I learned music as a child and the day the odd shapes on a page connected with the notes on my instrument, a whole new dimension of sound exploded. The world of glorious music connected with my ordinary world and I could unite them simply through my fingers.
A similar thing happened to me recently. Somebody told me that an eternal covenant was originally made with Abraham in chapter 15 of Genesis.
What put the cat among the pigeons was that the Lord spoke about the eternal covenant with Noah in chapter 9, quite a few decades earlier. He said that whenever the rainbow is in the clouds, he, the Lord, will see it and ‘remember the everlasting covenant between God and living creatures of every kind on earth.’
There was an everlasting covenant before Abraham and before Noah, so I wondered when God made it.
Firstly I discovered that a covenant is, in simple terms, a workplace agreement. Secondly, I discovered that God made a workplace agreement between his threesome self, Father, Creator and Holy Spirit in the first garden. He said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, to have dominion over the fish in the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, all wild animals on land, and everything that creeps on the earth.’ (Genesis 1:26).
Thirdly, I discovered that the agreement did not include anybody but Elohim, God plural. The angels were not included and certainly Adam was not included because he was not there yet.
So when God made his workplace agreement, it was inevitably an everlasting, or an eternal, covenant, because it was made by eternal equals.
This is the covenant he remembers when he sees the rainbow and it is our foundation..
We began in a garden; and Christ was buried and resurrected in a garden, ‘in the garden a new tomb, not yet used for burial,’ (John 19:41). Then John indicates another garden where there is a river and a tree for the healing of nations, Revelation 22.
So when 2nd Timothy 1:9 says that salvation is granted to us in Christ Jesus ‘from all eternity’, my mind explodes. Eternity is united with my ordinary world simply through my prayer.
Elizabeth Price