How do we take the covenant teaching and apply it to our lives? Understanding the covenant and living in its authority is fundamental to the victorious Christian life.

The purpose of the Church is to continue what Jesus started.

One of the problems with the Church today is that it does many things Jesus doesn’t call it to do.

Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. ¹⁹I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you." (Luke 10:18-19).

There is a direct relationship between living by faith, authentic "Jesus faith," and understanding authority.

Matthew 8:5-12

5When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. ⁶"Lord," he said, "my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering." ⁷Jesus said to him, "I will go and heal him."⁸The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. ⁹For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it." (vv. 5-9).

Jesus’ surprise is evident: ¹⁰When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, "I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith." (v. 10).

Jesus says something that seems unrelated: "¹¹I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, [those are Gentiles, outside Israel, and outside the covenant at this point] and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.... ¹³Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go! It will be done just as you believed it would." And his servant was healed at that very hour." (vv. 11, 13).

In the beginning, God gave authority to humanity.

Genesis 1:26 - "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

God gave significant authority to humanity.

Psalm 8:4-6 confirms that we have this kind of authority: "what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? ⁵ You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. ⁶ You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet."

"We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ⁴"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. ⁵"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (vv. 3-5).

"When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it." (v. 6).

Adam failed to exercise authority over the enemy.

Words have authority in the realm of the Spirit.

Christians exercise spiritual authority by speaking.

Like seeds, words are planted, and we reap a harvest - good or bad.

The "Law of Genesis" is found in 1:12 - "The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good."

The law of sowing and reaping works just as surely in the spiritual domain as it does in the physical domain.

"The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" ⁶He replied, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you." (Luke 17:5-6).

In Luke 17:3-4, Jesus said, "If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. ⁴If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him." ⁵The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!"

Jesus said that we don’t need more faith, we simply need to exercise the faith we have.

Christians can make these kinds of choices and exercise this kind of authority because we are made in the image of God. We have the breath of God in us.

God created us to be covenant children. Our spirits are made from God himself. I Cor. 2:12 says it this way, "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us."