By Stephanie Pavlantos
A couple of weeks ago, Cindy wrote a beautiful article on Bridal Language. If you haven’t read it yet, please do that. Bridal language, like covenant language and creation language, is all over the Scriptures. Thank you, Cindy, for asking me to add my two cents…
Our Bridegroom is coming to get all who love, follow, and obey Him. It all began with a nation called Israel. They are the main characters in His Story. When you read the prophets and the stories of Israel, they are all pieces of a puzzle that fit together to form God’s plan for all time.
A nation is born.
They married their King, then they left their first Love.
The King divorced them and sent them into exile.
God sent His Son to die so He could renew the marriage covenant with them.
He gathered the scattered flock into His Kingdom.
Jesus will return to gather all those who are Israel to live forever in His Kingdom on Earth.
We read and hear about covenants throughout Scripture, but many of us don’t fully understand the importance of covenant in God’s plan. There are different covenants—Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and Messianic. Although people may break covenants, they do not disappear. God’s covenants are eternal because He cannot die, nor will He break them.
By the time of Abraham, people widely recognized a Suzerain/vassal covenant. It was a covenant between “greater” and “lesser” people. A king may make a covenant with a lesser king of another kingdom, or even a vassel in his kingdom. This covenant guaranteed they would take the necessary actions to protect and or provide for each other. It was written, signed, and saved in the king’s temple or palace, and a copy given to the vassel as proof. There were also blessings for staying true to the covenant and curses for breaking it. If you loved the king, you kept the covenant, but if you broke the covenant, the king understood you hated him.
This is why God said, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” This is covenant language.
When God made a covenant with all the people who came out of Egypt at Mt. Sinai, there was a wedding. We see the marriage language in Exodus 19. First, there was a washing/cleansing of the people—a mikvah. This happened before all Jewish weddings. The smoke around the mountain became a wedding canopy or chuppah. We can see wedding language in Exodus 24:3:
“Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words that the LORD has spoken, we will do.”
In Exodus 20, God spoke the commandments to the people. Hebrew tradition says He spoke to each person, and they made a vow to keep His commandments. God’s Torah, or instructions, are like a pre-nup. They tell us how God wants to be loved and honored and how to love one another. Breaking these commandments and instructions equated to breaking the marriage vows. There are blessings and curses found in the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible, promising what would happen if they broke the covenant with God. You can find these in Deuteronomy 28.
Deuteronomy 28:25 promised, “The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.”
When Israel split into two nations—the southern and northern kingdoms in 1 Kings 12—there was a series of good and evil kings. The House of Israel (Ephraim) left her first love and went after the gods of the pagans. God divorced her in Jeremiah 3:
6 The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? 7 And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. 8 She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore.”
The Assyrians took over the House of Israel, and later, Babylon defeated the House of Judah, causing both houses to go into exile. Israel never totally returned to Israel after their captivity, but Judah did. God had made a covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7, promising a throne, house, and kingdom, and He honored it, so they returned to the land of Israel in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
However, from the time of Hosea and Amos to the prophet Jeremiah, God told His people exactly what He was going to do. He would destroy their land (Hosea 5), and their enemies would take them captive (Amos 3). Then, He would pursue them, bring them back, and renew His covenant with them (Jeremiah 29, 30, 31). He would send them a Savior (Isaiah 9) who would come for the lost sheep of Israel.
He planned to remarry them.
But there were rules God Himself had put in place. Deuteronomy 24:1-4 says, “When a man takes a wife and marries her, and she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her, and sends her away from his house, and if, after leaving his house, she goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the second husband dislikes her, writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her, and sends her away from his house, or if he dies, then the former husband who sent her away may not marry her again after she has been defiled, for that would be detestable to the LORD.”
Paul tells us about the law of marriage in Romans 7:1-4. 1 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law [of marriage] is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law [of marriage], and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. 4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law [of marriage] through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
What are these verses referring to? The laws of marriage. God could not legally take back His bride after He had given her a divorce for her defilement. Only death allowed that. So her first husband had to die in order for that covenant to be broken. She could remarry only when death broke the covenant.
God sent His Son to die so He could bring His first bride back into His Kingdom and marry her. Jesus came for the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 10:6 and 15:24).
However, in bringing back His Bride, He made a plan to include the nations. Hosea 2 (please read the book of Hosea in light of this story between God and the House of Israel) tells us His plan for the House of Israel and the nations.
Hosea 2:19-23: 19 And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord. 21 “And in that day, I will answer, declares the Lord, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, 22 and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel, 23 and I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”
Who are these that are “Not My People”? The Gentile nations. God’s plan from the beginning was to bring the nations into a relationship with Him. He included us in the Old Testament Scriptures that Paul knew so well. That’s why he was an apostle to the Gentiles and his brothers. He never gave up trying to bring his people to Jesus. Paul wrote most of Romans for them.
In Ephesians 2:11-13, Paul refers to those “once far off,” meaning the House of Israel scattered among the Gentile nations. He also speaks to them and to the Gentiles when he says, “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
What is the commonwealth of Israel? It’s our citizenship. Paul is telling us that once we were not citizens of Israel, but in the Messiah, we are now citizens. We were once strangers to the covenants, but now we have all the rights of Israel. What is the new creation Paul speaks about?
Galatians 6:15-16, “For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. 16 And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.’
Circumcision represents the Jews, and uncircumcision represents the Gentiles—so Jews nor Gentiles count for anything—only the New Creation. The new creation is the Israel of God. All of us in covenant with Jesus (whether we are Jews or Gentiles) are part of the Israel of God. God grafts us in and adopts us as sons and daughters. (Romans 11, Galatians 4:4-5).
The Church has not replaced Israel—we all make up the Body of Messiah. Paul told us in Romans 9:4-5 that to Israel belong… “the adoption, the glory, the covenant, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises, the patriarchs, and the Messiah.”
You are Israel if you belong to the Jewish Messiah named Yeshua/Jesus! There is neither Jew nor Gentile…for you are all one in Jesus. Galatians 3:27-29.
Our Bible doesn’t consist of an irrelevant Old Testament paired with a relevant New Testament. It’s one book with a love story that reaches across 6000 years. All relevant. All for us.
Connect with Stephanie at www.jewelsofhebrews.com