Chapter 2.

Today we are continuing to explore the truths of the Blood Covenant which are foundational to understanding the Bible. This Bible is basically the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. 

The word ‘covenant’ in Hebrew is ‘Berith’, which means to bind. It’s a binding obligation, binding two parties together. It’s the ultimate expression of committed love and trust. Its purpose is to establish and bind a relationship that had already been in the making. 

A definition is this: A covenant is a binding unbreakable obligation between two parties based on an unconditional love; sealed by blood and sacred oath that creates a relationship in which each party is bound by specific undertakings on each others behalf. They place themselves under the penalty of divine retribution should they later attempt to avoid these undertakings. This relationship is only broken by death, and so a covenant goes way beyond a contract on paper. The strength behind it is that God is involved, and so in our secular society there is no real concept of covenant. 

God introduced covenants to the human race because it would be through a covenant that God has chosen to reveal Himself and bind Himself to us forever. He wants to reveal His absolute love and commitment to us, and the highest way to do this was through the means of a covenant, 
the strongest kind of relationship in existance. He wants to unite man to Himself through Covenant, so that our relationship with Him and our faith in Him might be made sure, and that thereby God and man might be united forever. By grounding His promises and assurances of chesed love to us in a Blood Covenant, our position and blessing is made secure, and all reasons for doubting Him are removed. Knowing we are in Blood Covenant gives us strong faith and full assurance.

Because God loved us so much, He wanted to make us secure in that love, with all its promises, so that we know that we know that we possess it, and He gives us this full assurance by making a perfect covenant for us to enter into with Him.

This ultimate covenant between God and man is called the New Covenant and through that we have eternal life, eternal security in the love of God, and so all the covenants throughout the Bible help us to understand the power of this great Covenant, the New Covenant. 

One thing we must understand about covenants is the representative man. If my family was to make a covenant with your family we would need a representative: somebody representing my family and somebody representing your family and then those two people would make covenant. The representative has first of all to be genuinely bound to his people (of the same blood), and secondly to be acceptable to the other group. Only then can he be the valid representative. 

The two representatives, one from each family then cut the covenant. Each would be cut in their flesh (often in the right hand or arm) so that blood would flow, and their hands would be joined so that their blood mingled (showing that they were now one). This is the origin of shaking the right hand in friendship (the right hand denotes strength, signifying ‘I will give my strength to you’). The hands would have powder rubbed in, so that a permanent scar would be formed, as a visible sign of their blood-covenant. 
Often their blood would be added to a glass of wine from which both would drink. Also an animal would be sacrificed. This shedding of blood signified the total of giving of ones life to the other to uphold the covenant, and that it was covenant unto death. Once a covenant was sealed in blood it was considered unthinkable to break it. It was the deepest thing in a society. 

When the two representatives cut covenant with each other, their whole family is in them when they make that covenant. And when their peoples all add their ‘Amen’ to the covenant, the result is that both peoples are in covenant with each other through the representatives. My whole family is now in covenant with your whole family. This is a very important idea.

So when the covenant-blood is shed, all of the families are gathered into that covenant and every blessing of the covenant that the representative receives, his whole family receives also. In the New Covenant, Christ represented both God and man, for He is the God-man, and the Covenant was cut in His own body on the Tree His blood was both the blood of God and the blood of Man. Through His broken body and shed blood the Godhead and the human race are united in Him! On the basis of His blood, as Representative Man He received every covenant-blessing from God on our behalf! We are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. All that He received from God is also ours, if we are in Him! 

If we are ‘in Christ’ it means we are in that Covenant with God, that He cut in His own body on the Cross. You see ‘in Christ’ is covenant talk. 

Now Adam was our original representative. When Adam sinned, he just didn’t sin on his own behalf, but all of us were in Adam when he sinned, when he said: ‘God, I don’t want you. Leave me alone. I want to be my own god.’ When Adam said‘No,’ to God we were all in Adam. He represented us, because we were all in him. We weren’t born yet, but we were in him and we came out of him, and so everything he did had consequences for us. Adam rejected God and His covenants and that seemed to be the end. Moreover all men after that were born in sin and by their personal sins, added their Amen to adam’s decision. Adam’s decision meant we were all doomed, for we were in him. 

