The Bread of Presence: Encountering the Presence of God Through the Blood Covenant and Communion

By Phillip M. Wren

Throughout the Old Testament, we see people like Abel, Noah, Abraham, and many others relating to God through blood and blood covenants, which in today’s Western society we have little experience with. The Bread of Presence will take you on a spiritual journey to discover the background and rich meanings of these covenants as found throughout the Bible—all of which reveal profound treasures about Jesus, the gospel, and the new covenant.

Through exercising your faith and expressing your worship through communion, you will learn how to encounter God based on the unchangeableness of covenant promises sworn in blood. You will be taken through times of personal communion with the Lord, partaking of the bread and the wine, through which you can experience the benefits of physical healing, deliverance, and divine encounters with God that will change your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638854920

Book preview

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Understanding Blood Covenants and the Covenant Meal

How is your prayer life? Do you have a desire to go much deeper with God in your personal prayer and worship life? Many followers of Jesus have a hunger for a more intense prayer life and relationship with their Master. But many feel stuck and have no idea how to get there. Others have tasted of the depths of intimate worship times with God and have found Him very satisfying. What was it about King David that would cause him to write in the Psalms things like, "My soul thirst for Thee, my flesh yearns for Thee (Psalm 63:1), or, My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the LORD" (Psalm 84:2)?

David had encountered the presence of the Lord in the sanctuary where he experienced the awesome glory of God. It is an experience that once you taste of it, you yearn to come back to Him for more and more of His presence. I, like many of you, have also tasted of God’s satisfying presence in my own personal times of prayer and worship. But when I began to take communion in my prayer times, I entered into a different realm of tasting of the presence of God in such a way that it has changed my life. I have fond that yearning and longing for the courts of the Lord, for the presence of God. I want you to also know that burning desire to encounter God in the intimate chambers of His presence. Take a journey with me into a study of blood covenants and communion and learn to encounter God in His secret place.

As we begin our journey, we will first look at the nature of blood covenants. In the vision God gave me in 2003, He showed me a golden triangle with the words Blood Covenant at the base of the triangle. On the left side was the word Worship, and on the right side, the word Faith. I understood God was showing me that an understanding of blood covenants was foundational to the experience of encountering God in communion in a much deeper way than we have before. Therefore, in this first section, we will begin learning about covenants made by blood.

The Bible is full of blood covenants; and even the new covenant that Jesus established is a blood covenant. However, the average Christian is basically unaware of what a blood covenant is and how it functions. Every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we are celebrating a blood covenant. Therefore, it will be extremely useful for us to have at least a basic understanding of blood covenants and how they relate to taking communion with the Lord.

What is the significance of the bread and the wine? When we take communion, we often emphasize the fact that the bread represents Jesus’s flesh and the wine represents His blood. But what exactly does this mean? Why do we eat (symbolically) His flesh and drink (symbolically) His blood? We take too much for granted without understanding why we do things. The key to understanding these questions is found in understanding blood covenants. Understanding the details will open our eyes to more profound truth and in turn will deepen our experience with God in communion. Therefore, let us understand the significance of the bread, the blood, and the sacrifice.

Have you ever noticed how often covenants are used and established in the Old Testament? Most of these covenants are blood covenants. It is interesting to notice that as early as Adam and Eve, when their sons Cain and Abel came before God to present their offerings to the Lord, Abel presented a blood sacrifice, which we will see later is related to a blood covenant. Noah, after getting off the ark following the flood, offered blood sacrifices in connection with the covenant God established with him. God established a blood covenant with Abram when He had Abram to cut animals in half and God walked between the pieces establishing a covenant. At Mount Sinai, God established His covenant with Israel through a blood covenant, and we could list many more examples throughout the Scriptures.

So what exactly is a blood covenant, and how does it work? Once you understand the principles of this type of covenant, it will change the way you experience your personal times of communion with God, and it will give your faith a tremendous boost. I have found it to be one of the most powerful faith builders in my own life. You will have a new excitement and expectation the next time you have communion with the Lord. You will have a new expectancy for God to work in your life.

