Bible Covenants Part 4 – Lawson and Aaron Perdue

Praise the Lord, friends, I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in. We have a great lesson to share with you today. We’re talking about the fact that God establishes covenant. Now, that’s very important when you understand it, because if God established it, it’s not about us, it’s not about our performance, it’s about His performance, and because He promised it and He performed it, He’s gonna do it. Friends, it’s great to have you with us, and we’re sharing about Noah, and we’re gonna talk specifically that God establishes covenant, and the reason that this is so important is, number one, if God establishes covenant, it is not based on our performance, it’s based on His performance. Number two, the second reason this is so important, is because the covenant is not our idea, it’s not our plan. This is not the word of Lawson, or the word of Jesse Duplantis, or the word of any other great Bible minister, you know, that you know, this is the word of God to you.

I love that, God establishing covenant, so He’s the one that initiates it, and it’s, you know,

Right.

His covenant is always a covenant of blessing,

Right.

and the Bible says that the lesser is blessed by the greater.

Yes.

So God is the one who blesses us. You know, the priest would bless the people. The lesser is blessed by the greater, and God, the greater, is the one that initiates that covenant. If man tries to initiate that covenant, tries to reach God on their own, it fails.

Right.

When you think of the Tower of Babel, that was man,

That’s a great example.

trying to reach God themselves, and it failed.

That’s right after this. So this is Genesis 9, right. This is about, you know, 2500 BC, with Noah, and then about 2000 BC, that’s where Abraham came out of, or of the Chaldees, where they were building this tower,

Trying to reach God themselves.

Through their own strength, through their own ability, a humanistic way of trying to get the blessing of God or the good things of God. It’s not by our power, it’s not by our strength, it’s by the Word of God, and the Spirit of God, and the work of God.

And when man tries to initiate that relationship with God, tries to initiate that covenant, it leads to confusion, it leads to division, but when God does it, it leads to unity, it leads to-

Blessing.

Think about, you know, the Day of Pentecost.

Right.

You know, there were Jews from all around the world, different nations represented there, and they all became part of the church as people were speaking

Right.

in tongues, you know, babbling, that’s where we get the word babble from, like, it’s incoherent, they started hearing in their own language,

Right.

they supernaturally heard in their own language, just people praising and glorifying God.

Amen.

and 3000 people were added to the church. It brought unity.

Right.

You know, there was clarity, because God was the one pouring out His spirit, He was the one establishing,

Right.

you know, His church.

And that brings blessing. And so we’re gonna start in Genesis 9, and it says in verse 1, “God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.'” This is the same thing that He told Adam, you know, in the beginning after He created humanity and He saw that it was very good, but man had a failure, right, which many times we do, and that’s why we have Jesus and that’s why it’s so important that God establishes covenant. The covenant’s not based on us, or our performance, or our ideas, it’s based on God, and His performance, and His work,

And His goodness,

His plan, yes,

His nature.

His goodness, and that comes into this. So we’re gonna jump on down to verse 7, and He said, ‘You,'” He’s speaking to, you know, Noah, “‘be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply therein.’ And God spoke to Noah,” in verse 8, “and to his sons with him, saying, ‘Behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your seed after you.'” So again, it’s God, and He always comes first.

He’s the one that establishes,

He’s the one. In other words, when we talked about covenants, we said, there’s two kinds: there’s horizontal, right, man to man,

Mm-hmm, yes.

and that’s based on our ability to perform that or carry that out,

Two equals.

two equals, but then there’s a bilateral, from a king to his vassals or God to man. This is a bilateral, a unilateral agreement, not a bilateral, a unilateral, or vertical between God and man. In other words, “This is My covenant. If you believe it, you’ll receive it. If you doubt it, you do without it.” So we’ve gotta believe it, but He says, “‘I establish My covenant with you and with your seed.'” It’s so important that we understand that God establishes covenant, and He says this over and over again, “and with every living creature that is with you, of the birds, of the cattle, every beast on the earth that goes out of the ark, to every animal, I will establish,'” again, God says, “I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh,'” in other words, He makes a covenant, now, of grace, right, “all flesh be cut off anymore by the waters of the flood, neither shall there be anymore a flood to destroy.'” This is God’s heart. God does not want to destroy humanity.

And this, this actually becomes a picture of Jesus, a picture of salvation. You know, the Bible talks about this being an antitype of water baptism, you know, relating to salvation,

Right.

that, you know, we have this covenant with God through Jesus. He’s the one that protects us,

Right.

He’s the one that saves us.

Right.

Just like the ark saved Noah, and His family, and those animals, Jesus is the one that saves us.

