By Sidharth Mohandas

Covenant is a powerful word… In fact, our entire relationship with God is founded on a covenant. In this article I wish to specifically deal with a covenant called the Covenant of Salt.

This covenant as practised by the Jews was a covenant in word. It was something like this…men tied a pouch of salt to their belt, and when ever they made a covenant, they would exchange a pinch of salt, putting grains into each other’s pouch. If one party wanted to break the covenant, then the other would say, “You can break the covenant if you can take back your grains and yours only from my pouch“. Of course, we know that that sounds unreasonable, but that gave them the realization of the importance and gravity of keeping ones word.

There are about three references to this in the Old Testament, of which I have quoted two below to show you the nature of this covenant:

“Whatever is set aside from the holy offerings the Israelites present to the LORD I give to you and your sons and daughters as your regular share. It is an everlasting covenant of salt before the LORD for both you and your offspring.” [Numbers 18:19, NIV]

“Don’t you know that the LORD, the God of Israel, has given the kingship of Israel to David and his descendants forever by a covenant of salt? [2 Chronicles 13:5, NIV]

This is the nature of a salt covenant …forever…everlasting. That would signify an irrevocable pledge and loyalty shown by God to His people.

Now, when we come to the Newer Covenant, Jesus tells us, “Ye are the salt of the earth…” [Matthew 5:13, KJV]

We live in a day where honesty, integrity and genuiness are no longer standards even among Christians. In fact, it is considered “clever” to be able to deceive and mislead others in order to gain advantages. When Jesus said we were to be “the salt of the earth”, He was telling us that we were to be living examples of the covenant lifestyle.

You and I need to ask ourselves…Are we people who weigh our words? Do we give our word and not keep it? If so, we need to consider Paul’s instruction:

“Let your speech be always with grace, SEASONED WITH SALT, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” [Colossians 4:6, KJV]. Now this is an instruction given to believers at Colosse as to how they were to behave with “those outside” [unbelievers]. Friends, do not forget that you are an ambassador to the kingdom of God. If you’re a person who constantly breaks his word, you are misrepresenting the culture of heaven.

A while back I was told how a certain radio group took my friend’s testimony and added some spice to it to make their show sensational! God never instructed us to season our speech with spices! I encourage you today to rightly represent the lifestyle of the kingdom of God, the lifestyle of the covenant.

By Titto Thomas

Therefore, let no one judge you in matters of food and drink or with respect to a festival, a new moon, or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the reality belongs to Christ. [Colossians 2:16-17]

As a very young Christian I remember being asked to keep the Sabbath. The person who ‘commanded’ me had explained in detail and yes the whole package looked very convincing. At that point of time I was desperately trying to please the Lord and I thought if keeping the Sabbath would make him happy, I would be more than willing to try it out. Anyway I took it before the Lord and he led me to the above verses! But Sabbath is not a very light topic in the bible therefore I believe we need to look at it responsibly! Allow me to get to the question by explaining our position on the old testament.

The Old Testament

We all have this question. “As a new testament believer, how do I handle the Old Testament?” Paul answers this question in Romans 15:4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the scriptures we might have hope.

The things in the Old Testament were written for our ‘Learning or Instruction’. Therefore the implication is that we have a lot of things to learn from the Old testament.

An analogy that the Lord showed me was this ” If someone came and beat you up with a stick, who would receive the retaliation. The stick or the person?!” The realm of the spirit was concealed from the common man in the days of old! Now we know more realities, we know who our real enemies are. Not Assyria or the Hittites, But powers and principalities in the heavenlies!

It is fundamental that we realize the importance of the Old Testament and it’s implication for us. No we don’t swallow it, Hook line and sinker rather we learn things from it!

The Law of the Life

As we move on to the New Testament we come face to face with another reality. That of the Law of life. Now this is definitely going to shock some people, although there are instructions mentioned in the New Testament, we find not a single mention of right or wrong! Because Law (referring to OT) meant just that! Right or wrong! The important point here is that although God (through HIS WORK) abolished right and wrong he established a much higher law, The law of Life! Now this is much superior to right and wrong. For example when one person asked Jesus, on what to do with Soldiers who asked the Jews to carry their load, Jesus did not reply with right or wrong(as what the man wanted) but instead replied that they should go the further one mile!

See the law of life goes much beyond right or wrong to a much higher realm or plane! Now once we understand these basic concepts we can look at our topic in detail.