First we need to look at the background of blood covenants in ancient cultures and in the Bible to understand a few basic principles of how they were established, what is their purpose, and to see these principles in the new covenant that Jesus established through the cross.

As we look at some of the ancient covenants, it is important to understand the basic Hebrew definition of covenant. In Hebrew, the word is briyth (ber-eeth), which has as one of its basic meanings of cutting, as in cutting a covenant.¹ Briyth is a reference to cutting the flesh of a man or an animal to allow blood to flow for the establishment of a blood covenant. This takes on different forms in different cultures and traditions.

Background

In the background of almost every culture, we find a history of blood covenants. In H. Clay Trumbull’s book, The Blood Covenant, Trumbull documents the practice of blood covenants in the history of many cultures of the world. I would highly encourage you to read Trumbull’s book. It is full of many helpful insights on blood covenants. For example, we have a custom of shaking hands when we meet someone. This is a gesture of friendship. But most of us do not realize that the handshake is connected to ancient blood covenants in that the wrists of two people were joined to intermingle each other’s blood to create a covenant of friendship.² The wearing of a wedding ring is also a carryover of a blood covenant.³ The ring symbolized an unending bond between two parties often established in a blood covenant. Many of the blood covenants of the world’s cultures are very similar to each other and some have been corrupted with pagan aspects. But they all share some common form of blood covenants. Why? It seems that there may be a common root, or a common origin. How far back do we have to go to find this possible common origin?

As we saw above, Abel, the son of Adam and Eve, was the first human recorded to have offered a blood sacrifice. You can’t get much earlier in history than this. Where did Abel get the understanding of sacrificing in blood? He even understood to offer the firstlings of his flock and their fat portions (Genesis 4:4). Many of us may have assumed these details of making sacrifice were not given until God gave the Law to Moses over two thousand years later. But here we have details of a blood sacrifice that we are told were acceptable to God, while the simple gift of crops from the field that Cain offered was not accepted (Genesis 4:4, 5). Where did Abel, Noah, and Abraham get the understanding of covenanting in blood in such detail long before the Law was given through Moses?

We do not have to go very far to find a possible answer to our question. In the third chapter of Genesis, we have the famous story of the sin of Adam and Eve and how God responded to it. In fact, we have a fascinating pattern that shows up in the first three chapters of Genesis that many miss. I missed it for most of my life until a few years ago as I was studying these chapters and God opened my eyes and began to unveil the gospel so clearly to me in these first three chapters of Genesis.

In the first account of creation in Genesis 1, the reference to God in Hebrew is always Elohim, which we translate as God. Over and over we have phrases like, God said, God saw, God made, God called, and so on for about twenty-nine references to God in the first account of creation. Then suddenly in the second account of creation, beginning in Genesis 2:4, the pattern changes. When you see a pattern change like this God seems to be trying to get our attention. Almost every reference to God in chapters 2 and 3 take on His Hebrew personal name YHWH (Yahweh),⁴ and we find God referred to as LORD God every time; the word LORD being used in substitution of His personal name YHWH (Yahweh). Thus we have the name LORD God (YHWH Elohim) over and over in chapters 2 and 3, except when the serpent, the devil, uses His name. It is interesting to note that the serpent, the devil, did not refer to God as LORD.

In the first account of creation we have Elohim, the mighty God of creation, speaking things into existence seemingly from outside the creation. Elohim is the mighty transcendent God of creation. But now in the second account, we have references to God being personal, with His personal name, walking on the earth He has made. He breathes life into the nostrils of man. He walks in the garden and communicates with the man He has created. When Adam and Eve sinned He is there, still the personal LORD God on earth dealing with their sin. When man tried their own way of dealing with their sin by covering themselves with fig leaves God did not find this acceptable. The LORD God Himself, however, stepped in and covered the nakedness of their sin with animal skins.

Did you catch the significance of the two different ways God was referred to in the two accounts of creation? In the first account we have the mighty Creator God, but in the second, God appears as personal and is on the earth and deals with man’s sin. Does that sound like the Father in heaven in the first account, and Jesus, the personal God with a personal name, on the earth in the second account? Right in the first three chapters of Genesis we have a story that sounds a lot like the gospel story of Jesus coming to earth.