Noah built the ark, right, prepared an ark for the saving of his household and obtained the witness that he was righteous, right, right with God, by faith.

Mm-hmm.

It’s a faith deal.

Mm-hmm.

It’s still, right, this is a-

And all these covenants, they’re all the same.

It’s a type and shadow of it, or a picture of what God did in the new covenant through Jesus and, right, He says, “I’m not gonna destroy the earth anymore.” God’s heart is never to destroy. See, a lot of people are actually angry at God because they’re actually counting the works of the devil. Jesus said in John 10:10, “‘It’s the thief that comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I’ve come to give you life, and that life more abundantly.'” So God’s not the great destroyer, He’s the great blesser.

And this is a really amazing account here, too, because pretty much every major culture throughout the world, every major civilization has a Noah, an ark story.

They do,

because we all descend

because it’s true.

from Noah. You know, I was talking to my son about this, and really, there’s one race, there’s the human race,

Yeah.

and you know, we have different, you know, many different cultures, different preferences based upon where we came from, but there’s one race,

Right.

and just because your skin color is different, that’s just because you have different amounts of melanin, this pigment in your skin, but there’s one race, one human race.

You know, you can-

You know, people have different preferences in food and music, and do things slightly different based upon where they’re from, but there is one,

We are one human race.

You can take the blood out of a African man, a Indian man, a Chinese man, Asian man, and you can save a white man, and you can take the blood out of a white man and save a African man, a Indian man, an Asian man,

Mm-hmm.

right? God has mingled the blood of all nations, right,

Mm-hmm.

and the races were actually caused because man was trying to do it on his own so God divided the earth in the days of Peleg. That’s what Genesis 10:25 says.

The languages, yeah.

Right, but that happened in Genesis 11 that you talked about.

Mm-hmm.

But He said there’s not gonna be a flood to destroy. It is never God’s-

Mm-hmm.

Jesus said, it’s the thief the work of destruction is the work of the devil.

Mm-hmm.

The work of blessing and healing in life is the work of God.

Mm-hmm.

Jesus said, “I’ve come to give you life, and that life more abundantly.”

Yeah, someone got on recently on one of our church social media accounts, our team here put a video of me sharing an offering, and I just, I shared a scripture about blessing, how wealth and riches will be in His house,

Yeah, someone put it-

And someone was attacking that. I was just saying that God cares about your well-being, and they said, they were just really attacking that, and they said, “Well, show me one scripture that talks about God caring about your well-being.” I’m like, well, that’s the entire Bible,

Right.

And I think this guy’s a complete idiot, and I told my wife, “You know, I bet this guy’s favorite verse is from Job, “‘You give and You take away,'” and a lot of people gravitate towards that verse. but that’s not who God is, and they don’t read it in context. Later on in Job, God shows up and says, “You guys need to shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Yeah.

I’m the one who created this world, and, and then He blesses Job, and Job is restored,

Yeah.

and has twice as much as he had before.

Job was speaking out of his emotion, and his friends, and if you read the context of that scripture right there, it wasn’t God taking away from Job, it was the devil.

And it’s very clear it was the devil.

that was attacking Job and his family, and his wealth, and his health, and if you read a little bit farther, you find out after that attack, Job believed God, right,

Mm-hmm.

found peace with God, and God restored Job and he became the wealthiest of all the men in the East, and he had twice as much prosperity, and he had beautiful daughters, and all these different things that God did for him. But, see, people don’t read the context, they just take a scripture out of context and make a doctrine out of it.

Mm-hmm.

That is not a doctrine, that is not true.

That is not covenant.

Read the Bible.

It’s not covenant

This is, we’re talking about covenant.

Mm-hmm.

And so God says, “I’m not gonna destroy.” Now, if you read Isaiah 54, that’s after Isaiah 53, that’s a prophecy of Jesus, Isaiah 54 is a prophecy of the covenant that God made,

Mm-hmm.

this new covenant, the covenant of grace, and He says, “Listen, I’m not gonna destroy anymore, like in the days of Noah. I’m not gonna flood the earth.” He said the same thing. And He goes on, go ahead, Aaron, and read verse 12, and then we’ll try to get, just read it first.

This says, “And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations again.

This is forever covenant.

Yeah, eternal covenant. ‘”I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.'” It’s kinda interesting that the whole LGBTQ woke movement has tried to steal the sign of this covenant, the rainbow,

and God, God,

Yeah.

you know, God is a God of covenant, He’s a creator, He created them male and female. You know, that anti-Christ, that anti-God, that anti-Bible, anti-church, anti-, it’s really anti-Creator when you try to deny male and female, it’s anti-science, it’s anti-truth, but when you see a rainbow in the sky, it’s a sign of God’s covenant

Amen.

that he’s not a destroyer, He is a restorer.

