Broken Laws, Ordinances And The Everlasting Covenant

We will go on with Isaiah 24, verse 3:

“The earth shall be entirely emptied and utterly plundered; for the Lord has spoken this word. The earth mourns and fades away, the world languishes and fades away; the haughty people of the earth languish. The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore the curse has devoured the earth, and those who dwell in it are desolate; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men are left.”

God gives three reasons why this will happen concerning the inhabitants of the earth. They have transgressed the laws, they have changed the ordinance, they have broken the everlasting covenant. Now, those might be interpreted in various ways but in my thinking, there are certain laws which God has instituted for humanity which will never be broken with His permission. And when God made a covenant with Noah and all those who descended from him, one thing He said was whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. That’s an eternal edict of the Lord. No human government, no human legal system can set aside that law.

And then it says they changed the ordinance. I believe it means they changed the pattern of living which God has instituted for humanity. And primarily, that is the family. The structure of the family in the Bible is not based on culture, it’s based on the eternal nature of God Himself. God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of the man, the man is the head of the woman. It starts with God Himself.

For those women who feel it’s unfair to be placed in a position of subordination, you need to remember that Jesus is in a position of subordination to the Father. The changing of that ordinance ultimately has taken away the whole stability of society. There are professional sociologists and others who have seriously questioned whether society can survive when the institution of the family has been broken down.

And then the third charge against humanity is that we have broken the everlasting covenant.

For me the everlasting covenant is the covenant that God has made with men and women through Jesus Christ. And when we break that covenant and depart from its requirements, we must inevitably be subject to the judgment of God.

As I look at the world around me, and I’ve had a long time to observe the world, I’ve seen every one of these things happen before my eyes. I’ve seen the whole structure and nature of society totally change. If things that are done today and are taken for granted had been done sixty years ago, there would have been an uproar. The kind of thing that’s presented on television now, would have created a demonstration sixty years ago.

Perhaps you’ve heard the little parable about the frog. If you put a frog in a basin and pour in boiling water, the frog will jump out. But if you put the frog in a basin with cool water and gradually heat it, then the frog will stay there till it dies. And that’s how the devil has been treating us. He didn’t pour the boiling water in immediately but he has steadily and gradually heated the water until we’re ready to die.