But there is more. How did the LORD God cover their nakedness? He did so with animal skins. But to do so meant that the LORD God Himself had to shed blood and put those animals to death Himself to cover their nakedness. God Himself, on the earth, made the first sacrifice in blood to deal with sin. This is one of the first illustrations of the gospel in the Bible. It is a beautiful illustration of God coming to earth in the personal form of the Lord Jesus, walking on the earth and dealing with our sin. As God did in Genesis 3, so God also did in the person of Jesus when God Himself made a sacrifice of His own Son and covered us with His garment of righteousness. That’s what the gospel is all about.

Now back to Abel. In the fourth chapter of Genesis, we find Abel offering up to God a blood sacrifice. This suggest that Abel’s knowledge and desire to offer his sacrifice to God was taught to him, perhaps from his parents who experienced God shedding blood for them. In response to God reaching down and shedding blood to cover their shame, God may have taught them how to respond back in kind and offer themselves to God in blood. God first reached down to man in blood to cover sin. Man then reached up to God in blood to connect with such a loving Creator.

It seems possible that this earliest story in the Bible of how God first dealt with Adam’s sin is an origin of the many blood covenant traditions around the world. It is certainly the origin of the principles of the new covenant through the blood of Jesus.

But why blood? A key to understanding blood covenants is the fact that the Scriptures teach, and ancient peoples also understood, that the life of the flesh is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11, 4). Therefore, blood represents life, not death. To offer blood is to offer life. When Abel offered blood toward God through his sacrifices he was in essence offering his life to God. Not only did he just offer his life through substitute blood, he offered the best, the firstlings and the fat portions, which represent the very best of the offering. Therefore, God accepted Abel’s offering of himself but rejected Cain’s simple gift from the produce of the ground, without offering himself. The book of Hebrews gives testimony to the faith of Abel in offering his sacrifice.

By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. (Hebrews 11:4)

The Heart of the Blood Covenant

What was experienced and lost in the garden with God was regained through the blood covenant of Jesus Christ. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had an intimate relationship and oneness with God. They were made in His image, and they shared His likeness and character. But through sin, they lost it all. It was in another garden, outside of Jerusalem, that Jesus gave His life by the shedding of His blood to restore to us what was lost.

The heart of the blood covenant is built on the key mentioned above, whether the covenant is between God and man, between two individuals, or between two groups of people. The key principle being that the life is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11, 14). The sharing of blood is the sharing of life. This principle seems to have been almost universally understood to some degree or another by ancient cultures. Trumbull says:

There has been in primitive man’s mind (however it came there) the thought of a possible inter-communion with God through an inter-union with God by blood… As the closest and most sacred of covenants between man and man; as indeed an absolute merging of two human natures into one, is a possibility through an inter-flowing of common blood; so the closest and most sacred of covenants between man and God; so the inter-union of human nature with the divine, has been looked upon as a possibility through the proffer and acceptance of a common life in a common blood flow.⁵

This thought seems to have its common root in the blood covenant God taught Adam, Abel, Noah, and Abraham. Trumbull again says:

A covenant of blood, a covenant made by the inter-commingling of blood, has been recognized as the closest, the holiest, and the most indissoluble, compact conceivable. Such a covenant clearly involves an absolute surrender of one’s separate self, and irrevocable merging of one’s individual nature into the dual, or multiple, personality included in the compact. Man’s highest and noblest outreachings of soul have, therefore, been for such a union with the divine nature as typified in this human covenant of blood.⁶

The idea is the interunion, or commingling, of lives and the interunion of natures through blood. Two lives being bound together in blood.

Cultural Background

In some ancient cultures, when two parties would enter into blood covenants, they would do so through substitute blood, the blood of an animal representing the lives of both parties. While growing up as kids, many of us learned about blood brothers where two individuals would make an incision in their wrist; and as their blood flowed, the wrist would be joined together for the intermingling of the blood or the intermingling of lives. Real blood brothers must protect and provide for one another. The enemies of one become the enemies of the other. They are considered as one. At the death of one, the survivor is to care for the family of the deceased as