything depends upon our departing from the one, and learning to live and walk in the other. Are you walking TODAY in the Spirit and life of the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you learning that life, submitting to what it does in you, putting to death the deeds of the flesh by the power of this new life? Or are you walking in the first birth, the natural life, your own life and will and self, and yet calling yourself a new covenant Christian? 

Everything in Scripture talks about these two births, and about the need that all men have to leave the one and come into a daily, continual experience and growth of the other. Not a belief in the other. Not a song or a sermon or a book about the life of God in the soul of man. But a true exodus out of the one, and a true transformation into the nature and Spirit of the other. 

In the very beginning, man turned from God, the Fountain of living waters, and became a habitation for a contrary seed. He became a house for an evil strongman, a cage for unclean birds, he became a residence for “the spirit who works in the sons of disobedience”. This is Pauls’ description of man in his natural state. Jesus’ words are stronger. He says, “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” In the very beginning, Genesis 3:15, God spoke of another seed that would crush the head of the serpent in man. Here is the gospel, here is the covenant. The covenant is in the Seed that will crush the head of the Serpent in man. 

My friends, it’s all right here! The whole Bible is summarized for us right here in Genesis 3:15. Man died when he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He died just as God had said he would. His outward man did not die for 900 years, but his inward man died immediately, and his soul became the kingdom of a contrary seed. What did God do? Did He send a book? Did he send a teaching? Did He send a really smart, seminary-trained theologian? HE SENT A SEED! He sent a life, the living, growing, spreading Seed of His own Son. He offered man life in a different Seed, a new Seed, the Seed which is Christ (Gal 3:16). 

This is the life that we must learn to walk in, and live in. The life of the Seed of God. The covenant is in and with the Seed. Galatians 3:16 “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, ‘AND TO YOUR SEED,’ who is Christ.” Every promise that was given to Abraham had to do with this Seed, and with a covenant that was in this Seed. If you go back and read through the book of Genesis, you will see that everything that God promises to Abraham and the Patriarchs, is related to this Seed that Paul is talking about here in Galatians chapter 3. Unfortunately, many translations replace the word “seed” for the word “descendants” which makes this harder to see. And it makes Paul’s point in Galatians chapter 3 harder to see too. Because Paul’s point is very specifically that God was NOT talking about descendants, as speaking to many, but to a Seed, who is  One, who is Christ.

My point is that God promised many things to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but EVERYTHING that He promised was found in a very specific SEED, the Seed that is the life of Christ. That’s where you will find all of the promises fulfilled, all of the blessings, everything that pertains to life and godliness. It’s all found in a very particular Seed of Life. He promised Abraham a perpetual inheritance in a seed, an increase of the seed like the sand on the seashore. He says there is an eternal covenant in the seed, and every nation that lives in this seed will be blessed. Paul quotes these verses in the New Testament and shows that they are talking about Christ, the life, the living seed of God. And the sign of this covenant given to Abraham, the sign of this fixed relationship and agreement, is the removal of flesh, the cutting off of foreskin of the flesh. 

Can you see what God is showing us in these pictures? He is saying to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that there is a Seed coming, and the covenant is in Him. He is the covenant. It is His life, and it is by abiding in Him, walking in Him, living by His life, that you will find the blessing, the inheritance, the victory, the increase. In Him, in the experience of His life, every promise is yes and amen.

BUT, this promise, increase, victory, blessing, is NOT found in the flesh, by continuing to walk in the flesh. No, the flesh is cut off. Circumcision is required. You will never experience the covenant, the blessing, the inheritance, the promise, if you continue to live in the flesh, the first birth, the natural man, self, self-will, Adam. Life is in the second birth, not the first birth. The covenant is in the second birth, and not the first birth. And therefore, I say again, it is absolutely indispensable that you and I learn what it means to die to one birth, and to live in another. We must, as Jesus says, lose one life to experience another. We must deny one, and follow another. We must put off one and put on another. 

And apart from his dealings with Abraham in this way concerning His Seed, God gave us numerous pictures of these two lives or births in many living, vivid pictures in the Old Testament. He showed us clearly, in unmistakable ways, that the first birth is rejected and that the second birth is the only one that will inherit the promises. We see this in Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, and Jacob and Esau. From different angles we see it in Leah and Rachel, in Ephraim and Manasseh, in King Saul and King David. Over and over these living pictures and shadows tell the same story, preach the same gospel, declare the same covenant. What do they preach? They all, with one unanimous voice, say, “Anyone who wants to walk with Me, and experience My power, My work of redemption, must walk and live in the life of my Son.” They must live in the Seed. They must experience one seed cut off and another formed in the heart. This is the agreement. This is the relationship. This is the only way to walk with Me.

And so I say again, if we are going to experience the new covenant, we must experience it in a very specific life, a very specific Seed. That is where the relationship exists. That is the binding agreement. The new covenant is this simple: There is life in a Seed, and there is death outside of the Seed. If you walk in the life, grow in the life, abide in the life, you will walk in the covenant and inherit the promise. But if you walk outside of the life, in your own life, your own will, your own self, if you live your own life in the flesh, according to the first birth, then you will know nothing but death. 

You can believe whatever you want to believe, but if you live outside of the life, then you live outside of the covenant. It doesn’t matter that you believe in the life; the question is whether you are living in the life, and whether the life is living and growing and reigning in you. That’s where the covenant is. Christ is the covenant. Christianity is not the covenant. Christ is the covenant, the life of the Son of God. 

