Jeremiah 34

And so the storyteller doesn't give you the crucial information 'cause he assumes this is like your 18th time through, through or whatever, and that you remember from the Book of Jeremiah what this is all about.

'Cause you do, right? You remember from Jeremiah 34 what this is all about.

Um, this is all ritual symbolism of a covenant, covenant-making ceremony.

It's ancient Near Eastern covenant-making ceremony.

What on earth does this bloody ritual mean? In Jeremiah 34, uh, there's some Israelite kings who, uh, had promised that they would set a whole bunch of slaves free, and then those rulers in Jerusalem went back on their promise, and it was a devastating moment.

And God was ticked that they went back on their word.

And so through Jeremiah, here's what God says to those leaders.

This is Jeremiah 34.

So, like, Isaiah and, and Jeremiah too.

We can talk about, um, Jeremiah 34, um, which becomes important both during the French and Indian War and then even more so kind of in Pennsylvania during the American Revolution.

These kind of individual stories, and I, I realized, like, I, I really need to actually look at how is it, like, what's the argument they're making in, in, in Achan or A-C-H-A-N, like, the whatever guy that steals plunder back in time of Jericho.

Um, they, they bring up him, like, his story, and, like, all these, all these kind of biblical stories and, and most of them, yeah, are from the, the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible.

So revisit that message if you want to get more details.

But there was an ancient custom here of cutting a blood covenant, and it's referred to in another section of Scripture, in Jeremiah 34, 18 to 19, that gives us a bit of a window into the custom.

It says, And I will give the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant which they made before me, when they cut the calf in twain and passed between the parts thereof.

You hear that? The prince of Judah and the prince of Jerusalem, the eunuchs and the priests and all the people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf.

The persons making the covenant would sacrifice several animals and divide the bodies, placing the halves opposite to each other on the ground.

Then the parties would walk between the pieces of the sacrifices in declaration that if they failed to keep their word, they deserved the same fate as the animals.

See Jeremiah 34, 18 to 19, we talked about that.

So that's the specifics of the covenant.

This would be the equivalent of going to the courthouse, signing a notary, and making it legal.

It's kind of like Jeremiah did in Jeremiah 34, verse 18.

But Abram wanted to know that God would make good on his promise.

How would he know? By a sacrifice.

He divided the beasts in the midst according to the ceremony used in confirming covenants.

Jeremiah 34 verses 18 and 19, where it is said, They cut the calf in twain and passed between the parts.

Number four, Abram, having prepared according to God's appointment, now set himself to wait for the sign God might give him by these, like the prophet upon his watchtower.

Habakkuk 2 verse 1, While God's appearing to his own sacrifice was deferred, Abram continued waiting, and his expectations were raised by the delay.