Amen.

and He’s the God of covenant. Verse 15, “‘I will remember My covenant, which is between me and you, and every living creature of all flesh. The waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.'” You know, when people would meet God and come into covenant with God, they would build an altar as a sign of that covenant.

Yeah.

Even those between, like, one king and another king, when Abraham made a peace treaty with another king, they would build an altar, put up a heap of stones, and this is because it’s a sign of our covenant.

Yeah.

The rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant with us that He is not a destroyer, but He’s a restorer.

Amen, it’s awesome. And so, you know, we’re gonna take a short break in just a few seconds, but if you need prayer, feel free to call in during the break and get prayer, call in at the end of the broadcast, call in later during the day. Sometimes our phones get busy, but call in and receive prayer. We have a lot of people that get healed, get baptized in the Holy Spirit, receive their prayer language, and all kinds of things, and you can go to our website anytime and take advantage of the multiple resources that we have for you. We’re gonna be right back. Blessings. Friends, we’ve been teaching Bible Covenants from my syllabus that I’ve been teaching at Bible school, that I developed over 20 years ago. I’ve been teaching it for over 20 years in Bible school. We actually have that syllabus free of charge on our website, plus “Hebrews: The Better Covenant” in book form, in audio and video downloadable form. Check our website out.

We went to Pastor Lawson, and we said we were just, you know, needing some guidance, some wisdom, on how to believe, or whatever, but he said, “I feel like God is telling me you’re gonna get all this money all in one chunk.” We just started calling that money in. That money came, we got the check before the end of the year, and actually, there was, it paid enough for it to cover all the medical debt, and there was 10,000 left.

Friends, I’m so glad you stayed with us, and we’re right here, talking about the covenant that God made with Noah, and what aspect this teaches us about the overall covenant that God made with us in Christ,

Mm-hmm.

and He says, “I establish My covenant with you.” He said, number one, it’s not about our performance, number two, the covenant’s not our idea. Do you know what, God wants to heal you more than you wanna be healed. God wants to prosper you more than you want to prosper. God wants to give you emotional peace more than you even want to receive it. God wants to help you more than you even wanna be helped, and we’ve gotta realize that God is not a double-minded God.

Mm-hmm.

You know, if somebody’s double-minded, it’s man,

Mm-hmm.

and James says a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways, but when you begin to realize that God is good, He’s always good, His promise is always true, He’s always the same, then you can quit being double-minded and believe what He said about Himself and what He said about you, and begin to receive these promises. So Aaron, go ahead and jump, in this, He says, “‘This is the token of the covenant I make with you,'” but jump on down in verse 14, and read verse 14 through verse 17.

Yes, this covenant with Noah, and God just said, “‘This rainbow is a sign of that covenant,'” and that’s something that’s kinda typical when a covenant was established, is that there’d be a sign. Sometimes, when that covenant was established between God and a person, they’d build an altar

Right.

as a sign, called that altar something. You know, Abraham called an altar Jehovah-jireh, one of those, that first redemptive name of God. When Abraham would make a treaty with other, you know, rulers in his land, they’d put up a heap of stones as a sign of that treaty. God has a sign of His covenant with us,

Yeah, “Remember

with Noah.

what I’ve done for you.”

Mm-hmm. I want you to remember, I’m a good God.”

You know, when the Israelites crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land, with Joshua, you know, God instructed him to pick up 12 stones,

Right.

and set them as a heap, as a reminder that God has a covenant with these 12 tribes of Israel as they go into the Promised Land.

Remember what God’s done. We have a school that meets in our building,

Mm-hmm.

it’s called 12 Stones Classical Christian Academy,

That’s awesome, mm-hmm.

and it’s awesome. There’s believers, they’re teaching students, you know-

Our children’s pastor is gonna go teach this week, to their four to 10 year olds.

Yeah.

on the parable of the talents.

Right, they’re doing a thing. I actually made a donation to them, because they’re giving every student in school $10 to go raise money, and I said, “Well, I wanna pay for that,” and I gave them a donation, you know, to give to every student to go make money, because God gives us talents,

Mm-hmm.

and do something with what I’ve given them.

See, when the Israelites crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land, you know, God actually, they, you know, stopped the Jordan River from flowing.

Right.