How can this be fixed? Adam now was an unfit representative. Adam couldn’t go before God. He was unrighteous, he was sinful. God could not accept him as a representative now for any new covenant that would bring salvation. Nor could any human being be found who could represent mankind to God, because all man are now sinful. All men are unrighteous and so it looked hopeless. We were lost, cut off from God. We were doomed. How can this be fixed? Everyone now born in Adam has no hope. 
There is no covenant between man and God. There is no connection between man and God, 

Man is lost and without hope, unless there can be found a perfectly righteous representative and he has to be a man. He can’t be an angel because he’s got to represent us. We are human beings. We need a representative man, but not a sinful man, it has to be a perfect man who can represent us, who can stand before God in total righteousness and perfection and represent the human race before God, and make covenant with God, so that God can say: 
‘I can deal with that man, he is righteous before Me and we will enter into covenant together.’ That’s a tall order isn’t it? 

Can there be found a man, who is perfectly righteous, who can receive 
all the blessings of the covenants on our behalf? 

Job understood this problem. 
In Job 9:32 he realises the problem and calls out for the answer. He called out for another man - a second Adam. The first Adam let us down. Can there be found a second Adam who could represent the human race before God and bring man into a covenant with God that will hold, that will stick, that will bring us salvation? 
‘For He (God) is not a man, as I am that I may answer Him, 
that we should go to court together.’

He says: ‘we are separated from God, an infinite separation. How can we meet? How can we come together? How can we come into some kind of covenant; some kind of agreement; some kind of reconciliation? How can it be done?’ v33: ‘Nor is there any mediator between us, who can lay his hand on us both.’ Now this is the name of a covenant representative, he’s a mediator of the covenant. He represent one party, and is accepted by the other party. Normally a covenant between 2 parties required 2 representatives coming together and making covenant. 

But Job sees the problem caused by man’s sin means that mankind cannot produce a representive man who can stand before God. Amazingly by the inspiration of the Spirit, he sees the only possible solution. There needs to be a single mediator who can represent both God and man in the covenant. As the mediator he must stand in the gap between the two, and lay his hand upon both God and man, to bring the two together into covenant unity. He has to be able to identify with and represent both God and man (God to man, and man to God).

You see this mediator has to be a man to represent the human race, but he’s also got to be righteous enough to stand before God! 
Moreover to represent God he has to be God! How can he lay his hand on God and man? He has to be the God-man, God manifested in the flesh. But Job says there isn’t any such mediator. ‘Nor is there any mediator between us, who can lay his hand on us both.’

v34: ‘That He would take His rod away from me, and not let the dread of Him terrify me.’ Job knows that all the human race are under the judgement of God, and unless we can find a representative Man who can change this situation we are condemned, because in Adam we are all under judgement. Then he said: “If I could find that mediator then I could speak to God and not fear Him, but it is not so with me.” He says:‘there is no mediator, we’re in trouble.’ 

But later in the Book of Job God revealed to him that there was such a Man. There was such a Redeemer. In Job 19:23 he said: ‘Oh, that my words were written! Oh, that they are inscribed in a book!’ He says: ‘This revelation 
is so important. I want it to be written down. I want it to be recorded for all eternity,’ and indeed these words were recorded for us.

He says: ‘That they would be engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead forever.’ He says: ‘I want this revelation to be recorded forever. Let it stand because this is the greatest revelation I have ever heard.’ 

v25: ‘For I know that my Redeemer lives,…’ Hallelujah. ‘My Redeemer lives.’ There is a Man. There is a representative that can stand before God on my behalf. He is even alive now. God showed him that Jesus Christ, even then in the time of Job was alive, and He was ready to take that place. ‘For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth.’ The Redeemer will come to earth to make the covenant that redeems us from the hand of the enemy and purchases us for God. Hallelujah! Jesus Christ is that Man. 

And he says ‘After my skin is destroyed’, even after I die, ‘this I know: that in my flesh I shall see God.’ Who is this Redeemer? Well, he must be a man, because he has to represent man to God, but also Job realises He is already alive in heaven. He must be God to represent God to man. Therefore he declares: “I shall see God.” He says: ‘This Redeemer will come and save me and reconnect me to God and as a result I will be resurrected and in my flesh, in my resurrected flesh, I will see Him. He’s going to come to the earth and redeem me. He’s going to make the covenant to save me and in the power of that covenant I’ll be raised from the dead and I will see Him.’ ‘Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.’ 