And, if you can hear what I mean by this, this is the only covenant that has ever existed with God. Now I know that there is an old covenant and a new covenant. I know that God made a covenant with Noah, and with David, and with Jacob, and with Phinehas, and with Israel through Moses. I understand that the Bible speaks of several covenants, made at several times, with several people. But every one of these covenants gives us pictures, representations, and descriptions of the one relationship in the one life of the Son of God. 

From the perspective of heaven, there has only ever been one way for man to unite to God, to walk with God, and that one way has been the LIFE of His Son. God’s dealings with Noah did not show us a DIFFERENT relationship, or a different life that was acceptable to God. It was just a different picture or representation of that same life, that same agreement, the same covenant in the life of the Son. With Noah there was life in an ark, and death outside of the ark. There it is! Everyone who wanted to live had to be in that ark, and everyone who wanted to remain in the flesh, could stay outside. There’s the picture! And then we see how the world outside of the ark was swallowed up in death, and the world inside the ark came forth on the mountain of God to fill the earth. And when the life inside the ark came forth from the ark, it was blessed of God, in a relationship with God, under the rainbow of God, in covenant with God.

The same is true with all covenants in the Old Testament. They are pictures of the one life. They are not separate and unrelated relationships with God that are for different times and places and people of the world. Yes, they were given at different times, to different people, and contain different details. But in all of them, until the coming of the New Covenant (which is their fulfillment and realization) God has been testifying of one life, one place to live in Him, with Him, one agreement, one relationship.

What we generally call the old covenant, that is, the covenant that God made with Israel through Moses at Mt. Sinai, is overflowing with pictures, symbols, types, shadows, promises, and prophecies of this one relationship in the life of the Son of God. Every jot and tittle of the stories, the commands, rules, rituals, sacrifices, offerings, fragrances, priesthood, ALL OF IT testifies, speaks, SHOUTS to the hungry and humble ones that there is only one relationship with God in the life of His Son. 

Have you read Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy with a soft, simple, hungry heart? Have you prayed your way through those chapters asking God to teach you what He sees in all of these stories and events and laws and ceremonies? If you have, then you know that in all of these books the Father has testified about LIFE IN HIS SON, A COVENANT IN HIS SON. 

What did God do for Israel when they were locked up in slavery and hopelessness in Egypt? Did He merely open a door and let them all run for their lives in every direction? Did He manifest His salvation by killing Pharaoh, and liberating his people so that they could go on enjoying Egypt, and living their own lives? Did he bring them out of Egypt and let them live in the flesh, feed upon flesh, love flesh and pursue flesh? No, He opened a door and brought them out into a very specific covenant, a very specific agreement, a very specific relationship, and in every way, this relationship or covenant was a picture of life in the Son of God. 

I can hear somebody arguing and saying, “No, the old covenant wasn’t about life in the Son of God, it was about rules and laws and ceremonies and offerings and fragrances and sacrifices.” Yes, I understand that. But my friend, every single one of those things, every jot and tittle of them, is an arrow that points to life in the Son of God. The multitudes of laws in the old covenant are merely descriptions of Christ’s nature and character. God commanded Israel to walk in humility, kindness, charity to widows and orphans, equity, righteousness, goodness, purity, etc. because all of these and more are the nature of Christ. And yes, it is also true that Israel could not perform these things in the flesh, and so the old covenant became a ministry of condemnation against the transgressing nature in man. That is very true, and very important. But it doesn’t change the fact that these laws were holy, righteous, and good, and that with them God was showing us the nature of life in His Son. They were good descriptions of a good life. They were righteous descriptions of a righteous life, and every one of these laws finds its fulfillment in the life and nature of Christ being formed in the soul of man. 

As you read the old covenant, you see that God taught His people (in a variety of different pictures and figures) the difference between man’s life and His, and what happens when man walks with God in the covenant, and what happens when man breaks the covenant to follow His own will, and walk in his own life. We see these things shown to us in all sorts of pictures. When man goes outside of the life, outside of the covenant, there is death, and danger, enemies, serpents, plagues, defeat. Sometimes when the covenant was broken people were consumed by fire, or swallowed up in the earth. Inside the covenant, keeping the covenant, walking in the life, the place, the relationship that God had given, was safe. And if they would only stay in that life, walk in that way, then it would be well with them. But when they transgressed the boundaries of the covenant, when they would not walk in the pictures of and shadows of Christ in all of the laws and types and shadows, then they found that outside of that life there was only death in the flesh. 

The main thing you see over and over is that there is life in the covenant, and there is death out of the covenant. There is life in Christ, there is death in the flesh. God showed Israel that whatever comes from flesh defiles a man, and what comes from Spirit cleanses and makes pure. As we read through Leviticus, we find that everything that flows from flesh, or grows on flesh, or spreads through flesh, is unclean and dangerous. We see over and over that there is a bestial nature that must die on an altar. It cannot enter the tabernacle of God. It is burned or dragged outside the camp. I don’t want to get into details, I just want to say to you that God couldn’t have given us more clear pictures of the danger that we are in when we continue to live in the flesh, instead of living in the covenant. 

And so I just want to press my point one more time. Ever since man has fallen, God has appointed a place near Him, a cleft in the rock, a fixed relationship, where man could return to Him, and find life in His Son. He made a covenant with man, He established a relationship with man, and there is an agreement established in heaven and written by God in countless types and shadows in the Old Testament Scriptures that says: “Those who want to walk with me, MUST deny their own life, MUST carry their cross to their own flesh, and MUST learn to live and abide in the life of My Son.”