BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

What did God mean when He said, “By myself have I sworn”? He was saying, “There’s no one bigger than Me by which to swear. So, I swear on My own life that I will keep this covenant of BLESSING I’ve made with you. If I fail to keep even one word, even one promise, of this covenant, I will destroy Myself.” Talk about a solemn oath! Picture the scene. God is making this commitment over the blood of the ram that was the substitute for His covenant partner’s only son. There’s no way He can unbind Himself from it. Any argument about it is over. It’s been settled forever. God cannot break this promise and still live. Because Abraham understood this, his faith in God’s WORD was unshakable! So, “fully persuaded that, what [God] had promised, He was able also to perform…after [Abraham] had patiently endured, he obtained the promise” (Romans 4:21; Hebrews 6:15). The Oath Is for You, Too “But Brother Copeland, God swore that oath to Abraham in the Old Testament. It doesn’t really have anything to do with us, as New Testament believers.” Yes, it does! God had us in mind when He made that oath. His desire to secure our redemption was the motivation behind it. God knew if Abraham proved he was willing to sacrifice his only son, then He’d be obligated to do the same. Because of His blood-backed covenant and the oath He swore, He’d be bound to send Jesus to the cross to save Abraham and his seed. Who is Abraham’s seed? We are! Galatians 3:29 says, “If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.” This means the oath God swore to Abraham was also sworn to us. It means we can be as certain as he was that God will bring all His exceedingly great and precious promises to pass in our lives. "For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a STRONG CONSOLATION, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus" (Hebrews 6:16-20, emphasis mine). The word translated consolation in that passage means “courage.” What is courage? It’s inner strength. Strength that anchors our souls so we can believe God and not let contrary symptoms and emotions shake us. It’s what we see in Abraham. He didn’t get emotional about sacrificing his son. His emotions were completely anchored in the promise of God. As believers, ours can be too. We don’t have to get all upset when natural circumstances make it look like God’s promise can’t possibly come to pass for us. We don’t have to agonize when God tells us to do something we don’t understand, like “owe no man anything.” We don’t have to cry and say, “LORD, how could You tell me not to borrow money? I can’t get anything nice without going into debt. Don’t You care about me?” That’s baby stuff! It’s treating God as if He’s not a trustworthy Father. As if there’s something wrong with Him and His plan. It’s time we outgrew that attitude. God can keep His WORD no matter what the circumstances and He knows what He’s doing. We just need to believe Him and do what He says. “But sometimes that’s hard,” someone might say. 8 : BVOV

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