It began heaping up, and, you know, when the priests with the Ark of the Covenant,

Right.

the Ark of the Covenant, again, a covenant, you know, they,

It’s a covenant.

you know, they crossed, and then they picked out 12 stones from the dry bank of the Jordan, and they set them up, that “God is the one who made this happen for us.”

And what was in the ark? The covenant.

Mm-hmm.

The covenant that God gave.

The five tablets, yeah.

All of humanity, the whole world, you know, revolves around the covenant when you begin to understand it. Jerusalem, Israel, is the center of the landmass before the continents were divided and floated, and the center of Israel’s Jerusalem, and the center of Jerusalem was the Temple Mount, and the center of the Temple Mount is the holy place, and the center of the holy place is the most holy place, and the center of the most holy place is the Ark of the Covenant, and the center of the Ark of the Covenant is the covenant.

Mm-hmm.

Man!

Mm-hmm.

See, what people, people don’t realize how this speaks to us, because that holy place, that most holy place, actually speaks of the spirit of man, and when you get born again, the Word of God has taken up residence in your spirit. You’re born again by the incorruptible seed of the Word of God that lives and abides forever, and then this type of it in the Old Testament was this Ark of the Covenant in the most holy place, and in the center of it is the covenant that God made with man. And God created heaven and earth with His Word, and He keeps His Word, and if His Word was to fail, heaven and earth would fail. So the center of everything, really, is the Word of Almighty God, and we have the unchangeable Word of a unchangeable God, and He’s never, ever, changing.

And just as you were kinda talking about that, I was just thinking about the old covenant, how in the Old Testament, the holy of holies,

Right.

it was a very mysterious place,

Right.

and it was very hidden, and in the New Testament, you know, deep within us, we have this spirit that’s the holy of holies, where God has placed His spirit,

Right. that spirit of Jesus,

Amen.

and the Bible refers to it as the hidden man of the heart,

Lawson Right.

And the Bible also talks about “Your Word have I hidden in my heart,”

Right.

that I might not sin against you.

Right.

So very, very, you know, a lot of, a lot of-

Right, so people don’t understand, like, for instance, when they dedicated the temple, right, in the Old Testament, and the glory of God, they always talk about how the people were crying, “Your mercy endures forever,” and the glory of God came and filled the house, and the priest couldn’t stand to minister because of the glory. It’s not because of praise and worship,

Mm-hmm.

it’s because of what they were praising God about, and they were praising God that the Ark of God was placed in the house of God, and the Word of God took its proper place among the people of God,

Mm-hmm.

so when the word of God takes up a residence in you and you’re born of God,

Mm-hmm.

that’s what we’re rejoicing about, and Christ in us is the hope of glory. Man, it’s all so intertwined. Now, He says, “‘When this bow comes over the earth,'” in verse 15, “‘I will remember My covenant.'” God remembers His covenant, God never breaks His covenant.

People might forget,

Yeah.

but God remembers.

But God remembers,

Mm-hmm.

and He says, “‘which is between Me and you, and every living creature. I’ve made it between Me,'” the covenant is between God, and man, and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth, and God said to Noah, so He says, “I am remembering My covenant.”

This is good, “The waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.” So some people think, well, with global,

Yeah.

climate change, they only say warming, ’cause sometimes things get colder, but they’re like, you know, we need to be very afraid of the rising water levels, yet these same people who push that agenda buy all the expensive beachfront property in Hawaii, and, you know, if they’re really worried about that, why would you buy property right on the beach, where, you know, you’re at sea level zero

It’s a lie.

or sea level one.

And, you know, what they do is they use these lies, right. You’ve said there’s a volcano, it puts out more gas, greenhouse gas,

Oh, yeah, yeah.

in what, you know, in a week or a month, than all of humanity put together does in a year.

Mm-hmm.

It’s unreal,

Mm-hmm.

and people don’t realize that. But you know how the heaven and earth’s gonna be destroyed when God destroys it by fire, it tells about it in 2 Peter 3, and then we believers are gonna go into a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. Sin hasn’t messed the deal up. But look at this, in verse 17, He says this, “God said to Noah, ‘This is the token of the covenant which I have established.'” In other words, God made the covenant, and God established the covenant, and how’s the covenant established with us? It’s established with us through Jesus. Jesus is the one who finished the work Jesus, the ark was actually a type of the cross, and Jesus died on the cross and paid the price so that now we can enter a relationship with God and receive the blessings of God or the promises of God in our life.

Mm-hmm.

