No 4

(God's Covenants with Israel)

The Jews are God's chosen people, but do you know what? They sometimes don't like to be called that; some Jews would rather say that they are God's choosing people. No matter; the Bible says that God chose Israel and He made a covenant with them to prove it; actually there was more than one, but we will look at one in particular. The dictionary defines a covenant as a solemn agreement between two or more persons. Here is the covenant that God made with Israel.

The Bible says in Genesis 15 that Abraham's descendants will be as the stars in the sky (v 4); that they shall be strangers in a land and that they shall be afflicted for four hundred years (v 13). They shall come out of this land with great riches (v 14) and the Lord will give them a piece of land that stretches from the river of Egypt (not the Nile but the Wadi El Arish) to the great river, the River Euphrates (Verse 18). It is not the Nile river because the Lord mentions the inhabitants of this land ( the Kenites, the Hitites, the Perizzites, etc - vs 19-21) and they lived in this general area, not in Egypt. The River Euphrates passes through present day Iraq; needless to say that a lot must happen before the Nation of Israel comes to possess this land in its entirety.

There were other covenants that God made with Israel: Abraham - Gen 17:10 (circumcision); Isaac - Gen 17:19 (and his descendants); Jacob - Gen 28:13-15 (all nations shall be blessed); Moses - Exod 6:4 (His children in Egypt); David - 2 Sam 23:5 (an everlasting covenant). The New Testament covenant with Israel is that one day the blindness shall be removed from them and the whole Nation shall be saved (Romans 11:25, 26). Some say lets evangelize the Jews as much as we can; maybe the Lord will come quicker; regardless, God has a plan for Israel and He will fulfill it to the letter.