What a revelation Job had and then he says: ‘How my heart yearns within me!’ He’s yearning for the coming of the Messiah, the coming of the mediator between God and man. 

After this mediator came it is recorded in the New Covenant in 1Timothy 2:5 that: ‘There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,who gave Himself as a ransom for all (to redeem us all).’ There is only one that can stand in that place, no Buddha, no Muhammad, no other religious leader can do that. He has to be perfect. He’s got to be the Son of God. He’s got to be the God-man Redeemer. There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Do you see that? He’s got to be a man. He’s the man Christ Jesus who gave Himself as a ransom for all. 

So Job prophesied there is a representative. There is a mediator who will come before God for us. This Person will have to prove himself faithful and perfect and obedient to God in every aspect, and indeed Jesus proved Himself obedient even unto death. He is our Champion. 

If we are in Christ, that means He has become our representative, and everything follows from that. Just as David was the champion for Israel, so Jesus represented us as our Champion. When David defeated Goliath all Israel was in David. They shared in his victory. It was their victory too. Likewise, when Jesus defeated sin, satan and death as our representative, we too defeated sin, satan and death, because we were in Christ. We also have victory over sin and freedom from all condemnation, for our representative Man Jesus, gained perfect righteousness before God, and every blessing as a result. If we are in Him, His righteousness is given to us as a free-gift and on that basis God justifies us (declares us forgiven and righteous, so that we are now the righteosness of God in Christ (2Corinthians 5:21).Thus in Him, we receive His standing before God. 

When Jesus conquered death, He did it for us. Thus in Christ (through our union with Him) we have the victory over death. Our spirits have already conquered death, because we are in Him, and in Christ our bodies will also be resurrected. Praise God! ‘In Adam all die. But in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1Corinthians 15:22). 

Thus simply by virtue of being in Christ, we partake of all the blessings of the covenant that Christ has established with God through his blood In a covenant the next thing that would happen is the shedding of blood. Very often an animal would be slain and sacrificed, cut in two and a pathway would be made with the two sets of pieces, and the covenant partners would walk down this pathway of blood making their covenant declarations. Also the covenant representatives would be cut in their hands or arms and their blood would flow, leaving a scar, the sign of the covenant. All they would have to do to show that they are in covenant was to show the scar in their hand. (The Jews had circumcision as the visible cut and sign of their covenant with God). 

It’s a Blood Covenant. Blood must flow. What does this blood signify? It represents life poured out. In a Blood Covenant they are declaring: 
‘I pour out my life for my covenant partner.’ And also they were declaring: 
‘If I break this covenant let my life end. Like this animal split in two, let my blood be poured out.I will keep this covenant even to the shedding of my own blood.’ In other words this is a covenant unto death. This is the end of all arguments. 

Making the covenant in the presence of death and the shedding of blood signified that it was a death to the old life of independence and a rebirth to a new life and covenant identity. They become new people, because they’ve now got a whole new relationship of commitment to one another. 

That’s why usually when people made covenant their names would be changed. God changed His name. Did you know that? When He entered covenant with Abraham, God’s name changed. He’s not just God anymore, He’s now the God of Abraham. He took Abraham into His name, to signify His covenant with Abraham. 

My wife, Hilary used to be Hilary Windows. When we entered into covenant her life changed. She died to the old life. She became a new person in union with me. She became Hilary Walker. She took my name into her name to signify our covenant unity. God is now the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, because He made covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Abraham’s name also changed. He was Abram wasn’t he? And then he received part of God’s name. The ‘H’ of Yahweh (YHWH) - and that’s the breath of God. So no longer is he Abram, but now God is filling him and he becomes AbraHam. God’s name was put into Abraham’s name and vice versa, because their lives were being joined into one. Sarai’s name was changed to SaraH (that H again). You see the name changes because everything changes. The old life goes. You enter the covenant into a new life.