The Old Testament Sabbath

The first occurrence of the Sabbath is in Exodus 16:23, when God asks the Israelites not to collect manna on the seventh day. He later includes it in the Ten Commandments, and even commands the death penalty for its violation. The Sabbath was also meant to be kept for all generations. The Sabbath day was by every means Holy! The Sabbath day signified rest. It was sign(Exo 31:17). And as is every sign, so was this sign, a pointer to something! The Lord says it was a sign of God resting from a work(definitely not because he was tired!). It just means he had made something perfect and stood back to enjoy it! But there was something bigger encapsulated in this. It was a pointer to something bigger, as was the whole Old Testament.

Sabbath: The Pointer

When we reach the Gospels we find that the Sabbath concept was totally misused. As with all scriptures, we humans had bent and twisted it. The perfect beginning for this was when eve replied to Satan. She said “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall YE TOUCH IT, lest ye die.” See God had never told Eve that she would die if she touched it!! She just made the whole command a bit spicier! The political and religious institution of the day had used it to their advantage! Just think about it, The WHOLE Old Testament is pointing to Jesus but only a handful of people really understood him, when he arrived! I am not just talking about a few verses but 39 books and 99 percent of the people missed out on it! Yes they were very dogmatic but they missed the point. Brothers and sisters, are we at that point too. Have we missed out on what the bible is trying to say?!

Jesus contradicted the Sabbath idea of the day by grossly violating it and declared himself the LORD over it. Just as every other ‘THING’, Sabbath too was a pointer to the man himself – “JESUS CHRIST”. That’s the ultimate reality!

Sabbath in the New Testament

Now in the New Testament we can be misled to think that God is contradicting Himself when He says things like Col 2:16-17. But no He is not. He just moved it to a higher plane.

He clarifies what He says in Colossians in Hebrews 4:9 “There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God.” So there is a Sabbath for us. And it goes much beyond locking up yourself in your house on a Saturday. It comes in the light of resting from another work! A spiritual work which ended with a cry from Jesus on the cross! “IT IS FINISHED“. The work of salvation is over, we can now rest from our works! We don’t have to strive to work for our relationship with God. We can now stand back and enjoy Him. We all must see this in our lives. It is so pivotal. The breakthrough in my Christian life came when I saw this! (5 years after being born again of him and filled with His spirit!). I pray that God would open your eyes too to see this great truth. God has finished his great work and now (amen and amen) He is at work, through His Spirit, working it out in our lives. We just stand back and say YES( to Him). That’s it!!

Your response and the danger

Back to the question: Should Christians observe Sabbath? If we are looking for a yes or a no, we are barking up the wrong tree. Let me explain…as I mentioned above, the law of life in which we operate now does not involve good or bad. It has to do with what the inner life in you is swelling up for. For those who claim that it’s biblical, all I want to tell you is that we no longer need to observe it like the Old Testament. Yes there is a new testament Sabbath and it has to do, not with sitting home on a Saturday, but with a state of rest in relation to God (i.e. we no longer have to earn our relationship with God).

Two books Galatians and Colossians, were written because someone hinted about following the Jewish traditions. As you read through these books we see the fire inside Paul as he wrote it.(Gal 6.11). God wanted you and me to stay clear of legalism! And He was very serious about it (Gal 5.4). If you are ever lead to observe Sabbath because of a stand you need to make or other personal choices, Go ahead! But you are in serious error if you make it into a doctrine, or if you force someone else to do it! We are not called to stand at the sign, but to move on to where the sign lead us. Sabbath is perfected in Jesus. This is what the sign is pointing to. So don’t hang around the sign, run to where it points to!!!!

By Sidharth Mohandas

“If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” [Romans 10:9]

This verse is one of the most common verses that people have used to lay down the condition that each of us must fulfill to be saved. But very few have actually understood what confessing “Jesus is Lord” is. However, the actual Greek doesn’t simply mean to say that Jesus is Lord. The Greek word used for the word confess in the above verse is “homologeo” which means to “make a covenant in word”. In the biblical sense, a covenant in word is a transaction where we say, “Everything that belongs to me belongs to You, and everything that belongs to You belongs to me”.

We need to ask ourselves today whether we are fulfilling our part of the covenant? Have we actually given “Lordship” to Jesus? Or did we just do a lip-service to Him? I encourage you to write down areas in your life that the Spirit convicts you of where His Lordship is lacking. The Spirit will help you to keep your part of the Covenant. Remember, 1 Corinthians 12:3 tells us that no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit. Let us seek the Spirit’s help and be people of the covenant.