More about covenants

Last night in our Jewish roots study, we took a look at the covenants.

The world had become wicked again after the flood, and so God chose one man through whom to work his promise in the garden - the seed promise from the garden that was fulfilled in Messiah...( Galations 3:16 - Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,”who is Messiah)

Genesis 12:1-3 is an introduction to how the covenant is going to work: 

1 Now the LORD had said to Abram:
      “Get out of your country,
      From your family
      And from your father’s house,
      To a land that I will show you.
2  I will make you a great nation;
      I will bless you
      And make your name great;
      And you shall be a blessing.
 3  I will bless those who bless you,
      And I will curse him who curses you;
      And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed

First Abraham, then the nation, then the world.  The land, the seed, and the blessing.  This is all still being fulfilled, first through Abraham, then Israel, and then the whole world through Yeshua the Messiah.  This covenant is irrevocable, and was reiterated several times through Abraham's descendents.

Let's look at the last verse from above:  The words used for curse are actually two different words.   "The one who curses (qalal) you, I will curse (’arar)." The word qalal means to not esteem, to treat lightly, to despise.  The word 'arar means bind with a curse, rend powerless, hem in with obstacles.   So the idea of the verse is this:  If you fail to esteem My plan through Israel, I will bind you up with a curse.  The first scriptural evidence of anti-semitism is when Hagar despised (qalal) Sarah when Ishmael was born.

The new covenant given to the Jewish people at the Last Supper was a fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:31, which fortells of that new covenant.  This new covenant never got rid of the covenant of the land, the seed, and the blessing.  Those are all still intact.  You can see that this is true, since the Jewish people never disappeared throughout history (in spite of many, many attempts); and since 1948, Israel is back in her homeland!  Yeshua is the fulfillment of the seed promise, and offers a blessing (salvation) to every person in the world!