And so He says that “I have established,” so God’s the one who establishes the covenant. We don’t establish the covenant, the covenant’s not about our performance, the covenant’s really not about our idea, the covenant’s about God’s idea, but when you find out what God’s idea is, and He makes known His thoughts to us, He says, “My thoughts are higher than your thoughts, My ways are higher than your ways.” And then He goes on, that’s in Isaiah 55, and He goes on and says, “‘So shall My Word be that goes forth out of My mouth. It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it will prosper the thing whereunto I send it.'” God’s Word is not returning void. It is full of power, full of life. It produces,

Yeah.

it accomplishes what He pleases. If you’ll believe it, it will work for you, and it prospers what He sends it to.

And God’s the one that remembers His covenant and establishes it.

You know, I have a word

Amen.

for someone right now. Maybe you think you’ve screwed up too much, and you’ve voided God’s promises in your life. You know, that’s a lie from the enemy. And even looking at Noah, right after God made this covenant with him, he screwed up.

Right.

He planted a vineyard, and got drunk, and he was a great man of God, a great man of faith, but he screwed up, but that didn’t void, you know, God’s covenant. He didn’t just go flood out Noah and his family ’cause Noah screwed up.

Yeah, and there may be other people that are watching. Aaron talked about this earlier in the week, and some person of trust has failed you, but, you know, Lester Sumrall, Dr. Lester Sumrall, said this, “All men of God have clay feet.” We’re all human, right, and maybe you failed, maybe someone close to you that you’ve respected failed, but keep your eyes on Jesus, keep your eyes on the Word of God, keep believing God, because God has good things for you.

And someone else’s faithlessness does not change God’s promise.

Yes.

There’s scripture that talks about that. It doesn’t void God’s promise, it doesn’t void His covenants.

Yes.

Because someone failed on their end,

Lawson Right.

you know, it doesn’t change who God is,

Does not change the Word.

it does not change His faithfulness,

Amen.

and God is faithful to perform His Word, He’s faithful to perform His covenant,

Amen.

He is faithful. And I’m glad that He’s the one that initiates the covenant, and He’s the one that establishes it.

Yes.

That’s so important to remember both those aspects, that He initiates it, He establishes it, and He remembers it.

Yeah .

And God would talk all the time. He would say, “I remember my covenant with Abraham. I remember my covenant with Isaac. I remember my covenant with Jacob. I remember my covenant with David.” God remembers His covenant.

Yeah, His covenant is true, His Word is true. God is not a man that He should lie, neither the Son of Man that He should repent, and what God promised He will perform. Today I wanna share, just, you know, before we go off the broadcast, and, you know, feel free to call our prayer ministers anytime we have them available, but I wanna talk about some of our resources. You know, we’ve been teaching all of this week just on basically one and a half lessons of my Bible Covenants teaching that I do and at Charis Bible College, I’ve been teaching it over 20 years, I developed it, but we have the outlines for this downloadable, they’re free of charge, on our website. We also have “Hebrews: The Better Covenant.” We have that in three areas. We have it in downloadable audio, downloadable video, teaching on the Book of Hebrews, which I teach at the last of Bible Covenants, the last four lessons, but the other thing that we have is we have a Hebrews book, “Hebrews: The Better Covenant,” it’s a great book, and we have all this, plus hundreds of hours of downloadable free things on our website. The book goes through Amazon, but if you want that, go to our website and check it out.

Announcer Hebrews 8:6 says that we have a better covenant based on better promises. In “Hebrews: The Better Covenant,” you’ll learn how the new covenant is better than the old simply because of Jesus. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of “Hebrews The Better Covenant,” a $35 value, free of charge. Don’t miss this opportunity to know what Jesus accomplished in establishing this better covenant. Visit CharisChristianCenter.com today to download your copy.

Friend, we here at Charis Christian Center and “Grace for Today” believe in being good stewards of the resources that God has given us, so we pay a professional service that’s actually available to help you do that in a couple of ways. Number one, you could make a will, absolutely free of charge, with professional legal help, and number two, you can go to “Tax-Smart Ways of Giving.” You can find them all on our website. Friends, it’s great to have you with us today, and I wanna invite you to attend services with us at Charis Christian Center in Colorado Springs. The atmosphere is amazing! Recently, in one service, I had people from 10 nations and several states, they watch us on a regular basis online, and they said, “This is amazing!” So if you can’t come physically, come and attend online at Charis Christian Center or YouTube. Blessings.

Announcer Thanks for watching “Grace for Today.” This broadcast has been made possible by our faithful partners. If you would like to become a partner, need prayer, or have a question, please call us at 719-418-4000, or to partner online, go to CharisChristianCenter.com/Give. You can write us at P.O. Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on “Grace for Today.”