The next important thing about covenant is the oath they would swear, as they stood in the blood of the sacrifices. They brought God into it. They would make an oath. They would swear by God that they would keep this covenant. So whatever it took, they would now keep this covenant. In other words they’re saying: ‘Let God be my judge. Let God judge me if I do not keep this covenant. God help me to keep this covenant.’ Once it was made with an oath, it could not be revoked. It was settled in heaven and on earth. 

It wasn’t just a covenant between two people. You do not just make a covenant with another person, you are calling upon God to be in the middle of it. It was between two people and God, and that’s how a real marriage should be. 

In Marriage you are in a covenant that involves God. It is a binding commitment made in the Presence of God. There is nothing deeper or more serious than Covenant. It’s not a limited contract. It’s a whole hearted giving of yourself to another, a total self-giving to the covenant-partner, and a receiving from them. 

Why make a covenant in the first place? As Ecclesiastes says: ‘2 stronger than one’ (whether people, families or tribes). Your weaknesses can be filled by your partner’s strengths and vice versa, so together you are stronger as two intertwined ropes are stronger than a single rope. Then Ecclesiastes adds: ‘A 3- fold cord is not easily broken.’ This describes a true covenant relationship where God is invited to be in the middle of it, forming the 3rd rope, and such a union is unbreakable!

So they would walk in the midst of the sacrifices and stand in the covenant blood, and swear an oath to God that they would keep the covenant and they would declare the blessings and the promises of the covenant: ‘I will protect you and look after you. I’ll be there for you when your enemies attack you. I’ll be there to defend you,’ and also they would pronounce the curses of the covenant: ‘If I or if you break this covenant then let your house fall to pieces’, and thus the covenant was established by blood and by oath. 

How does this apply to the New Covenant? When Jesus shed His blood, He was our covenant representative. He proved Himself obedient unto death, and then became the Blood Sacrifice of the Covenant by shedding His blood for us, and God then walked through the blood. He accepted Jesus as the perfect representative for man. He said: 
‘Jesus because you’ve done this, you are righteous in My sight. You have proved Yourself a worthy representative for mankind and on that basis I will enter into an eternal covenant with You, and I will bless you with every blessing, and everyone who is in You will also receive that same life and blessing.’ 

In the death and the resurrection of Christ, God was making a covenant with Jesus. That’s why it’s perfect covenant. Do you know if God made the New Covenant directly with us it would fall to pieces very quickly, because we would always be breaking it. 

But the New Covenant is unbreakable because it was made between two perfect people; God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ. The covenant was made sure before we were even born, and when we believe we are put into Christ and enter into the Covenant and receive all its benefits as a free-gift, all of God’s strengths to fill up our weaknesses become available to us.
All this is the marvellous grace of God to us.

God entered into covenant with the Man, Jesus. When Jesus stood there He was representing the whole human race and God entered into covenant with Him and He accepted His blood as the founding blood of the covenant. The New Covenant was established in His precious blood. 

God then declared every blessing for Jesus, every spiritual blessing for all eternity was given to Him. God spoke over Jesus and into Jesus, all the glories of the New Testament such as the forgiveness of sins, healing, joy, abundant life.... I believe He spoke these words when Jesus was raised from the dead. He spoke into Jesus and He said: ‘rebirth, spiritual life, resurrection, forgiveness, healing, prosperity, every blessing is yours now and forever’, and Jesus received it.

God spoke every blessing into Jesus, and Jesus received them all on your behalf. He received every blessing, and now all of God’s promises are now sealed in the blood of Jesus. They were released to Jesus as our representative, and so now all those blessings are also ours in Christ. 

That’s how it works. God doesn’t make a separate covenant with you, because you would just break it anyway. He made the covenant with Jesus; He’s the representative man. 

So the main issue is: do you accept Him as your representative? Or are you going to stick with Adam? The choice is yours. 

Adam can be your representative before God. If you trust in yourself and living unto yourself, as your own god, you are identifying with Adam and you are choosing to live Adam’s way. But if you put your trust in Christ, then you are renouncing Adam’s decision to go his own way and you are identifying with Christ and His obedience to God, and you are then in Christ. He is now your representative. 

