Psalms 85:
Show us thy steadfast love, O Lord,
and grant us thy salvation.
8 Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,
for he will speak peace to his people,
to his saints, to those who turn to him in their hearts.[a]
9 Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,
that glory may dwell in our land.
10 Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
11 Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.
12 Yea, the Lord will give what is good,
and our land will yield its increase.
13 Righteousness will go before him,
and make his footsteps a way
Steadfast Love: a key phrase denoting the covenant God makes with us. He has performed a work that is steadfast, that cannot be broken or undone, a work of Love, his love to us.
Righteousness is a term that denotes God, creator.
Faithfulness: our opportunity to accept and reciprocate that steadfast love.
Covenant is the title of the Christian Scriptures: Old Testament and New Testament is the more familiar translation. We should expect ‘covenant’ to be the central theme of the Bible. Covenant was the central theme of the Last Supper, and so passed into the central Christian liturgy.
The question I shall explore this evening is which covenant are we talking about? Not, I shall argue, the Moses covenant, with all the problems this brings of the new covenant superseding the older one; but rather the everlasting covenant that encompasses all the historic Old Testament covenants and forms the basis of the New Testament. This is the covenant that Jesus renewed at the Last Supper. He restored a covenant that had in his time been neglected, and in our current theological scene is almost completely unknown.
Matthew attributes to Jesus at the Last Supper more words than appear in Luke and Mark. Matthew’s Jesus defines the covenant as ‘for the putting away of sins, aphesis’ (Matt.26.28). Blood poured out for the putting away of sins. Which Old Testament covenant was this? We usually assume that Matthew’s gospel was written for a community with Hebrew roots, and so he needed to define which of the many possible covenants Jesus meant.
The covenant with Abram was a promise of land and had nothing to do with sin (Gen.15.18-21).
The covenant that Moses mediated at Sinai was an agreement to observe the ten commandments and did not deal with putting away sin (Exod.24.
The covenant with David was a promise that his heirs would be the rulers in Jerusalem and did not deal with putting away sin (2 Sam.7.12).
The covenant with Noah was a promise that God would never again destroy the earth. It was the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth (Gen.9.16).
1 Corinthians 15:58
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
http://ecocongregationireland.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Everlasting-Covenant-Margaret-Barker-DD.pdf
Breathings 