February 7, 2012: Knights of Columbus Bible Study Notes Summary of Lesson One
Knights of Columbus Bible Study
“Come and See…” (Jn. 1: 46)
Study Notes – summary of Lesson One (7 Feb 12)
A. Last week’s summary – What is a covenant?
1. Covenant comes from the Latin “Convenire” (to come together” or “to agree”)
2. What is the difference between covenants and contracts?
Contracts involve promises
-The “word” you each pledge to the other is you name. And you each sign your name on the contract as a “sign” that you’ll uphold your end of the bargain or keep your promise
Covenants involve oaths
-Covenants elevate and upgrade your promise. Not only do you give your word, you also swear an oath, invoke a higher authority – you call God in as your witness.
Think of the oath we’re most familiar with, the oath you swear before taking the witness stand in a courtroom: “I promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”
Contractsexchange property
-contracts involve you promising to pay a certain sum of money and the person you’re contracting with to deliver you a certain product or service.
Covenantsexchange persons
-When people enter into a covenant, they say “I am yours and you are mine.” In a contract, you exchange something you have –a skill, a piece of property, money. In a covenant you exchange your very being, you give your very self to another person.
B. The Meaning of Covenant in the Bible
-The first question we must ask is: What is God doing in making the covenants we find in the Bible? God is forging sacred kinship bonds. God is saying to his people, “I will be their God and they shall be my people…I will be a Father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me” (see 2 Corinthians 6:16).
-The story line and the drama of the Bible all plays out against this backdrop of divine family-making.
-The Bible begins with God’s covenant with Adam and Eve. By the final pages of the Bible, we see that the New Covenant God made in Jesus has embraced the entire world.
-Remember all those details of the Bible that seemed so hard to figure out- the laws and commandments, the ritual rules; the oaths that God swears to His people and his people swear to him; the historical episodes of sin and betrayal and repentance and forgiveness: the punishments and deliverance; the psalms and wisdom teachings, the prophecies of a new and final covenant redemption?
-They all make sense when you understand them as part of God’s divine plan to make all men and women into His sons and daughters through the covenants, which is all summed up in the New Covenant, where God send us “a Spirit of adoption, through which we can cry, Abba, Father!” (See Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 1:5).
C. The Character of the Bible Covenants
-Special characteristics of each of these covenants. As we move through our exploration of the Biblical covenants try to learn and remember the five special features:
1. The covenant mediator (the person God makes the covenant with) and his covenant role (whom the mediator represents);
2. The blessings promise in the covenant;
3. The conditions (or curses) of the covenant;
4. The “sign”by which the covenant will be celebrated and remembered.
5. The “form”that God’s family has as a result of the covenant.
-When you enter into a contract, say, to buy a house, you make a promise to the seller, along the lines of “I give you my word that I will pay you this amount of money for your house.” The seller, in turn, makes a promise: “I give you my word that if you pay me the sum we have agreed upon, I will turn over to you the deed of my house.”