Adam’s choice was: ‘I will be my own god. I will live my own life my own way, thank you very much. I’ll go my own way.’This person may even believe in God, but basically Adam’s choice was: ‘I don’t need God. I’ll do it myself, my way.’ And if you do nothing in this life, if you just drift through this life and make no decision with regard to God, you are still in Adam, and you will suffer the fate of that decision. But if you hear the Good News that there is another representative Man who is standing before God on your behalf, who has made a covenant with God for you, and if you believe in Him and accept Him, saying: 
‘yes, I accept Jesus as my representative, Lord’ then the Bible says: you are taken out of Adam, and put into Christ. Now He’s your representative Man. 
Now the righteousness He has before God is your righteousness. The blessings He has before God are your blessings. Every victory He has won is your victory. Hallelujah. And now you stand before God in Christ, no longer in Adam. 

But you have to make that decision. You have to accept the covenant that He’s made. It’s a big decision. It’s turning from Adam’s decision: ‘I’m going my own way. I’m my own god. I’m doing my own thing’, to the decision of Christ. 

Now Christ’s decision was humility. He said: 
‘I submit to God. My choice is to trust God, to depend on God, to submit to God.’ He made that decision and proved Himself perfect in that. 
He did it on our behalf and what we must say is: ‘Yes, I agree with Jesus. I identify with Jesus. 
I accept Him as my representative. 
I submit to Jesus as my Lord. With Him I choose to submit to God, and to live by faith in God.’ 
When you make that choice the Bible says 
‘You are put into Christ.’ You are now in Christ. He becomes your representative head. Now there is nothing deeper or stronger than this Blood Covenant in your life and destiny. 

You might think ‘How can I have strong faith?’ - the kind of faith the great men of God had even when it seemed that everything was going wrong, that God would come through for them. It’s because they knew their covenant with God.Hebrews 6:12 says: ‘do not become sluggish, wimpish, but imitate those who through faith and patience (enduring faith)inherit the promises (the promises of the covenant).” 
How can we have such a faith? He gives Abraham as an example of one with this faith:

Hebrews 6:13: ‘For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself’ (Genesis 22:16).
This is God making covenant, but who does He swear by? What is greater than God? He has to swear by Himself. He made an oath and He swore by Himself, He puts His own being and existence on the line. It would be impossible, but if God broke His covenant, He’d have to cease to exist. You have to realise the power of the Blood Covenant in Jesus. It’s unbreakable. 

v14 He swore by Himself: ‘Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you.’ This is the covenant made with Abraham in Genesis 22:16,17. 
v15 ‘And so, after he, Abraham, had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.’ In verse 12 we were told to imitate Abraham’s faith. So what’s the secret of his strong faith? We see here that his faith was based firstly 
on the trustworthy promise of a faithful God but also secondly upon God’s covenant oath. It is by knowing that God’s promises to us are absolutely dependable, because of His character of loving faithfulness, and also because they are secured by a legal-blood covenant which God has sworn by Himself to fulfil, that we can have strong faith like Abraham. Therefore we must have a revelation of the strength and the power of Blood Covenant to have this kind of strong faith. 

v16 For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute, the end of all doubting.’ Do you see that? The covenant oath is the end to the argument, the end of all debate and doubting. I don’t care if that person is your worst enemy, if you have made covenant with them, there is no more argument. 

v17 ‘Thus (how much more) God determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath (so that we could have absolutely rock solid faith).” God wanted us to be so sure in our faith, so that we know that are secure in His love, that He will surely keep His promises to us, that He gave us a covenanat confirmation of them, by giving His oath! 

v18 He confirmed the promise with an oath “...so that by two immutable things (His promise and His oath) in which it is impossible for God to lie we might have strong consolation (faith), who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us, which is the anchor for our soul.’ 

Our faith is to be anchored in the covenant of God. We have a hope, a confident expectation that God will fulfil every promise He has made to us, even into eternity. How can we be sure? Because of His promise, and because He has sworn by Himself to back up His promise. He has put His very existence on the line and that’s as strong as we can have. 

If you want to know why people in the Bible could often have such great faith in God’s promises, it’s because they understood their Covenant. Believing in healing is not just about knowing the verse: ‘by His stripes we are healed’, thinking maybe if I say it enough times, I will believe it, and it will happen. Really it’s all about knowing what stands behind that promise:
God’s faithfulness and His Blood Covenant Oath. 

