Then Your Covenant With Death Will Be Annulled

Hello again!

This is what God gave me today in his word:

And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line; and hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter.” Then your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overwhelming scourge passes through, you will be beaten down by it. (Isa 28:17-18)

This is a little confusing… I mean, first he says “your covenant with death will be broken”, then he says you’ll be whipped?!

Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we have an agreement, when the overwhelming whip passes through it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter” (Isa 28:15)

This isn’t talking about their being saved from death, but instead it’s talking about their vain attempts to save their skin by works… Works which included “making a deal with death”… In turn for their efforts they got the whip.

A Roman "Scourge" Whip

My point in saying all of this is not (just) to tell you not to try to “make a deal with death” as the people of Hatti tried to – and we see how well that worked for them now don’t we? – but it is instead this; It doesn’t matter how hard we try or what we do we simply cannot get into Heaven! As you just saw in the verses above we can try making a deal with death itself and still fail to grasp eternal life… However:

 But he was pierced for our transgressions, 
   he was crushed for our iniquities; 
the punishment that brought us peace was on him, 
   and by his wounds we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

²⁶Then he released for them Barabbas, and having^(A) scourged^[a]Jesus, delivered him to be crucified. (Matthew 27:26)

Jesus was “scourged” for us! … In short; it’s true that no matter what we do of our own accord can not “get us into heaven”. But because Jesus has already taken the whip for us so that we can now be accepted into heaven… Our covenant with death has been annulled!

annul – invalidate: declare invalid; “The contract was annulled”; “void a plea”

wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

You are loved!

Joshua Cleveland