Faith Builders

A BETTER COVENANT

By Kenneth E. Hagin

Chapter 1

SATAN'S BIGGEST LIE

Fools because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted. Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; and they draw near unto the gates of death. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses. He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered tehem form their distructions. - Psalm 107:17-20

I've often made confessions for healing from the 107th Psalm; particularly from verse 20: "He sent his word, and healed them..."

To better understand the meaning of this text, we must look at the entire Psalm. Bear in mind it refers to the children of Israel and the fact that God has provided healing for them.

For example, in Exodus 23 He said, " And ye shall server the Lord your God, and he shall bless thy bread and thy water: AND I WILL TAKE SICKNESS AWAY FROM THE MIDST OF THEE. There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: THE NUMBERS OF THY DAYS I WILL FULFIL" (vv25,26).

You can readily see, then, why God calls the children of Israel "fools" in Psalm 107:17. They could have chosen to live in a place in God where there wouldn't have been any sick among them - not in the whole tribe - not in the whole nation.

There was a place in God they could have chosen to live where His blessing would have been on them, their fields, their flocks and herds, and so on. He even promised to fulfill teh number of their days, and to bless them above all the peoples of the eartch. And what was the blessing? Healing, health, and prosperity.

God established a covenant with them; they had protection under his Old Covenant. They were foolish to take themselves out from under that kind of a blessing, weren't they?

We've got a covenant, too: the New Covenant. But the way some people preach, I don't think they have ever read the verse in Hebrews that says we have a better covenant than the one the children of Israel had:

HEBREWS 8:6

6 But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of A BETTER COVENANT, which was established upon BETTER PROMISES.

(I think if they read it at all, they thought it said "worse"!)

All our lives we've heard in church that God doesn't want us to have anything. We're to go through life on Barley-Get-Along Street, way down at the end of teh block, next to Grumble Alley, and never have anything. We're to be sick, afflicted, and down-trodden all our lives, and maybe we can barely get into Heaven.

No wonder that turns a lot of people off! Is a covenant with no healing and no prosperity a true picture of this better covenant? You don't get that kind of picture under the Old Covenant, yet this New Covenant is supposed to be a better covenant.

(extract from Chapter 1 of A Better Covenant by Kenneth E. Hagin)