There are two immutable, eternal, indestructible things that will not change or fade over time. First of all, our faithful God has given His Word (promise), and if He has promised you healing, He can’t change, that promise holds forever. 

Secondly, He didn’t just promise, He also gave His oath. He swore by Himself that He will keep that promise and He can’t do anymore than that. Why did He do this? Why enter into covenant with us? It was so that our relationship with Him might be made rock solid, unbreakable, so that we would know and fully believe in His unconditional love, that He will never let us down. We know that He will never leave us nor forsake us, because He has locked Himself into an eternal covenant with us that is unbreakable. He has not just promised, but He has made a Blood Covenant over that promise, and has sworn by Himself that He will keep His word. 

So when He says: ‘by My stripes you are healed’ He stands behind that word with His very blood and with His oath, and if we know that, we will surely have a strong overcoming faith. 

Now the promise that Hebrews 6:14 was refering to: ‘Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you.’is part of God’s covenant with Abraham and is found in Genesis 22. This was actually when God was acting out with Abraham the foreshadowing of the New Covenant: Abraham offering up Isaac. This was a prophetic picture of God offering up His only beloved Son to die for us on Mount Moriah, and it is what God said to Abraham in Genesis 22:16,17 that is being referred to here: 

In Genesis 22:16 it says: 
“By Myself I have SWORN, says the Lord..’ 
It’s enough that God gives His promise, 
we should not need anything more. 
But in order to make His promise sure, God is sealing it in a covenant, and He is swearing by Himself, so that we could have no possibility of doubting His word for as Hebrews 6:16 says: 
‘an oath for confirmation 
is the end of all dispute and doubting.’ 
It settles the matter once and for all.

In Genesis 22:16 God says: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing’ (because Abraham and Isaac were obedient unto death): ‘you have not withheld your son, your only son, blessing I will bless you, multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and the sand on the seashore; and your descendent, your seed, shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.’ That’s the covenant God made with Abraham. And it was a perfect picture of what happened 2000 years later when God offered up His beloved Son to die on the cross. 

When Jesus died on the cross, God stepped into that blood and declared to Jesus: ‘because you have done this, because you have not withheld anything from Me, because you have given your life even unto death ‘blessing I will bless you, and I will multiply you and I will bless your seed.’ His seed is us, everyone who is in Christ. 

God said: ‘I will bless your seed, I will multiply them, they will possess the gate of their enemies’ In other words: ‘I give them victory over the devil and over every enemy.’ And in your seed all the nations shall be blessed 

Every blessing of the New Covenant was declared and put into Jesus for our sake. Jesus didn’t need the blessing He was already the eternally blessed Son of God, but He secured the blessing for us. When God made this covenant oath to Abraham on Mount Mariah in response to the offering up of Isaac, He was really looking beyond this shadow to the offering up of His Son Jesus Christ. As God made a covenant oath to bless Abraham and his seed on the basis of the offering up of Isaac, so God made a covenant oath to bless Christ and His seed (that’s those who are in Christ) on the basis of Christ’s offering up of Himself on the Cross. 

As Abraham received the covenant promise on behalf of his seed, so Christ received the covenant promise on our behalf. 

So the New Covenant founded on the blood of Christ consists of God’s promise backed by oath and so is eternal and unbreakable. That means every promise of God to us in Christ is a covenant promise soaked in Christ’s blood and confirmed by God’s oath, so that there might be an end of all dispute or doubting in our heart. 

He gave these guarantees so that we might be fully assured that the promises belong to us. God doesn’t just promise to bless us, but He 
has confirmed His promise with a covenant oath 
so that we might be doubly sure of it.

Hebrews 6:12: ‘imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself’ v15 ‘And so, after he, Abraham, had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.’ Abraham had strong, enduring faith because he knew God’s promise was grounded in a blood covenant confirmed by oath. If we too know this, we will have the same kind of faith as Abraham the faith that obtains the promises. 

Thus our faith is based on God’s faithful love for us, supremely revealed in the New Covenant, which is accomplished in Christ, established in His blood and confirmed by God’s own oath. Therefore all the promises of God to us in Christ are surely, surely ‘Yes, and Amen.’