Covenant by the Book
God is pleased to establish his covenant with his creatures in deed and truth. In the garden of Eden God set his creatures in the midst of all they needed and he spoke to them establishing his covenant and its conditions and in the midst of their sin spoke to them in words of grace (Gen.1-3). In the days of Noah God preserved his favored servant and his family in a floating vessel and secured them again upon dry ground, reiterating his covenant with Noah and his progeny in truth (Gen.6-9). God took the Gentile Abram from his homeland and spoke to him in numerous ways establishing his covenant with him and promised its fulfillment by himself (Gen.12-17). God led Moses out of the desert into Egypt to lead his covenant people out by his might under the cover of blood. He encamped with his people and spoke to them through his prophet words of life and promise (Exodus). David, a man after God’s own heart, preserved and protected by God, was given the throne of Israel by God’s might, and his throne established forever in his word of promise (2Sam.7). And in these last days God has spoken to us by his Son (Heb.1:2) who is the Word (Jn.1:1) and the Lamb of God who was slain for his people’s sin (Jn.1:29; Rev.5:8-10). He did this to demonstrate the love of God toward all those he has chosen to be holy and blameless in the Son forevermore for the praise of his glorious grace (Eph.1:4,6). God establishes his relationship with his people in his own deeds of power, wisdom and goodness through a bond of blood. And he perseveres with them with his eternal Word of power, wisdom and goodness. Covenant begins with God’s deeds and Word and is continually renewed with his people by his gracious deeds and powerful Word.
Covenant Renewal is a time to be reminded of our need of God’s powerful work toward us and his powerful Word with us. In 1968 the 36 year old Philip J. Masters climbed the mountains in Papua in the islands of Indonesia to carry God’s gospel to the Kimyal and Yali peoples. These fierce people had no knowledge of God’s love toward them in Christ and no welcome for this sojourner from another kingdom. They filled him with dozens of arrows shot from their bows and left his body in the river to wash up and be found by his family and friends. This was a tragic end to a fervent servant of the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, from this tragedy God would grow a people reflecting his glory through his new covenant in the blood of Christ. In the year of our Lord 2010 God delivered to the Kimyal and Yali peoples his book of the covenant in their own language through the hands of Phyllis Masters, the wife of Philip J. Masters. The hands receiving the Scriptures were those of the people who took her husbands life in hatred 42 years earlier. These hands received the Book of the Covenant with joyful hearts as those who were being saved by God’s grace in the covenant of blood, the blood of his own Son, Jesus Christ as told to them in the Scriptures. The Kimyal and Yali church was founded in the blood of the covenant in the Son as told to them from the book of the covenant, and now this covenant people continue in God’s grace through these Scriptures as they hear them, read them and preach them in their own language. Philip J. Masters laid down his life for his friends as one who had known the love of God through the blood of the Son. The deed and truth of God in the covenant had given him life and in continued renewal of that covenant a life to share with others. As the Son promised to build his church even against the gates of hell (Mt.16:18), so Mr. Masters took the glory of Christ into a kingdom of darkness where Satan dwells and was killed as a faithful witness (Rev.2:13). His wife and others followed standing upon this faithful witness as a seed that had gone into the ground and died and there God has grown his beautiful church. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church and where this seed goes into the ground and dies it grows a beautiful bride of Christ through God’s deed and truth in covenant established and preserved on his book of the covenant.
